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Transnational Thursday for August 8, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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IQ-income is more relevant between countries than between individuals in a country (assuming monoracial). Because luck evens out and zero-sum games even out. A high IQ person in average IQ country might have low income because he's low on social ladder relative to his countrymen. This doesn't work between countries. A whole country cannot be low on social ladder, it's a zero-sum game.

A whole country, however, might have bad government/have bad relations/bad resources etc. (btw, high corruption in a country also decreases IQ-income correlation for individuals in that country)

My understanding of the whole genetics vs. IQ thing is that there is indeed a strong correlation, but not that it's the only factor. You seem to be saying this yourself in another comment.

There's been just a few too many countries that went from top dog to basketcase, and vice-versa, for me to go full IQ-gene-reductionist.

There's been just a few too many countries that went from top dog to basketcase, and vice-versa, for me to go full IQ-gene-reductionist.

like... which examples? You not being clear of differentiaing two associations, genetic IQ vs phenotypic IQ and phenotypic IQ vs GDP per capita, doesn't help.

If there's a high IQ population under different policies (e.g. China) then it might get richer or poorer, this doesn't not simply low IQ population might do something to outcompete high IQ pop under normal government.

Argentina went from nearly US tier rich to. It's still very rich to median person.