13 Comments

Maybe the East--West axis should be called the "Continent--Island" axis.

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What about topography, weather, temprature. It changes ways of surviving the circumstances, hence philosophies of life, hence all those characteristics written above.

Personal observation shows huge inclination towards the effect of Natural Habitat or people's thinking--comparable only to external threats of invasion.

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Sorry, I meant to say "Japan, China and Russia oppose deference to authority, are anti-nationalistic, don't value parent-child ties and reject suicide more than nations like the US?". Assuming that you responded to the nonsense I actually said rather than what to I actually meant to say.

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I don't know about China or Russia, but that seems an apt description of Japan. It does have a high suicide rate, but that doesn't mean suicide is more accepted over there--AFAIK it's not.

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With this graph, I would think it would be important to note that placing centrally on the vertical axis is likely due to lack of ideological interest in either pole, rather than due to conflicting but strongly felt interest in some elements of both poles. This is possibly the case for the horizontal axis, but I have a hard time believing anyone has any disinterest the vectors this represents.

I also am surprised that there is a strong correlation between elements on the secular-rational side and the placing of Japan, Russia and China on these factors. "Societies near the traditional pole emphasize the importance of parent-child ties and deference to authority, along with absolute standards and traditional family values, and reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride, and a nationalistic outlook. " This doesn't seem to be consistent with anecdotal evidence. Japan, China and Russia value deference to authority, are anti-nationalistic, value parent-child ties and reject suicide more than nations like the US?

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OhioStater, where are you getting this idea that wealth leads to moral decline, look at some of the traits from the poor category, listed together:

"jobs to own nationality, reject outgroups, woman needs children, not happy, state responsible,religious faith, national pride, obedience." Note also that "homosexual ok" is listed in the rich values, but not the poor ones.

It looks to me like being poor has a tendency to make people evil. Or (more likely) people are evil by default, but wealth improves their moral character. This makes sense, if you're rich you feel secure, so devote less resources to survival and more to Hansonian altruistic signaling. And one of the best ways to signal is to reach out to the "other." I think this is the reasons modern people are significantly less evil than their ancestors.

Of course, Hansonian altruistic signaling can also lead to voting for statist policies, so I guess it's a mixed bag in that respect.

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As noted in the comments at Sumner's, we should expect the variance among small countries to be larger.

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so, I had a short conversation with my CPA, my takeaway...

you seem to lead a very European lifestyle.

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Can't resist two afterthoughts-1) In one sense it's unfortunate that the plot is so geographically coherent: as a result it's tougher than it might be to travel far in value-space without also traveling far physically. Best try: A combined Russia/Sweden trip is a no-brainer, and for a U.S. resident El Salvador looks pretty good, too. I suppose I'd pick Morocco to round it out.2) What's the deal with Greece?

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Very interesting.1) I wish that I could have easily found a description of the analysis approach at the referenced site. That said,2) I'm tentatively astounded at the ease with which a simple (the 7 colored regions), fairly natural, and largely-non-gerrymandered bucketing can be imposed on the country plot3) FWIW, if I had been presented with the country chart minus axis labels and minus the U.S. data point, my gut feel would have placed U.S. higher than did the actual factor analysis (e.g. my sense is that U.S. values are significantly closer to Sweden's overall than to Turkey's or Iran's).

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> I’m guessing they don’t spend $550 million dollars on new high schools (as LA just did.)

Here in Fairfax County, just before the stock market crash, we spent over $100 million dollars on renovating West Springfield high school.

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I happened to be looking at the CIA Factbook's median age statistics recently. A low median age correlates highly with birth rate, death rate, poverty, traditionalism, and Survivalism. Birth rate may be a good causal factor. I sorted the median age for all the countries in the diagram. In increasing order:

15-25: Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Pakistan, Jordan, Philippines, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Egypt, South Africa

25-31.9: Dominican Republic, Venezuela, India, Iran, Peru, Morocco, Mexico, Algeria, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Israel, Albania, Argentina, Chile, Armenia

[Sharp transition occurs from 32 to 35]

33.7-40: Uruguay, Ireland, Moldova, Iceland, Macedonia, United States, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Montenegro, Slovakia, Australia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ukraine, France, Lithuania, Norway, United Kingdom, Hungary

40.1-45: Spain, Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Czech Republic, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Serbia, Croatia, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Sweden, Belgium, Slovenia, Greece, Finland, Austria, Italy, Germany

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Hirsch and Veblen basically argue economic growth is not beneficial, and this is another data point proving their assertions. Economic growth leads to wealth (at least in elites) which leads to cultural and moral decline, at least among those with wealth.

It seems the only point of economic growth is the geopolitical great game, such that the US Treasury has enough resources to outspend Russia and China militarily.

Also is important we buy big cars to drive up the price of gas because if we didn't the price of oil would be low making it easier for China use that same oil to develop its economy and military.

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