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Why is all the wealth concentrated in the north and west, while the south has always had so little “cargo”?

In a nutshell, according to Jared Diamond, the “fertile crescent” had crops that were easily harvested and that kept well. The cereals of that region are very different from the tubers of New Guinea. Diamond also counted only 14 large animals that have been domesticated during our entire history.  Only one of the 14 species existed outside Asia, the Middle East or Northern Africa.

The middle east, because of climate and luck, had a huge head start.

Now, the narrator continues to use the term “advantage” when describing the condition of possessing more stuff.  It is here where I would like to see Diamond’s radical ideas further radicalized.

The question that got evaded is the process by which surplus grain was stored, organized and, most importantly, distributed.

When the middle east dried up 8,000 years ago (partially to overfarming), people spread out east and west, along the same lines of latitude, bringing the animals with them.

“A horse or an ox could transform the productivity of farmland. European farmers were able to grow more food to feed more people, who could then build bigger and more complex societies.”

But such statements throughout the thesis leaves out an important detail.  How does excess grain in the granary lead to such excess?  More productive farming answers why we have more stuff than the New Guineans. It does not explain why Cortez and Pizarro needed to commit genocide.

Where two or more of you are gathered, there will I be.
Matthew 18:20

A slightly unorthodox interpretation of that line involves the idea of emergence.

Jacques Monod was the first to propose that cognition can take place at the level of single molecules—specifically proteins, as their ability to discriminate between substrates or ligands might represent a form of cognition[1]

What is the difference between me choosing between an apple and a banana and a molecule choosing between two ligands?

It is easy for evolutionists to explain that the human eye did NOT evolve so that we can perceive the world. We perceive the world IN THE WAY THAT WE DO BECAUSE the eye evolved in the way that it did.  The eye allows light of a certain frequency into our brains, which, in turn, give that light meaning.

Under different circumstances, beings that perceived light of 100 picometer wavelength (X-ray vision) might have out-reproduced our 300-800 nanometer, 20-20,000 Hz perceiving ancestors. The question is, what would “logic” look like to such individuals? Does a brain that can consciously process events that give off gamma rays necessarily agree that if a=b and b=c that a must equal c?  I’m not so sure.

If the way we see is a function of the way in which the eye evolved, why isn’t the way we think a function of the way our brain evolved?

[1] Frarnsworth, 2006, Understanding Life as Information http://qub.academia.edu/KeithFarnsworth/Papers/576067/Understanding_life_as_information

I’ve heard tell that corporations are destroying the world.

I am frustrated with those who espouse this view.

Frustrated at the lack of coherent examples of corporate wrongdoing.  The opinion that corporate culture is wrong is pervasive, but rarely gets developed beyond the platitudinous.

Go to Public Campaign or to Corporate Accountability International and find that they are far more interested in obtaining your donation than they are about education the public about any corporate malfeasance.

So, one of the things I will do here is CLEARLY list EXAMPLES of corporate activity that harms the general public.

Go here:

Page of corporate harmful activity examples that has yet to get a clever title.