Comments by "Andy Dee" (@AndyViant) on "The Bi-Oceanic Corridor to revolutionize South America" video.
-
@ejtattersall156 No, that's not necessarily correct. Wealth comes from availability of natural resources, human capital, productivity, innovation, education and many other things.
Corruption doesn't remove most of these advantages, but it just reduces overall productivity.
Likewise a country can have very low levels of corruption, but if it doesn't have the resources or production of goods to sell, it's still going to be broke.
I live in a modern first world country that has recently set historical records since it's founding for corruption levels.
Were we still wealthy? Absolutely, due to natural advantages of natural resources, educated workforce and so on.
Was anything done about that increased level of corruption?
No, because the entrenched government was THE major source of corruption (just like most 3rd world countries), as well as it's major industries and of course political donors.
Corruption only gets resolved when the people go without to a sufficient degree to cause civil unrest, or at least vote out the corrupt government for the alternative.
If you keep the corruption level below the level that the public reacts to, or distract them sufficiently, the corruption continues on unabated.
Eventually the distractions stop working when people economically hurt enough, or recognize the double standards.
This is the main cause of changes of elected government in democratic countries, or regime change in less democratic ones.
3
-
1
-
1
-
@ejtattersall156 nice cherrypicking on how you ignored the rest of it. I will repeat
"Wealth comes from availability of natural resources, human capital, productivity, innovation, education and many other things."
Firstly, Germany was long the largest nation in Western Europe by population. So it excels in human capital.
It's population is well educated, which creates innovation which drives higher production.
So straight away choosing Germany as a counterpoint sinks your argument.
In addition Germany was long a wealthy country from natural resources too - the critical ones of the late 19th to mid 20th century especially being coal, timber, and metal ores such as iron ore and copper.
Germany was at one stage both the largest steel manufacturer in the world and the largest coal miner, as well as having significant reserves of gas and hydro power.
Germany would not have fought 2 world wars against most of the european powers without a lot of resources.
One they were critically short of was oil, and we know the consequences of that.
Obviously, as with most modern economies they have transitioned from a resource extraction economy to a knowledge based economy, although they certainly maintain far stronger production capability than most modern economies.
Part of that descent from extractive industries is environmental controls, with their much tighter environmental controls than say China or India, but I will agree part of it too is exhausting previously rich resources.
1