A couple comments; first, you have clearly never tried to manage a third-world work force/team. A single example came to mind quickly for me; a hotel I frequented in Mozambique had a serious problem with feral cats. Like 50 of them. They would come right up to your table, jump on it while you were elsewhere, and lick the butter of your plate.
I like cats as much as the next guy, but seriously.
It took a couple of months to get an exterminator in willing to deal with them; cats = black magic = no employees (relatively well educated and very well paid for the town) were willing to deal with them.
The fact that you're writing this post in English significantly bolsters the point the author made about acculturation. You live in a world in which the English essentially won the culture war, and imposed their culture on a vast swath of the globe. (Check out this fine map of places England has not invaded for some perspective: http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2013/08/map-of-the-day-wh...)
While it might be controversial to say that English culture generates on average more wealth than some other cultures, I think it would be reasonably easy to demonstrate that something about the English acculturation of colonies left them better off financially than other European and Asian colonizers.
And, by better off, I mean vastly better off. Compare Nigeria (British, $3k+ per person GDP) to CAR (French, $350 per person GDP). I'm not cherry picking, either. America to Mexico. We live in a world shaped by the Brits.
To your point, financial well-being isn't anything like the only measure. At least in America, part of what made growth easy was whole-sale genocide. Places with more balanced colonization plans got much more strung out violence and economic difficulty. I would argue due to culture conflicts, at least in part.
I don't think the author is disputing this in the essay, though. He is instead saying that more individualistic cultures who will not engage with Western school systems hurt their economic outcomes, for a variety of reasons.
I like cats as much as the next guy, but seriously.
It took a couple of months to get an exterminator in willing to deal with them; cats = black magic = no employees (relatively well educated and very well paid for the town) were willing to deal with them.
The fact that you're writing this post in English significantly bolsters the point the author made about acculturation. You live in a world in which the English essentially won the culture war, and imposed their culture on a vast swath of the globe. (Check out this fine map of places England has not invaded for some perspective: http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2013/08/map-of-the-day-wh...)
While it might be controversial to say that English culture generates on average more wealth than some other cultures, I think it would be reasonably easy to demonstrate that something about the English acculturation of colonies left them better off financially than other European and Asian colonizers.
And, by better off, I mean vastly better off. Compare Nigeria (British, $3k+ per person GDP) to CAR (French, $350 per person GDP). I'm not cherry picking, either. America to Mexico. We live in a world shaped by the Brits.
To your point, financial well-being isn't anything like the only measure. At least in America, part of what made growth easy was whole-sale genocide. Places with more balanced colonization plans got much more strung out violence and economic difficulty. I would argue due to culture conflicts, at least in part.
I don't think the author is disputing this in the essay, though. He is instead saying that more individualistic cultures who will not engage with Western school systems hurt their economic outcomes, for a variety of reasons.