Global Population by Race & The Future of Our World

[Mossling]

Here is a general breakdown of the World's population by race, which apparently also broadly outlines general economic power, since races seem to occupy individual nations which tend to work together more easily:



Seeing as:

* Asia is developing at a very fast rate, thus taking economic power from the West every day, with China predicted to overtake the US by 2030 (China's economy overtook Japan last week)
* Asia consitutes more than half the World's population
* White people's culture appears to dominate the world's international culture at present, even though Whites account for only 16% of the World's population

...it seems inevitable that some serious changes are going to happen over the next 20 years or so - within most of our lifetimes.

Are you ready for this?
What are going to be the most serious changes, do you think?
How will you (and your families, etc.) deal with these changes?

[Mossling]

Interesting that this has been my most popular thread with nearly 6000 views, and yet has had no replies.

Anyway, here is a snippet from yesterday's news:

The awful truth: education won't stop the west getting poorer
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 February 2011

"the financial meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent squeeze on incomes is slowly revealing an awful truth. As figures out last week from the Office for National Statistics show, real UK wages have not risen since 2005, the longest sustained freeze in living standards since the 1920s. While it has not hit the elite in banking, the freeze affects most of the middle class as much as the working class. This is not a blip, nor the result of educational shortcomings. In the US, which introduced mass higher education long before Britain, the average graduate's purchasing power has barely risen in 30 years. Just as education failed to deliver social democratic promises of social equality and mobility, so it will fail to deliver neoliberal promises of universal opportunity for betterment.

"Knowledge work", supposedly the west's salvation, is now being exported like manual work. A global mass market in unskilled labour is being quickly succeeded by a market in middle-class work, particularly for industries, such as electronics, in which so much hope of employment opportunities and high wages was invested. As supply increases, employers inevitably go to the cheapest source. A chip designer in India costs 10 times less than a US one. The neoliberals forgot to read (or re-read) Marx. "As capital accumulates the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.""

Taking in to account general GDP (nominal) per capita, the US is currently 10th in the world, the UK is 20th, Brazil is around 55th, Malaysia is around 60th, and China is around 90th in the World, it seems there is still time for Westerners to make preparations.... but what preparations?

The East is playing a fair game, it seems - it's playing the West's game, and with more than half the world's population being Asian (excluding any Middle East population), then numbers will speak for themselves sooner or later. Information is freely available on the internet now - schooling is only a cheap laptop away. Very soon, gone will be the days of an 'educated class' in any country. Then what?

[CanadysPeak]

Interesting that this has been my most popular thread with nearly 6000 views, and yet has had no replies.

Anyway, here is a snippet from yesterday's news:

The awful truth: education won't stop the west getting poorer
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 February 2011

"the financial meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent squeeze on incomes is slowly revealing an awful truth. As figures out last week from the Office for National Statistics show, real UK wages have not risen since 2005, the longest sustained freeze in living standards since the 1920s. While it has not hit the elite in banking, the freeze affects most of the middle class as much as the working class. This is not a blip, nor the result of educational shortcomings. In the US, which introduced mass higher education long before Britain, the average graduate's purchasing power has barely risen in 30 years. Just as education failed to deliver social democratic promises of social equality and mobility, so it will fail to deliver neoliberal promises of universal opportunity for betterment.

"Knowledge work", supposedly the west's salvation, is now being exported like manual work. A global mass market in unskilled labour is being quickly succeeded by a market in middle-class work, particularly for industries, such as electronics, in which so much hope of employment opportunities and high wages was invested. As supply increases, employers inevitably go to the cheapest source. A chip designer in India costs 10 times less than a US one. The neoliberals forgot to read (or re-read) Marx. "As capital accumulates the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.""

Taking in to account general GDP (nominal) per capita, the US is currently 10th in the world, the UK is 20th, Brazil is around 55th, Malaysia is around 60th, and China is around 90th in the World, it seems there is still time for Westerners to make preparations.... but what preparations?

The East is playing a fair game, it seems - it's playing the West's game, and with more than half the world's population being Asian (excluding any Middle East population), then numbers will speak for themselves sooner or later. Information is freely available on the internet now - schooling is only a cheap laptop away. Very soon, gone will be the days of an 'educated class' in any country. Then what?

You might read Tom Friedman's book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. The premise of a flat world is that a programmer in Palo Alto cannot expect to earn more than a programmer in Mumbai. That requires that we raise the standard of living in Mumbai or lower it in Palo Alto.

I don't know about others, but I didn't comment on your post because race is not usually a valid identifier.

[Forest_Dump]

I don't know about others, but I didn't comment on your post because race is not usually a valid identifier.

I'd have to say ditto. Although I do sometimes find some interest in the number of races and how they are divvied up. I've seen as few as four and as many as 150.

[Mossling]

race is not usually a valid identifier.

Identifier of what?

Are not the general global economic drives based on the following hierarchy?:

Perceived Race First, Religion Second, Secular Culture Third, Broad Geographical Region Fourth.

I am sure there are many examples where this is not the case, but it seems that this is presently the general global case, and it appears to be quite deeply entrenched. At present it is just from my own experience of living in Europe, South Asia, and East Asia, however, and I am quite happy to be mistaken; I would like to open this topic to discussion.

For example, I felt that in China, a Chinese criminal is still socially 'valued' above a law-abiding, friendly white man (such as myself). I have often heard it mentioned how Asians from India are more racist that any other 'race', and these mentions were mostly from South Asian immigrants who have been living in the West. With at least half the world operating on such race biases, I feel that economies will be primarily driven by fundamental loyalties based on perceived race.

It seems to make sense that race becomes such an economically influential force, since biological variations in, say, skin colour and eye shape will have evolved in geographically, and thus ecologically, isolated niches - areas of land which often remain as natural borders between nations operating as individual economic units. I am sure as the world becomes more internationally/interacially 'comfortable', such divisions will not be so significant, but it seems at present they are.

What is your perspective on it?

[CanadysPeak]

race is not usually a valid identifier.

Identifier of what?

Are not the general global economic drives based on the following hierarchy?:

Perceived Race First, Religion Second, Secular Culture Third, Broad Geographical Region Fourth.

I am sure there are many examples where this is not the case, but it seems that this is presently the general global case, and it appears to be quite deeply entrenched. At present it is just from my own experience of living in Europe, South Asia, and East Asia, however, and I am quite happy to be mistaken; I would like to open this topic to discussion.

For example, I felt that in China, a Chinese criminal is still socially 'valued' above a law-abiding, friendly white man (such as myself). I have often heard it mentioned how Asians from India are more racist that any other 'race', and these mentions were mostly from South Asian immigrants who have been living in the West. With at least half the world operating on such race biases, I feel that economies will be primarily driven by fundamental loyalties based on perceived race.

It seems to make sense that race becomes such an economically influential force, since biological variations in, say, skin colour and eye shape will have evolved in geographically, and thus ecologically, isolated niches - areas of land which often remain as natural borders between nations operating as individual economic units. I am sure as the world becomes more internationally/interacially 'comfortable', such divisions will not be so significant, but it seems at present they are.

What is your perspective on it?

Try telling an ethnic Chinese and a Vietnamese they're the same race and you'll get the answer (assuming you live to tell the tale).

[Forest_Dump]

First of all, somewhat like Canady seems to have been implying, there is no independent criteria for establishing categories of race. I would agree that there are commonly but not universally perceptions of race but these perceptions result in different formulations of whatever race then assumed to be (and therefore different numbers of races, criteria for membership, etc.). But race as an identifier is still limited to certain types of societies, specifically the nation-states most common today, but not all societies. Specifically the more "tribal" and/or egalitarian types of society do not use the concept, at least not in the same way (with variation that I think can be correlated with interaction with broader state-level societies). Following from this:

Are not the general global economic drives based on the following hierarchy?:

Perceived Race First, Religion Second, Secular Culture Third, Broad Geographical Region Fourth.

This is pretty new to me (as in I have actually never heard this before in quite this way). Jared Diamond (Gun, Germs and Steel) takes the approach that something I assume to be akin to your Broad Geographic Region is actually "first" in importance but that has been severely critiqued. I have not seen anything quite like your specific configuration before, let alone defended in any way.

[Iolo]

Why not classify humans according to different shchtumbles? There are no such things, but who cares for tedious points like that? This archaic 'race' stuff seems to be desperately deep in the American psyche, doesn't it?

[Mossling]

Try telling an ethnic Chinese and a Vietnamese they're the same race and you'll get the answer (assuming you live to tell the tale).

I seem to recall that Chinese people and Vietnamese people are happy to embrace their shared racial history - in my encounters with them, at least. Xinjiang Chinese (Uyghurs) and Han Chinese are probably more likely to clash (as they have done recently in those NW China riots), and yet their culture has deeply chinese elements, and their physical features are often visibly 'Chinese' when compared to neighbours slightly more further afield - such as in Cambodia. The Uyghur Islam is also apparently a 'Chinese brand' of Islam - not something that would unite them more with Arab Sunni Muslims, for example, rather than their secular Chinese brothers.

"In addition to eating pork, the Uygurs of Changde Hunan practice other Han Chinese customs, like ancestor worship at graves. Some Uyghurs from Xinjiang visit the Hunan Uyghurs out of curiosity or interest. Also, the Uyghurs of Hunan do not speak the Uyghur language, instead, they speak Chinese as their native language, and Arabic for religious reasons at the mosque. [...] Most Uyghurs are Muslim, and practice Sufism." Wiki: Uyghur People

Specifically the more "tribal" and/or egalitarian types of society do not use the concept, at least not in the same way (with variation that I think can be correlated with interaction with broader state-level societies).

Just today I was listening to an Anthropology lecture relating how an ethnic group from Cameroon referred to "white people" - namely the French and British Engineers who had been working nearby. Did not many darker-skinned groups refer to, and reflect upon, the very different pale skin of Europeans when they arrived in their lands?

I have not seen anything quite like your specific configuration before, let alone defended in any way.

Interesting - maybe I will have to have a look around the net a bit. What is the most common main general influence upon the preferred economic interactions of nations, then? Political system? Like how the Communists of the Soviet Eras worked together?

"Rather than being one melting-pot society,.... the reality is that many US cities are made up of neighbourhoods of people with a common heritage who strive to retain their original culture and language. In San Francisco, a visit to Chinatown with it's signs in Chinese and people speaking Chinese verifies this reality." Intercultural Business Communication

"Sociologists have found homophily to be very common. Studies show that rich people want to associate with other rich people. Lawyers like to be with other lawyers. Doctors prefer to hang with other doctors. And people of the same gender, race, and/or ethnic group tend to favor each other's company.

So it shouldn't surprise you that investors prefer to finance entrepreneurs who are similar to them. But you might not have considered the implications of this basic tenet of human behavior.
[...]
In a completely different setting—trade credit in Africa—Raymond Fisman of Columbia University concluded that trade creditors are twice as likely to finance entrepreneurs if they are from the same ethnic group than if they are from a different one.

In yet another context, Ola Bengtsson of the University of Illinois and David H. Hsu of the University of Pennsylvania discovered that the founders of venture capital-backed startups and the venture capitalists who serve on their boards are much more likely than random to have the same ethnicity. In fact, they find that having "a shared ethnicity almost doubles the likelihood of a match."

Why Investors Prefer Entrepreneurs Who Look Like Them

Academics have a lot of theories about why people favor those who are similar to them, but two are particularly important to entrepreneurial finance. The first is that similarity breeds trust between entrepreneurs and investors. According to Bengtsson and Hsu, it's easier to develop shared understandings and implicit agreements with people who are like you.

The second is that similarity gives investors more control over the entrepreneurs they back. Being similar increases the odds that the entrepreneur and investor travel in the same social circles. Because ostracizing someone from a common social network is a good way to punish bad behavior, Bengtsson and Hsu explain that investors prefer similar entrepreneurs as a way to get more leverage over them.

The Implications

For an individual entrepreneur, the implications of homophily for financing are fairly benign. Your odds of getting money from someone who is similar to you are greater than the odds of getting it from someone who is different. But homophily exists across a variety of dimensions—race, age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, and so on. So your odds of getting a specific investment might not be that different than those of anyone else because of the way your particular attributes match with those of investors. " Businessweek.com: Overlooked When Raising Capital: Investor Preferences

This archaic 'race' stuff seems to be desperately deep in the American psyche, doesn't it?

Try going to China or India with your racism-ometer at the ready, lol. That may broaden your opinion somewhat, methinks.

[Forest_Dump]

I seem to recall that Chinese people and Vietnamese people are happy to embrace their shared racial history - in my encounters with them, at least. Xinjiang Chinese (Uyghurs) and Han Chinese are probably more likely to clash (as they have done recently in those NW China riots), and yet their culture has deeply chinese elements, and their physical features are often visibly 'Chinese' when compared to neighbours slightly more further afield - such as in Cambodia. The Uyghur Islam is also apparently a 'Chinese brand' of Islam - not something that would unite them more with Arab Sunni Muslims, for example, rather than their secular Chinese brothers.

By which I take it you recognise the difficulties in using the racial concept since, from your post, it seems that all the key attributes you listed show some clinal variation and behaviour is not necessarily correlated with ethnicity or religion or politics, etc., and I doubt that any would classify all those individual groups as distinct races, etc. And yet, it is the argument of PERCEIVED racial unity, or as you refer to it as shared racial history (which by the way is again a purely perceptual thing) that is used, politically, to thwart (or at least try to) the independence of Tibet, Taiwan and the Uyghurs as well as continue to influence the domestic politics of Vietnam, North Korea, etc. In other examples as well, race can be clearly seen as a political-economic construct used for purposes that go beyond any necessary foundation in anything else like science.

[Mossling]

Sorry, Forest_Dump, I have just finished editing my last reply to you. Please review and add anything extra.

[Forest_Dump]

Mossling, you are getting into the very hairy topic of 'ethnicity' which could be considered race written small i.e., a classification of people a step below race in scale so that while there may be a relatively small number of races (I have seen numbers proposed for this ranging from 4 races to 100-150 or so races on some racist web sites which I will not reference directly for obvious reasons). On the other hand, there can easily be thousands or more of "recognized" ethnic groups but that number varies much more because of 1) debates over the criteria of recognizing distinctive ethnic groups (see below) and 2) the fact that ethnic group composition shifts quite fluidly and therefore many ethnic groups are very fluid in composition and boundaries, etc.

To try to make this simple, there have been two sides on the ethnicity issue. "Primordialists", which include older classics like Shiels and more recently Geertz, argue that ethnicity has its origins in a common past. "Circumstantialists", particularly following the classic paper by Fredrik Barth (his 1969 paper remains the most cited paper on ethnicity), argue that it is only PERCEPTIONS of a common history that matter and only through interaction with other groups. Therefore, in some contexts (e.g., North America), there can be an ethnogenesis of new ethnic groups (e.g., "blacks", pan-Indiansim, Chinese, Italians (which can include, for example, Sicilians, Genoese, etc.,) who would not recognize themselves as all being the same in Italy (or Africa, or China/Asia, etc.) but form a new ethnic constellation when interacting with "outsiders" based on things like PERCEIVED shared history. Visible shared cues to identity tend to be more immutable (like skin colour, etc.) when status differences are believed to be important, inherited and at least potentially contestable. In highly cosmopolitan settings, immutable visual cues (like skin colour) are often "preferred" because they are not as easily changeable. However, particularly cosmopolitan settings, even that can break down. So, some First Nations people talk about they times when they would successfully pass themselves off as Italian, Asian or even black when there was a local stigma about being native but now adopt symbols like ribbon shirts or medicine wheels (etc.), hanging from their car mirrors to identify themselves as native. While I am more of a primordialist (not surprising since I am an archaeologist and look to the past and try to identify groups (populations, etc.) more than most) I also recognise that many or most past collective group identities (including ethnic groups) simply don't work anymore because previously independent groups are breaking down with gene flow as well as political, technological, economic, ideological diffusion, etc. into and out of almost all groups.

The concept of race never really held up to scientific or anthropological scrutiny and the concept of ethnicity is also dying off due to the globalization of the world but remnants are still around and being used to rationalise many political and economic decisions regarding to group identities. The point is that there is no longer any kind of uniformity in how these groups are defined or identified or what this can or should mean as the world changes. Some people do try to maintain their uniqueness and independence in many ways and on different grounds; others do not.

[Forest_Dump]

By the way, before some geneticist jumps in, I should point out that when I was talking about the concept of races being no longer supportable, I am not mentioning the results of recent genome studies that actually support the idea that, genetically, an argument can be made that there are actually three races: 1) the group often referred to as Khoi-san speakers (aka Kalahari foragers or even Hottentots, etc.) of southern Africa; 2) Efe/mbutu, etc. (aka for lack of a better, more well-known term, pygmies) of Central Africa; and 3) everyone else in the world. While there were some individuals from groups 1) and 2) who were kidnapped and displayed around the world, as far as I know, very few or none have left Africa or "disseminated" their genes (except in a very local way) outside their groups (although there has been lots of historically recent gene flow into these populations). So Africa is the only place where you really have more than one "race" and even they are disappearing as discrete populations (because of interactions with surrounding horticulturalists, etc.).

[Forest_Dump]

Just today I was listening to an Anthropology lecture relating how an ethnic group from Cameroon referred to "white people" - namely the French and British Engineers who had been working nearby. Did not many darker-skinned groups refer to, and reflect upon, the very different pale skin of Europeans when they arrived in their lands?

I had almost neglected this part. My bad.

Looking at perceptions of race in places like Africa are certainly worthwhile once the context is established. Certainly we know from recent history (e.g., the Hutus vs. Tutsis in Rwanda, for example) that not all these folk taxonomies are valid but are more recent constructs that often seem to follow the "colonial experience" (which usually means a very negative thing). Obviously here too skin colour is an immutable visual cue that can work as a signal to identify strangers from a distance and allow immediate recognition of who is "kin" etc. (although just as obviously there are cases of adoption into communities of visibly different outsiders who are then treated as exactly the same as everyone else - although since these adopted outsiders aren't usually fully enculturated, etc., they may be considered slightly stupid members of the community).

But "white skin" has taken on new meanings in Africa by the 20th century at least. Specifically, white skin is often considered to be a mark of a (dangerous, evil, etc.) witch and to have powerful magic (leading to the deliberate murder, etc., of albinos in some places so that skin and body parts, etc., can be used in magic). While the origins of this practice and belief set are not certain, one common explanation stems from possible Arab, etc., slave traders who may (?) have accompanied raids, often at night, stealing people away, etc. With the raids by Arab slave traders going back at least 1000 years in some places, plenty of time for the belief in "white skin" = evil witches, etc., to diffuse and become modified in various ways.

[Iolo]

Try going to China or India with your racism-ometer at the ready, lol. That may broaden your opinion somewhat, methinks.

Nonsense is widely believed, yes. Are you making any other point?

[wolfhnd]

Replace Ethnicity with race and move on. I would suggest even changing the title of the original post.

[CanadysPeak]

There are clear divisions, sometimes based on ethnicity, sometimes on "perceived race", sometimes on national origin, sometimes on religion. Those appear to be local rather than global. For example, I live in an area with a very disproportionate number of Indian and Pakistani physicians (the attractors are likely the temples, mosque, and grocery stores). They cross-refer all the time, yet would not even get along in SE Asia. We also have a lot of White American physicians; they cross-refer as well. I suspect people are comfortable with others that they think they "understand".

Oh, by the way, we have a lot of Penn State engineers in this area. They tend to hire other Penn State graduates. Just a comfort thing, I suppose.

[Forest_Dump]

There are clear divisions, sometimes based on ethnicity, sometimes on "perceived race", sometimes on national origin, sometimes on religion. Those appear to be local rather than global. For example, I live in an area with a very disproportionate number of Indian and Pakistani physicians (the attractors are likely the temples, mosque, and grocery stores). They cross-refer all the time, yet would not even get along in SE Asia. We also have a lot of White American physicians; they cross-refer as well. I suspect people are comfortable with others that they think they "understand".

Yes, that is exactly the "circumstantialist" take on it all - ethnicity being redefined on a local, as-need basis to meet things like interactions with "other" groups which can as easily shift. So, for example, your "white" physicians may well have descended from English, German, French, Italian, etc., roots but now consider themselves to all be "white" even though others might include them in different races, probably different ethnicities and certainly different nationalities that didn't and don't always (or currently) get along but may happily all clump under the banner of being "white" if and when it serves them and defined in opposition to whatever currently happens to be "non-white".

[Mossling]

Thank you all for your comments , and I agree with them all. It seems science has a particular stance on ethnicity and race, and then politically powerful masses have their own view - a bit like Christians believing in Creationism, while science refutes that possibility. However, it remains that Creationism, no matter how Empirically 'wrong' it may be, is a force at large in the world.

I always agree with the scientific perspective, however that does not mean I am going to ignore the presence of Creationism as a social force. In the same way, although race and ethnicity is based on dodgy global perceptions, I wish to discuss the presence of very real, active, and powerful 'race perceptions' present in the world as a social force. I would like to look scientifically at the erroneous, yet heavily influential effect of perceived race upon global economic dynamics, because whether we like it as scientists or not, it apparently exists.

As we have covered already; the Chinese perceive all non-Chinese-looking people as a very separate race, which tends to heavily influence their business preferences. Indian-looking people, and especially those who are 'ethnic Hindus' from India are apparently heavily racist against what they perceive to be 'other' races (I have even been on the receiving end of this from a Hindu 'family friend'). Seeing as China and India are now the rising economic forces in the world - predicted to overtake the USA in 20 years time, what does anyone think the West is going to be able to do? Do you think the science surrounding race classification is going to be heeded much? Or is the West, and especially it's perceived 'white people', going to receive it's own racist attack from those it abused on similar grounds in the past? I am surely not ruling this latter case out. China's "100 years of shame", for example, is very much alive in China.

[CanadysPeak]

I certainly agree that we can talk about global economics in terms of some characteristic similar to perceived race. Certainly we should not be surprised to see a general distrust of, and antipathy toward, foreigners with white skin. As Ricky has noted, "We got some 'splainin' to do." with regard to slavery, colonialization, gunboat diplomacy, etc. But, I think in general that Chinese, for example, are quite willing to do business with us in the US so long as we don't insist on a non-level playing field.

The central question will be: How productive is a US worker compared to a Chinese worker? Both should earn the same pay for the same production, don't you think? If the highly centralized Chinese government gives them an advantage, we can't complain. We can only ask if that's worth copying.

[Mossling]

I think in general that Chinese, for example, are quite willing to do business with us in the US so long as we don't insist on a non-level playing field.

Oh of course. I am not talking about not doing business here - I am talking about the largest economic force in the world - a nation called China containing a very specific self-perceived racial identity - reaching a Superpower status without any incentive to see other perceived races as being worthy of the same human value as themselves. The added fact that they have sufferred this '100 Years of Shame' at the hands of the Western 'round-eyed whites' will only apparently add fuel to this.

Guardian.co.uk: China's black pop idol exposes her nation's racism
""Ugh. Yellow people and black people mixed together is very gross," was one representative post. And Lou's critics are incensed not only by her colour but also because she is apparently the product of an extramarital relationship. Another blogger wrote: "Numb! This bitch still has the audacity to appear on television! I don't know what to say! One cannot be shameless to this kind of level!"
[...]
The China Daily newspaper also published a sterling defence of the young theatre student, written by one of its top columnists. "There are two factors at work here," wrote Raymond Zhou. "Lou Jing is not a pure-blood Chinese and anyone who marries a foreigner is deemed a 'traitor' to his or her race. More relevant, Lou's father is black."

Zhou concluded: "It is high time we introduced some sensitivity training on races and ethnicities if we are going to latch on to the orbit of globalisation. People should realise that if you have a right to discriminate against another race you have automatically given others the right to discriminate against you."

Chip Tsao, one of Hong Kong's leading columnists and cultural commentators, believes that a child of a Chinese woman and a black person hits all the buttons that cause prejudice among Chinese. "It's an obnoxious novelty," he said, adding that Chinese prejudice against black people was part of "prejudice against people less well-off than themselves".

There was, he said, greater acceptance of Europeans because they were viewed as successful, but mixed Chinese/white European couples frequently attracted racist comment.

One leading actress, Jiang Ziyi, who has an Israeli boyfriend, has routinely been accused of betrayal for consorting with a foreigner. A stark reminder of official racism came last year when Ding Hui, of mixed Chinese and African parentage, was barred from representing his country in the national volleyball team."

Something tells me that the following situation with regards to an 'ethnic minority' descending from a race outside the country will not be seen in China for a very, very long time:

"Last year's list showed how the economic crisis wiped £155bn from the wealth of the UK's richest people, with the number of billionaires down from 75 to 43.

The London-based steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal headed the list for the sixth consecutive year, seeing his fortune double from £10.8bn in 2009 to £22.45bn following the recovery in the steel industry." Guardian.co.uk: Rich list reveals record rise in wealth

When tenders are up for grabs, and offers are pretty equal, then I can't help but see ethnicity/race as playing a large factor for India and China - i.e. those of the same race will be given preference.

The central question will be: How productive is a US worker compared to a Chinese worker? Both should earn the same pay for the same production, don't you think?

I think, at the centere of the issue, is not how much an individual is paid, but how many individuals are working for similar pay, when it comes to the economies of whole nations which are developed to a similar degree. It apparently matters more what workforce one has - how many horses to hitch up to the wagon - which determines how much product is delivered and at what rate, when management techniques are generally the same.

[LocalizeYourMind]

I think you are missing something here as well. I expect technology to develop quite a bit in the future. Likely it will get to the point that anything that can be outsourced can be done cheaper at home by robots. The new wave of the future economy will be towards marketing, localization, and innovation. This is what will keep people employed. Meanwhile, nations that rely on our outsourcing will have to adopt the same technologies in order to grow their economies.

One thing I don't understand: why is the cost of living so much cheaper in china when they have much bigger population problems and scarcity of resources per person than we do in the US? It transportation of goods is so cheap that outsourcing is a viable option, then the cost of living (except for property prices) should also equal out in both countries.

[Hoppingmad]

This Pie Chart isn't all that accurate, mainly because it groups people by skin colour as well as race, which is contradictory and undermines the validity of it.
What if a Middle Easterner was white? What about the Arab part of North Africa? Are they 'black'? Or with the 'Middle East'?

[Mossling]

This Pie Chart isn't all that accurate, mainly because it groups people by skin colour as well as race, which is contradictory and undermines the validity of it.
What if a Middle Easterner was white? What about the Arab part of North Africa? Are they 'black'? Or with the 'Middle East'?

Of course there are going to be 'grey areas' - or more like 'tan areas', but I think the idea is that there are racial 'nodes' found in the world today.

[Mossling]

I think you are missing something here as well. I expect technology to develop quite a bit in the future. Likely it will get to the point that anything that can be outsourced can be done cheaper at home by robots. The new wave of the future economy will be towards marketing, localization, and innovation. This is what will keep people employed.

Sorry - I missed this post.

The way the world is 'set up' at the moment - holding up greed and displays of wealth as the main route to happiness - shadenfreude indulgence, basically - will not let countries go ahead with effective and practical automation on behalf of the masses because that will piss on the bonfire of Rothschilds and Rothschild-wannabes of this world. They are having a ball trying to amass grotesque wealth just to say, "I've got what you want and that makes my DNA feel good, in a kind of lonely, twisted way, but that's just the way it is".

See my thread on Moneyless Society: Resource-based Economy (especially p3) for more on that. I'm still waiting for someone to refute my statements in my most recent post on that thread here.

In China and India at the moment, however, the obsession with money is not completely about greed or schadenfreude. It's also also about covering oneself legally - where 'money talks', and buying what they call a 'parachute' out of their conservative, socially-repressed and corruption-rife country - most often to the West - Canada, for example.

There are some apparent positive global developments afoot in all this, though - smartphone technology, and thus portable, cheaper, concealable information technology providing more education and potential social networking via the internet, and a 'science of happiness' illustrating apparent facts behind social contentment in wealthy and impoverished social circles - something which is championing and rolling out a basic psychology and philosophy governing the stress response and how to undermine it.

See Google's 'Search Inside Yourself' program, for example, and the secular mindfulness meditation techniques they are promoting - practices proven to have been helping US soldiers from Afghanstan with PTSD, and with on-going military use with soldiers to manage their nerves during intense situations such as counter-insurgency operations where any person in their midst could be an assassin. See my thread Zen Meditation Promoted by UK Mental Health Services for more on that, and there have been plenty more developments over the past year to reinforce that thread, with the West's main advocate visiting the UK government to recommend the efficacy of the secular mindfulness practices:

Zen and the art of keeping the NHS bill under control
The Guardian, Sunday 7 April 2013

Back in 1965, a grad student in molecular biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology stumbled across a class of five people on Zen Buddhism. He'd never heard of Zen and knew nothing of Buddhism. Nearly half a century later, that grad student, Jon Kabat-Zinn, has arguably done more than any other individual to put Buddhism into the mainstream, not just in America, but in dozens of countries around the world. Now, Downing Street policymakers are keen to hear more.
[...]
Kabat-Zinn's work has spawned a cluster of different applications of mindfulness training, including for addiction, the elderly and parenting. In the past couple of decades, Kabat-Zinn has collaborated with psychologists in the UK who have adapted his work for Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which has won recognition from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), as a treatment for depression.

All of which explains why our interview is happening in Westminster, where Kabat-Zinn has a string of meetings with senior politicians before he heads to Downing Street for a session with policy advisers. There are good reasons for the policymakers to be listening closely, as Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues have a compelling proposition: mindfulness has unlimited applicability to almost every healthcare issue we now face – and it's cheap.
[...]
He now believes that mindfulness is on a steep adoption curve. Given the benefits of mental clarity, insight and creativity that practitioners claim, the interest from corporations is wellestablished, particularly in Silicon Valley, where Kabat-Zinn is a regular speaker. Even the US military has adopted a version of mindfulness for training soldiers.

I interact with many high-flyers from the burgeoning Chinese IT industry here in Beijing, and they have heard of these practices - one of them even attends courses run by Western mindfulness meditation teachers - even though the core practice was refined in China 1500 years ago. It's the secular, straight-forward nature that they are drawn to - an example of Western science stripping down and distilling a resource and selling it back to the people they got it from - this time it's a mind-body skill, however; a cultural paradigm, and a potentially very powerful one at that.

These current developments were not so obvious when I started this thread, however, and I do think they are very powerful and effective game-changers to a degree. Racial bias can be transcended by effective secular accessible and relatively 'obvious' psychology revolving around the human innate stress response - something more easily triggered by unfamiliar territory and customs. As soon as we are all operating positively on the same scientifically verified psycho-social basis, then everyone is primarily operating as a human, rather than a race of 'God's chosen people', or self-professed genetically superior strain, or whatnot. If anyone suggesting they are superior gets angry, those wise to the mechanisms underlying the 'feral' now relatively redundant fight/freeze/flee stress response will know otherwise. I predict two broader categories governing the future of our world - those in control of their emotions, and those not. Race will be a lesser consideration. I am more inclined to do business with a person who is less likely to get angry than a person who acts like a toddler having a tantrum.

We see this today, even, with regards to religions which define themselves as peaceful and civilised until someone outside the religion does something they disagree with and then they are chasing them through their own house with an axe in the name of that 'offended' religion. Getting offended because someone is different from you is a 'primitive' reaction in today's world. The future divisions will be between modern, resilient, civilised scientifically-leaning and tolerant human beings and 'the others'.

[ryan711]

One thing I don't understand: why is the cost of living so much cheaper in china when they have much bigger population problems and scarcity of resources per person than we do in the US? It transportation of goods is so cheap that outsourcing is a viable option, then the cost of living (except for property prices) should also equal out in both countries.

A very interesting question. I hope someone could answer.

[Mossling]

One thing I don't understand: why is the cost of living so much cheaper in china when they have much bigger population problems and scarcity of resources per person than we do in the US? It transportation of goods is so cheap that outsourcing is a viable option, then the cost of living (except for property prices) should also equal out in both countries.

A very interesting question. I hope someone could answer.

Seems pretty simple to me - human lives in general are cheaper in China. Food quality is bad, labour is cheap, minor crimes go uninvestigated. Quality control, regulation, and social services cost a lot of money, and yet as soon as a country or area gets a decent infrastructure many people want to live there and housing prices go up (as has happened in Beijing and Shanghai, for example). Often the living costs appear to be unnecessarily high in the West, but this seems to be due to relative lack of competition (where else are you going to live?) and a 'greed cult' revolving around happiness gained through wealth-related schadenfreude (see above).

[ryan711]

Seems pretty simple to me - human lives in general are cheaper in China. Food quality is bad, labour is cheap, minor crimes go uninvestigated. Quality control, regulation, and social services cost a lot of money, and yet as soon as a country or area gets a decent infrastructure many people want to live there and housing prices go up (as has happened in Beijing and Shanghai, for example). Often the living costs appear to be unnecessarily high in the West, but this seems to be due to relative lack of competition (where else are you going to live?) and a 'greed cult' revolving around happiness gained through wealth-related schadenfreude (see above).

Yes. This is the main reason why living standards are cheaper in China. While high cost of living nations spends so much to preserve and improve human lives, China and also India's government are somehow insensitive to the suffering and even deaths of the less privileged citizens as if one form of population control. As if the law of supply and demand applies to human population. Sigh :(

[Mossling]

Seems pretty simple to me - human lives in general are cheaper in China. Food quality is bad, labour is cheap, minor crimes go uninvestigated. Quality control, regulation, and social services cost a lot of money, and yet as soon as a country or area gets a decent infrastructure many people want to live there and housing prices go up (as has happened in Beijing and Shanghai, for example). Often the living costs appear to be unnecessarily high in the West, but this seems to be due to relative lack of competition (where else are you going to live?) and a 'greed cult' revolving around happiness gained through wealth-related schadenfreude (see above).

Yes. This is the main reason why living standards are cheaper in China. While high cost of living nations spends so much to preserve and improve human lives, China and also India's government are somehow insensitive to the suffering and even deaths of the less privileged citizens as if one form of population control. As if the law of supply and demand applies to human population. Sigh :(

I think China's "Century of Humiliation" probably did enought to desensitize them. They are all too aware of the potential brutalities humans can wage on other humans. Today's situation is a mere walk in the park in comparison. And of course they're not naive enough to assume that such Western aggression is off the agenda - they need to develop, industrialise, and install a decent infrastructure as quickly as possible before some bored lunatic in charge of a military industrial complex somewhere starts World War 3.

Check out the situation in the US and UK for general social comfort though, compared to Japan and the Nordic countries - the US and UK are at the bottom of the 'developed' world for social health:



It's all about inequality. As the dude on the video says: "If Americans want to pursue the American Dream, they are better off moving to Denmark". XD

[cudjoekj]

Hello,

I'd like to use Mossling & the Global race pie chart as a reference for a book that I am writing. I would like to know Mossling's first name and credentials. Also, how was the data collected. Please let me know if this would be okay. Thanks.