Данная статья была впервые опубликована в журнале Спутник и Погром в январе 2019 года (и потом озвучена на YouTube-канале CzarSputnik). Не смотря на то, что к тому времени этот журнал был заблокирован на территории РФ и находился в своих предсмертных муках, статья широко разошлась по Интернету и была упомянута в ряде влиятельных российских СМИ. Это […]
Русская Ноосфера 2.0: масштабный обзор уровня IQ по регионам России
On Defending The Soviet Union
Contrary to what some might try to take from my post on the longterm failure of the Soviet economy, I am not an anti-Soviet ideologue. I loathe lies about its achievements and the blanket condemnations directed its way by moralistic poseurs every bit as much or more than I detest reality-challenged attempts to paint it […]
Walled Off By Complexity: Did China Stagnate Because Of Its Writing System?
One of the biggest questions in global history is why it was Western Europe that industrialized first, and ended up colonizing most of the rest of the world. As late as 1450, the possibility of such an outcome would have been ridiculed. By almost any metric, China was well in the lead through the medieval period […]
The Century without an Indian Summer
How will the global South fare in our likely future of energy shortages, climate change and resource nationalism (and wars)? India has China’s population mass, but lacks its industrial dynamism and human capital. Africa has Russia’s energy and mineral wealth, but not the military power or social coherence to defend it. South America’s prospects appear brighter […]
Cliodynamics: Mathematizing History
One of the most interesting emerging sciences today, in my opinion, is cliodynamics. Their practitioners attempt to come to with mathematical models of history to explain “big history” – things like the rise of empires, social discontent, civil wars, and state collapse. To the casual observer history may appear to be chaotic and fathomless, devoid […]
Education as the Elixir of Growth II
A while ago I wrote Education as the Elixir of Growth on DR, in which I noted that in most countries the educational profile is closely correlated to their level of productivity. The major exceptions are nations with resource windfalls (inflated productivity) and socialist legacies (deflated productivity). Furthermore, the greater the gap between the ‘potential […]