Gabon – Africa's Shining Star

Chinedu writes:

As for Africa, it’s a large place, and some regions have higher GDP per capita and better living standards than Eastern Europe. We’ll see what the future holds.

There is one country that has a higher standard of living than Eastern Europe. It is Gabon, and the high PCI is all due to oil. It’s $20,000/yr PCI. However, Gabon is still one of the most horrific shitholes in all of Africa. Apparently all of the money is being stolen by an elite of ~10-2  

Tribalism and Chieftainship: Why the Modern African State Fails

Jason Y writes:

A tiny elite steals from people in many nations, not just African (or New World African) states.

The Blacks generally just sit there and take it though in Africa. And in Africa it is particularly nasty because of the dire poverty of so many of the people. For instance, Gabon has a per capita income of $20,000/yr. Should be a nice place. But the malnutrition rate is sky high, most of the people are horribly poor and/or starving and the health indicators are complete shit. Apparently some little elite, probably one tribe, monopolizes the state and steals all the money leaving everyone else with jack. With all that oil wealth, Nigeria should be a rich country. Instead it’s one of the most nightmarish places on Earth with horrific poverty and crime. You want to know why Blacks just sit there and take it in Africa? Because they are used to this crap! African Blacks have always lived in tribes under a chief. Generally the chief and his pals monopolized most of the best women and apparently a lot of the money, but I would assume that they doled out enough for the tribe to live by. They still sort of do that in a way. One tribe gets into office and steals all the money and gives it to their tribe and all the other tribes get jack. The other tribes don’t revolt because they are used a thieving all powerful chief. Instead they plot for their tribe to take over public office so that they can enrich their tribe and fuck over everyone else! I will say that I like what Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe though. The capital society is pretty peaceful and nice and even the slums are not that bad by African standards. Mugabe is a populist and a socialist, and he has done a lot of great things for his people. Botswana is said to more or less function also. The takeaway point is that Africans don’t rebel against their leaders even when they suck because they are used to living under an autocratic thieving chief who could not be challenged. Instead they opt for zero-sum games of replacing one tribe’s oppression with another’s. I do not know about this tropical diseases holding Africans back thing. There are a lot of tropical diseases in the Caribbean, Brazil, Vietnam and Singapore and those places are doing all right. It is not at all typical for a small oligarchic elite to steal everything and leave everyone else with jack. It’s hardly the case in Europe except maybe in the Ukraine and possibly in Russia and Kazakhstan. That model does exist in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Burma. Further east, this is the model in Indonesia and the Philippines. This is also the typical model in most of Latin America, though things are finally changing now. However, in India, Nepal, Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines and now most of Latin America, one can at least say that there is a loud and angry Left made of the masses who are getting screwed by the oligarchs. In a number of places, the Left is even armed. But there seems to be no such thing in most African states. It is if Africans simply expect to be ruled by a thieving autocratic bastard and do not see any other alternative. In most of Asia it is not the case – Mongolia, China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Taiwan are relatively equitable places. The entire Arab world is more or less run according to a socialist model as is Iran. Most of the former SSR’s are relatively socialist places such as Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kirghistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The oligarchic model is pretty much nonexistent in traditional Europe and in the Anglosphere of the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, though the US is starting to resemble the model somewhat. Trust me that nowhere else on Earth would you find a country that had a PCI of $20K/yr where the majority of the people wallowed in horrific poverty, starving and sickly. That sort of lunacy would only be found in Africa. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Possible Environmental Factors in the Black IQ

Johan Mayer writes:

Have you tried correlating the IQ scores with local lead poisoning? The main gains from the Flynn effect ended by the late 1970s (birth years), suggesting that fuel lead didn’t play a role (as both whites and blacks would experience higher intelligence, thus raising the intelligence that 100 represents—rather, it was probably the elimination of malnutrition), and that some of the remaining gap should arise from differential lead paint. The calculation might look as follows: Deficit = sum(over n) Distribution of lead level(n) x IQ_deficit_from_lead(n)for each neighborhood. Add the deficit to the mean IQ calculated from the composition of the neighborhood, then re-estimate the (before lead) IQ of each group, fitting to composition and reevaluated IQ; re-normalize the black IQ to the white (raised) IQ. Elevated black blood lead (much more common than elevated white blood lead) suggests that at least another 3 IQ points can be gained for blacks on that count, using Detroit data. I did a similar calculation for national IQ and malnutrition (using 1991 data), on the basis that malnutrition knocks off about a standard deviation of IQ (15 points, although I also found a source that claimed 11), multiplying by the malnourished proportion of the population. This pushes sub-Saharan African National IQ to the range upper 60’s to upper 70’s. Black African skin bleaching tends to be between 30 and 7 African leaded fuel use will also greatly harm urban populations (who will dominate National IQ estimates), although they were phased out by 2006; the time to affect primary schools is about nine years, although the IQ estimates are based on the the 90’s. South Africa should suffer 7 points, and Nigeria probably the same. Thus the pre-environmental expected IQ of blacks is well within a standard deviation of whites. East Asian cities are often near coasts, and historically held much smaller portions of their respective countries’ populations, as elsewhere. Thus their early (for the third world) industrialization would tend to have a lower impact on IQ. Lead has been studied, and childhood lead is substantially lower than adult lead, which may account for much of the national IQ achievement of Chinese versus other societies; child rearing practices that avoid putting unknown objects in the mouth might play a role, but then again, given the relatively small family sizes and involvement of grandparents, more supervision might also play a role. As to the topic of your post, another possible cause for the lack of black achievement considering IQ is racism.

The author makes a strong case that US Black IQ’s can increase 3 points and African Black IQ’s can increase 10 points due to environmental interventions. This is certainly plausible. I have no problems with any of these environmental efforts. All the power to them. A gain of even 3 IQ points for Detroit Blacks would be a fantastic thing indeed. A 10-point IQ gain for African Blacks would be a great thing for them and for Africa as a whole. Many of Africa’s most serious problems would surely ameliorate with a 10-point IQ gain. An IQ in the upper 70’s would put Africa on a par with the IQ’s of some Gulf states such as Qatar that have created highly evolved civilizations. However, even US Blacks with IQ’s a full 9 points higher than the Qataris fail miserably at creating the highly evolved society that the Qataris created. One argument is that Qatar only exists in its current form due to oil wealth. Give Black people oil wealth, and they will create a Qatar. However, this has not happened in Africa. Nigeria has tremendous oil wealth, and it is one of the evil and diabolically failed states on Earth. Nearly all of the wealth has been stolen by a tiny elite and the rest of the population flounders in monstrous poverty. Gabon is a much better case, and oil wealth has allowed them to have a $20,000 per capita income. Gabon is  basically a middle income country. However, almost all of the wealth has been stolen by a tiny elite, ~5 Give a Black society money, and the most cruel and sociopathic Blacks will steal almost all of it for a small elite group, leaving the vast majority of the population to suffer in terrible poverty (the African model). Alternatively, give another Black society money, and income will be much better distributed, but the most cruel and sociopathic Blacks will create in monstrous violent crime rate, destabilizing a prosperous society. The African wealth distribution style is also seen in Haiti and was seen until the 1960’s in the Dominican Republic. The rest of the Caribbean has a much more equitable distribution system. Trinidad and Tobago has a PCI or $20,000/yr due to oil wealth, but they have one of the highest violent crime and homicide rates on Earth. A Trinidadian woman I spoke to said it was because local young men had imported gang culture from the US, and it was now spread all through the country. Still, a country with a $20,000 PCI and that high of a homicide rate nearly qualifies as something like a failed state right there, at least on that one variable. Although we have shown that Blacks can create wealthy societies (at least in the case of oil), those societies show significant problems either in democratization or extremely high violent crime. In the African model, a tiny elite will steal all the oil wealth and leave most of the people scrounging for scraps. In the Caribbean model, wealth will be distributed much better, but society will still be saddled with a horrific violent crime rate. As the comparison with Qatar and the US shows, there is a lot more holding Black people back than just a low IQ. With an IQ of ~83, the Arabs can create Dubai, along with a highly civilized state with a shockingly low crime rate. With an IQ of 87, US Blacks still cannot create anything like Dubai even with an IQ advantage. So obviously the problems of Black people extend beyond IQ, and a rising Black IQ is not a cure-all. What these problems are is unknown, but there appear to be genetic factors predisposing Blacks to greater crime and antisociality. What these factors are is unknown, but I am convinced that they exist. Antisociality will create thieving elites in Africa and Caribbean societies with better income distribution but extremely high violent crime rates. Getting a handle around Black problems involves not only raising Black IQ but dealing conclusively with whatever it is that is crimogenic or psychopathogenic in Black biology or Black genes. Once IQ is high enough though, whatever Black criminogenic issues are involved tend to wash out. I have read that setting Black IQ at ~113, the Black and White crime rates are equal. High intelligence often washes out criminal tendencies due to greater forward thinking, possibly greater empathy, guilt and worry and lessened impulsiveness. As IQ rises in any race of humans, empathy, guilt and worry tend to rise and impulsiveness tends to decline. I do not agree that racism affects Black IQ scores very much. Instead, moving from a non-racist country (Jamaica) to a racist country (the UK) results in a gain of up to 14  IQ points in the second generation. Blacks living in “highly racist” White societies typically have IQ’s ~13-18 points higher than Blacks living in non-racist societies such as the Caribbean and Africa. Skin bleaching products sold in the US probably do not have much mercury in them.

Arabs Are Stupid, Backwards, Low IQ Morons Who Can’t Create Anything

I must admit that I don’t understand US Blacks. I believe that the UAE has an IQ of ~83 or so. That is ~4 points lower than US Blacks. Based on IQ alone, there is no reason why US Blacks should not, theoretically, be able to produce something like this, if they had the income to do so. But does anyone think that they would?

Black oil states in the Caribbean have sky high murder rates. Black oil states in Africa have utterly failed to redistribute the income in a fair and reasonable way; instead, it’s a zero-sum game with everyone for my tribe and my favored group and nothing for anybody else. The nation of Gabon has a PCI of $20,000/yr, yet has some of the worst health and nutrition figures on Earth. Most of the population is sick, starving, unemployed and barefoot.

I don’t get it. Arabs are dumber than US Blacks, and they create Dubai. US Blacks are smarter than Arabs, but they create Detroit. What gives?

Whatever is wrong with US Blacks, it ain’t IQ. Their IQ ought to be sufficient to create scenes like the above.

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Why America Sucks

All the voters are White. Of course the country is a reactionary nightmare.

As you can see, the overwhelming majority of US voters are White. It is US White voters and only US White voters who have sent America down the conservative and reactionary sewer pipe in the last 30 years. An operation that is yet ongoing, and that seems to be gaining quite a bit of steam. In the 2006 election, it was even worse. 7

The electorate also is overwhelmingly White.

The voter pool is also overwhelmingly White. So the argument that Blacks and Hispanics don’t turn out to vote is washed up. Even if they all turned out to vote, it wouldn’t matter much. It would only shift the electorate maybe -

As long as America is overwhelmingly White, it will be a terrifyingly reactionary and backwards place, the laughingstock of the Western World. There is nothing inherently reactionary about White people. In Europe, they are reliably socialist. Someone show me a reactionary and non-socialist country in Europe please? In New Zealand and Australia, Whites are quite socialist, whatever their limitations in recent days with the horror specter of Mr. Howard.

In Latin America, it is true, Whites are reactionary, extremely so. Even in Uruguay and Argentina, they are reactionary. But these countries also have a revolutionary White Left that in the past has given the White elites the bullets and bombs they so richly deserve.

Argentina today, though a reactionary and Third World mess like the rest of the continent, at least has a Leftist President. A real Leftist, not an Obama rightwinger. The Argentine elite is alarmed about the Communist takeover of Argentina, Commies being coded as “fascists,” and are openly calling for the return of the fascist dictatorship. Fascist Argentines bashing Left opponents as fascists while calling for the return of Argentine fascism. Typical fascist obfuscation and mind-warping.

They claim that Kirchner had Commie “brownshirts” in the streets who have taken over entire zones. The Commie Kirchner is supposedly trying to “censor the media” by breaking up the reactionary media monopolies that own nearly the entire media of the land. But why should the Right own 9

Media should be delineated democratically according to predilection. If 3

Uruguay elected a former Left wing guerrilla, but I’m not sure how much will change, as he is dedicated to following the neoliberal suicide model. Is Uruguay a more socialist state than the USA? An interesting question.

Costa Rica is a pretty socialist place, which is interesting since anti-Communist fools and liars always uphold Costa Rica on their social figures, comparing it to Cuba on the grounds that Cuba is not so hot. What these congenital liars don’t realize (Or maybe they do!) is that all of Costa Rica’s great figures are attributable to Costa Rican social democracy.

Those are the countries in which Whites are a majority.

In the rest of Latin America, Whites are a minority, and they are frighteningly conservative to reactionary. They have generally stayed in power through repression, fraud, imprisoning, assaulting, kidnapping, torturing and murdering the opposition. White elites have done this in most countries in the region: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico.

The implication is that Whites will only support any kind of socialism where they are a good, solid majority. They are only 6

The entire rightwing movement in the US for the last 30 years has been coming from Whites. Has it been coming from Hispanics? Of course not. Has it been coming from Blacks? Please. Has it been coming from Jews? Pull the other one. Has it been coming from Asians? Forget it.

So when you read that “the voters” are furious with Obama and support all sorts of reactionary monstrosities in opposition to him, it’s US Whites, and only US Whites, who are leading this Tea Party opposition wave to Obama. And much of it is undoubtedly racist, no matter how much they scream that it’s not.

US Whites, as a

The other day, my mother (smartest women on Earth) told me that in the lifetime of my brother and I, we will live to see the US become a more progressive country. If all goes according to plan, I will take off around 2035 or so. The reason for this, she said, is the decline of Whites.

White nationalists have told me that a declining White America will lead to a more progressive place. Their reasoning for this is curious, and doesn’t make much sense. One guy told me that as Whites decline further and further, they will get more and more radical. As they dip below 4

Will Hispanics, Blacks, Jews and Asians continue to be reliably progressive into the future? It’s an interesting question. Majority-Indian, mulatto and mestizo places like Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Panama are quite backwards and rightwing. A White minority in all places continues to rule to the detriment of everyone else. Usually they enforce their rule at gunpoint and often with deadly force. But they get the votes of mestizos, Indians and mulattos to do this.

In the Caribbean, Black and mulatto elites have treated their own people horribly. This is particularly the case in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Most of the Black Caribbean is not very socialist, with the exception of Cuba. But Dominica is an equitable country, and Trinidad and Tobago has a decent amount of socialism. Socialism was arrested in Jamaica with the US assault on Manley, a White socialist.

The record in Black Africa is not good in terms of socialism. North African Arab states are much more socialist than Black Africa. True, there is not much to divide in the first place, but still. Even Black African countries that have fallen into some money are still horribly rightwing. Gabon, a wealthy African country, has nightmarish levels of poverty, malnutrition, maternal mortality, child and infant mortality. Apparently, as has always been the case in Africa, a tiny Black elite has grabbed control over the economy for themselves and possibly their tribe and is locking out everyone else.

Given that mestizos, mulattos and Blacks have a poor record of setting up socialist systems in their own lands, one wonders just how socialist they will be here in the US as they grow in numbers. So far, they have been realiably socialist, but what will the future bring.

The model in mulatto, mestizo and Black countries is typically astounding gaps between the rich and the poor, horrifying levels of poverty, and often an enraged, militant and sometimes armed but cash-starved Left minority battling the elite for power. In these countries, poverty is a big deal, the opposite of the US. So there, all parties, from Right to Left, run on reducing poverty and fighting for the poor, with a few overtly fascist exceptions in Guatemala, El Salvador, (Honduras?) and Colombia and a strange overtly rightwing government in Chile, increasingly a US model state in Latin America.

The Right has the entire media spectrum. In Honduras, a 9

The ignorant mestizo, mulatto and Black electorate tends to vote for parties that often have progressive sounding names. In many cases, these parties are said to be overtly socialist parties. This is especially the case in the Caribbean, where almost every party has a socialist-sounding name. So down there, the Right calls themselves socialists, progressives and populists fighting for the poor while they implement reaction.

A similar dynamic is seen in Africa, where most parties have socialist-sounding names.

In other words, the US model of reactionary parties having open reactionary images, programs and politics is nonexistent in most of Latin America and Africa. No one would vote for it. In fact, it’s anathema in most of the world! It’s nearly nonexistent also in Arabia, South Asia, Europe, SE Asia and NE Asia. Turkey does have an overtly rightwing government.

Other than Turkey, show me one overtly reactionary party along the lines of the US Republican Party in power in any of these places.

One wonders if the model of the US reactionaries will change in the future with White decline. Will we see the rise of a backwards mestizo, mulatto or Black elite looking for votes possibly on an ethnic basis. Will we see the rise of fake populism and fake socialism, where the Right will operate rightwing parties with socialist and progressive sounding names campaigning on poverty reduction and helping the have-nots, to get the non-White vote? Will the Republican Party model of an openly and brazenly reactionary party become nonviable as non-Whites refuse to support it, according the model in the rest of the world?

Does Dumb Population = Dumb Government?

A new commenter, Portland Bus Driver, suggests that the IQ of a general population is reflected in the IQ of its top state officials. I beg to disagree. He also points to some behavioral differences between his Hispanic and Black passengers and suggests that it’s not all IQ. In fact he’s correct. Illegals probably have lower IQ’s than Blacks. Race realists typically bandy about the “Blacks act bad because they’re stupid” thing. In the case of US and UK Blacks anyway, I’d just as soon chuck this theory.

There is most definitely a causal relationship between higher IQ and a potential economic situation. Look at predominately East Asian and white countries compared to any black country, and South Africa does not count. Brazil is 5

The point is that the commanding heights of the economy and government must be in the hands of higher IQ people. Once the lower IQ masses take over –See: Haiti, Rhodesia, the US after George Bush 🙂 — the country declines.

That being said, environment and culture and all of that can still play a role.

In my experience Hispanics ride the bus to work early in the morning with lunchboxes, they show me respect and pay their fare (or have counterfeit fare). Blacks start getting on later in the afternoon in comfy workout style clothes to go “chill”. Then the Hispanics come home from work.

Later that night the blacks get back on in expensive clothes and jewelry and watches and flash their bus pass which is right next to their food stamp card, they give me a dirty look and use obscene language right next to children. I could go on, my point is that it is not just IQ, Hispanics may have some other trait that predisposes them to work. Every black run society, with a few exceptions that are easily explained, is economically “disadvantaged.”

I would say it is the IQ of the population that matters. Yet South Africa was able to work pretty well as long as the high-IQ Whites were running the state. S. African White IQ = 94.

But I bet that in the present South African government, at the highest positions, you have folks with high IQ’s. Same in Latin America, South Asia, SE Asia, Arabia, North Africa, the Caribbean. Even though the general population may be dumb as rocks, the folks at the top of government are typically well-educated and bright.

So I don’t think low IQ country = low IQ idiots in government. I just don’t buy it. Besides, past a certain point, IQ just does not matter. It’s “high enough.”

More than the state, it is the IQ of the general population that matters in terms of how the society functions. Let’s not place too much emphasis on government here! In Haiti, I imagine that those at the stop of the state are bright folks. I have met some of the Haitian elite, and they were not stupid at all. I’ve also met some of the African elite, and they were not dumb either. I have met very bright Africans from all over Sub-Saharan Africa. Surely there are enough bright folks to form a competent state at the highest levels.

You may start running into problems at the local levels, but I still say that it’s the composition of society, not the state, that matters. If your society has an IQ of 67 or 72, I am sorry, but chances are you are going to have lots of problems functioning in the modern world no matter how bright your officials are. This is what is really going on here when we compare say Africa with East Asia and the US.

The “Obama is in charge so dumb Blacks rule” thing is a fallacy. I don’t know Obama’s IQ, but it has to be higher than George Bush’s. Obama’s administration is full of bright folks of all different races. They are certainly intelligent enough to run a modern state well. He is conflating a relatively lower Black IQ with “Obama” and his admin. But Obama is very smart, and so is his Cabinet and his aides.

The IQ of Mexican immigrants is probably ~85. The IQ of US Blacks is 86.8. The illegals are less intelligent than the Blacks. But look at the behavioral difference. Let us not place too much weight on IQ.

Also, let us not conflate US and UK Black IQ = 86.8 and 86, with African IQ = 67. The IQ’s of US and UK Blacks are about 20 points higher. That alone almost makes them a separate race.

There are many societies that function quite well and have IQ’s of 86-87. US and UK Black IQ is certainly adequate to function in modern society. That they don’t seem to do too well has its reasons I’m sure, but IQ can’t possibly be one of them.

He suggests that every Black society is economically disadvantaged. However, there are some Black nations in the Caribbean and even in Africa that are doing quite well.  Equatorial Guinea and Gabon have per capita incomes of ~$20,000/yr.

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