Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Slavery: The Details They Don't Teach You In School (Pt.3) | Candace Owens | POLITICS | Rubin Report" video.

Reporter: "Champ, what do you think of Africa?" Muhammad Ali: "Thank God my great-granddaddy got on that boat!" - November 1974, after his heavyweight fight with George Foreman in Kinsasha, Zaire
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@afreedman4361 Selfish, maybe. Although it's hard to say what a great-grandfather might tolerate, for the sake of the good of his great-grandchildren.
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@afreedman4361 I'm fairly certain that's not what they were thinking at the time. I'm also certain that Africa for the last few centuries has been no picnic, even the parts where Europeans weren't much involved. (Rwandan genocide, anyone?) Would a family have suffered less there than here? Most likely, not by much. Would a story like Muhammad Ali's been possible there? Absolutely not.
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@afreedman4361 Credit to Thomas Sowell for what I think is a convincing argument -- that the geography of the place (lacking snow-fed, navigable great rivers) doesn't lend itself to the sort of permanent agriculture and long-range bulk trade that allows for stable major cities to form, and civilizations to advance. With few / unstable major cities, you get few / unstable civilizations that depend on high degrees of division of labor, and little intergenerational accumulation of those assets and knowledge, like you see in Europe, China, India, or even to some extent in pre-Columbian Americas. The exceptions here -- Nile Delta cities like Alexandria and Cairo, and inland cities like Timbuktu -- are cases that demonstrate the underlying soundness of Sowell's argument. The Nile cities flourished (moreso, and sooner than any other region on Earth) because they had the required geography, as well as the boost they got from close connection to other civilizations. Timbuktu tried very hard to flourish, and was even known for its libraries and knowledge accumulation -- but its geography (plus its relative isolation from other civilizations) ultimately didn't allow these gains to be permanent. As Jared Diamond points out, there are resourceful people everywhere, but geography does matter.
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