@jbbigf @tuppington @PhilBest That’s about right. But I can’t tell how much of t

http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/02/mitt_romney_is_living_every_social_scientists_nightmare @jbbigf @tuppington @PhilBest That’s about right. But I can’t tell how much of that is pandering.Diamond’s full argument is that all other things being equal, humans develop at a fairly constant rate given the natural resources available to them. HOWEVER, cultures often choose or evolve institutions that allow them to be out gunned, germ’ed and steel’ed, so to speak. And cultures can create institutions that allow them to advance or inhibit advancement. So Diamond generally argues that he answered the objection. He’s just emphasizing his primary contribution. Not diminishing it’s counter-effects.For example, we can visibly demonstrate the points at which both Chinese and Islamic civilizations became destructive. And we can see why they became destructive: they could not solve the problem of institutions. The west didn’t so much solve the problem of institutions as solve more of the problem than others did – preventing stagnation and regression. Even if that solution was an accidental byproduct of the church’s greed, caused by forbidding cousin marriage, and granting women property rights, in order to collect land in the Church’s name more easily.