Capital flows in and out of a country are not to do with exploitation in the main but rather where people choose to invest their money. A lot of people in emerging countries do not consider property safe in their own countries and so their money flows to Western countries. For hundreds of years Dutch, British and Swiss investors have been investing capital into less developed countries. European countries continue to have large aid budgets. To put this all down to exploitation is as naive as suggesting the slave trade was a purely European venture. In fact African tribes collected and sold slaves to the traders. Muslim countries still have slavery today
What has this got to do with the evidence provided? No one is denying the points you've made here. Exploitation and people wanting to move away their money aren't mutually exclusive. The points that I was making were directly linked to power abuse by the West be it from large trans-national corporations or the nations themselves. I certainly did not claim it was all down to it but it's clearly a major factor. Unless you can show some empirical evidence that the points that I raised such as Transfer Mispricing and third world countries having to pay for debt they already have are untrue than that needs to be acknowledged.
Now I'll be very careful to draw a false equivalence but many a person believed before the Soviets Collapsed in the early 90s that the Eastern Bloc would never be able to implement democracy. Many people thought they'd just revert to another form of oppressive rule. Now though they're obviously not as effective as democracies in the West, Eastern European countries are enjoying a great deal of democracy and I will suspect the same thing with happen with Arabic countries in the 21st century provided we indirectly add fuel to extremism.
Religious violence is linked to which religion you are talking about. Islam has always been a more violent religion. Democracy in an Islamic context needs checks and balances on the will of the majority. Almost all Muslim countries today are persecuting Christians. Baathist dictators have generally been friendlier to the church
Yes there are all persecuting Christians but you need to realise that during much of Christendom you'd be killed for holding a different denomination. Being a Catholic was still illegal in the UK until the mid 19th century. One of the main reasons why such persecution has plummeted is due to the Enlightenment which in turn let to the separation with church and state. Both factors lead a massive decrease in religious violence across the board. Though Islamic countries have been evidently later, we've seen massive progress in the past couple of generations to a better future.
Peoples life expectancy and living conditions improved generally across the whole of Europe. Communism performed badly compared to Western countries and it was an oppressive place to live to boot especially for Christians.
Lets address that with two points. Of course life expectancy had been increasing in the entire World but countries in the Soviet Bloc were doing better compared to the rest of the Planet. If you read the study that I gave you, you'd see that when countries are compared with similar wealth, the socialist countries nearly universally performed better. It's intellectually dishonest to compare a nation like America to a nation like the Soviet Union and say that therefore Capitalism is better.
Obviously Western Countries would perform better, European nations have had nearly 100 years ( when the revolutions began) of grow and power at the top over the rest of the planet whereas practically all socialist countries have come from back-water areas. Nevertheless, compared to each other and factoring in their beginning positions, socialist countries simply performed better.
But yes, Socialist countries in the 20th century under the Warsaw pact treated religious people disgustingly and were certainly more oppressive than the West than can be said without really having to think about it.
Socialism was always playing catch up on technology or simply stole it from the West. Maybe it is a double standard to on the one hand resist Christian involvement with the state and ón the other advocate a Socialism which would require a big state and bureaucracy to implement.
To keep this position tenable you have to demonstrate that Socialist and Capitalist countries were on par to make the claim that somehow Socialism was worse with technology. Progress doesn't live in a vacuum. What socialism in the 21st century did lead to was the first satellite in Space, the first man, women and dog in space, the first object on the Moon and sending the first objects to other planets. They went from a feudalistic society to beginning the space age in 40 years.
Gene editing tools like CRISPR do not mean Start trek style replicators in every house within a generation. Actually animal proteins are quite complex and it will take a while for some genius to produce a synthetic steak that tastes good. However the oil economy is no longer indispensable as we have alternative ways of solving our energy and biochemical and transport needs. At the moment though it remains more cost efficient. Forcing ecologically friendly solutions before they are cost effective is not essential yet except in the case of toxic products and health risks but it is one of those nice to have policies which voters are increasingly choosing to improve their living environment.
Well obviously CRISPR doesn't lead to that. I can't think anyone who's made such an crazy claim. What it does lead to though is a greener, cost effective society. What will happen in about 30 years is multiple areas such as methane from cows, fuel from vehicle and a massive drop from fossil fuels to greener energy could see a genuine green world. I will concede however that 30 years may be ambition considering the political situation of the world at the moment. Sadly due to the abuse of the planet, we can no longer think about "cost effective" plans. We seriously can't. I would say that climate change will be the biggest battle of the 21st century. 12 years until permanent damage is done to our planet. This is time for action right now.
Again it sounds like you need an intrusive socialist bureaucracy for your plans. Are you relying on the atheists to provide the public service. I am in favour of a gradual approach with punishments for worst abusers. The Green case is getting stronger all the time but it will not happen overnight.
Better America has control, as there is more accountability and rules in that system than any other feasible power right now. Europe is too weak and disorganised, China too ideologically misguided and oppressive and Russia too self-interested to rule the world. "Make taxes not war" seems to be your philosophy of the state. You advocate an intrusive Green/Socialist bureaucracy to take our money and boss us about. But I guess you want atheists and people of other religions to actually do the work
To begin not a single reasonable person supports overnight change ( if we take it semi-literally). What any person who's done some research into the situation actually advocates for a position similar to yours (nevertheless it would be incredibly faster for what you would want I assume))
Secondly, I'm not bothered who provides public services. Be it Christian, atheist or a Muslim. I'm not bothered to give one. What I do care about is Christians having influence in the state which I believe goes against Christian teachings not because I think Christians have had a bad influence of society (which Christians haven't).
Finally this idea of a socialist only lives in a right-wingers dream. You may be confusing me a genuine left winger with someone like a liberal who's inherent position is contingent to the status quo. Now ironically, left-wingers have always advocated for honorable wars like WW2 (which the Tory party was split on appeasement) so I can't see this. Since socialist society's have full employment (this would render most types of Welfare useless because literally anyone able can get a job), increased productivity per person per hour, less actual hours or work and more control of the workplace. I certainly support work and I too personally support it too. In fact, the socialist cause actually offends people who think they can live life on their backsides because in a better society we would all work to better each other. I just don't support Christians having control over others for a moral case based solely on my understanding of scripture rather than an economic one.
Punishments for the worst abusers is roughly what a tradable permits and negative externality tax is just a slightly more accurate way of putting it.
Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist countries are poorer than Christian countries statistically. Africa has complicated the numbers cause it is new to the Christian scene, but its economic progress in the last 100 years has a lot to do with the church. Take away oil and most Muslim countries are a complete disaster.
Can you give me a meta study or just one study/studies by itself which concludes that Christianity in Africa leads to higher wealth? I'm not denying it exists I just haven't done as ounce of research into it. Nevertheless, for hundreds of years Indian Middle Eastern nations suppressed Christendom overall again suggesting the hypothesis that religion isn't the main factor to wealth.
The Byzantines beat the Persians in the war just before Islam rose. So why you think the Persians were more advanced seems quite arbitrary. BUt also the Byzantine influence on Islamic architecture is clear. They slotted into the old imperial infrastructure and then claimed a lot of good stuff to be there own is what happened. Christian nations today produce more original research,more nobel prize winners etc etc. So not much has changed.
Well yes the Eastern Roman Empire did severely beat the Persians just before the rise of Islam but the rulers afterwards mopped the floor with them afterwards. I'll concede that the Eastern Roman Empire had influence on Arabic architecture but quite simply, most technological advances in the Islamic period were independent from other cultures/religions. Again the nobel prize helps when the richest countries in all the world are Christian and thus are more likely to have the resources to achieve said goals.
Actually the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the fourth crusade was probably more significant. The Muslims would probably have never taken the city had it not been so weakened by the Latin Empire period. It was Western Catholics that destroyed the residual power and resilience of the Greek Orthodox Byzantine empire.
I'm willing to concede this too as a major factor
You use the word preserved... bear in mind when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans it had about 1150 years of Christian history under its belt. The Hagia Sophia was unequalled in the Muslim world until very recently.
Except where your cases as usually anecdotal or one of cases I try to base my claims of studies and lots of research. What we see if that Islamic countries preserved Greek thought more than Christendom nations and developed it more too be it Meta-ethics and complex mathematics. (besides maybe in the area of Theological concepts where Christianity have been dominated since the early 2nd century). Yes Arabic countries could never build anything like the Hagia Sophia but neither could the rest of Europe for nearly a thousand years either.
In fact, Roman architecture (I'm assuming again that Eastern Roman Empire's technology was similar to the Roman Empire of old) far surpasses the technology of the Middle Ages. From the Roman Roads to the Colosseum to the Theatre of Marcellus. We can check from records, to archaeology to just with our own eyes that despite being Pagans and little to no Christian influence until the early 4th century, the Romans did things in the building sector which wait beyond anything Christians could do until the 15th century which was largely help with Roman influence. Thus we can conclude with this knowledge that Roman Paganism is superior to Christianity because after 1000 years from it's fall, many of it's buildings (and even to a degree today) surpass Medieval to High Medieval Europe. Except this is a ridiculous way of making a claim and it's doubtful that the religion had any conclusive link with the technological progress of the Romans.
Sorry you cannot remove 2.5 billion people from the equation as anomalies.
I don't think you actually understand the reasoning to do so. Due to growth being weighted into a couple of nations it gives the impression that growth is worldwide were in fact it's quite centralised. It's not to do with the population per say but with the Globe as a whole. Quite frankly, growth in India and China is keeping the Third World looking like's it's progressing everywhere.
