[emanuer]

For anyone interested in this topic, I can wholeheartedly recommend the book: "The WEIRDest People in the World" by Joseph Henrich.

The book provieds a beautifully constructed framework to understand culture and its effect on psychological development, as well as economic development.

  1. In the book, the author argues that innovation rates of countries correlate positively with the psychological dimension of "individualism". (FIGURE 13.5)
  2. The the dissolution of strong kinship ties correlates significantly with high economic growth. An argument the author repeats in his paper from 2022 [1]

My personal opinion is: gaining wealth is not a zero-sum-game, but a — the more participants the bigger the pie gets — kind of game. I truly believe, if cultures and institutions change, everyone in the world can be wealthy. With "wealthy" I refer to the living-standard North-American or Europeans enjoy.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4200629

[aidenn0]

> My personal opinion is: gaining wealth is not a zero-sum-game, but a — the more participants the bigger the pie gets — kind of game. I truly believe, if cultures and institutions change, everyone in the world can be wealthy. With "wealthy" I refer to the living-standard North-American or Europeans enjoy.

I'm less convinced. A lot of the improvement to living standards in the west for the past 50 years or so have been a result of shifting labor to countries with lower standards of living. That being said living standards in post-war US is not a bad target and I don't see a physics problem with attaining that.