Why are these country progresive? It is because of Four seasons?

Question

G8 members(most powerful countries) has 4 seasons, Japan(most Hi-tech country) has 4 seasons. United States Has 4 Seasons. South Africa And Libya has fou seasons. China(Great civilization, Great Economy and Greatest Agriculture) has four seasons. EU(All of member has high HDI) and Europe(Most of them has High HDI) Has four seasons. other progresive countries mostly experience fous seasons. Australia, Israel, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and others. So, it is because of Four seasons?

Answer 1

Are you using "progressive" in the "human development index" meaning or in the "economic growth" meaning?

Is Libya progressive by either definition? What about some of the Eastern European and Balkan countries such as Albania (higher per capita GDP than China but less than Algeria), Bulgaria and Rumania (also higher than China, but less than Gabon), etc.?

You are not the first to note the possibility of a connection between climate and economic development, and that there is a link generally accepted, but the idea of 4 seasons seems a bit extreme.

The initial hypothesis had to do with the tropics and sub-tropics vs, the rest. Concerns included:

- the need for investment and work in order to survive through the year;

- the incidence of disease and hence the ability to work;

- the temperatures and hence the hours of work; etc.

http://makewealthhistory.org/2007/07/01/...

On the other hand, as the primary explanation for almost anything, climate is not particularly convincing. Even among your examples:

- compare China today with China of 1950. back then, the economy was in tatters and getting worse.

- compare Japan after the Meiji Restoration to Japan under the Tukugawa's before Perry arrived

- compare Egypt at the time of Cleopatra vs. Egypt today

- compare the Moorish empire of the 12-13th centuries to the same area today.

In each case, the same geographical area, pretty much the same climate, yet radically different levels of "progressiveness".

Similarly, even today, the disparities between countries of similar climate and resources yet radically different levels of "progressiveness" suggest that while climate is a factor, it is not the dominant one. (How would you compare Russia and the Scandinavian countries? India and Thailand vs. Burma and Bangladesh? And what about Singapore, with per capita GDP above that of Japan, Spain, New Zealand, etc.)

As to what the real factors have been, economists have been looking for (and claiming to find) them for generations.

One of the classic examples was Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protest...

http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/engerm...

Some argue that the link is a correlation only - that the real factor was a higher education level in the Protestant countries of the time:

http://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_198...

A more recent attempt at explanation follows your thinking that the primary factors are geographical: Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs...

It is a fascinating book, but in the end fails to justify the argument. In fact, in the end, Diamond argues that it is the conflict in Europe that fueled development - that while China had all the knowledge and all the resources, it did not feel threatened and so never had the incentive to use those resources for effective development.

John Kenneth Galbraith did a fascinating series of studies and concluded that the primary determinant of economic development was the social context - the culture.

And while some want to look further - how do various factors affect the culture - no one seems to disagree that culture is indeed critical.

Even looking at your examples, clearly, the development situation in Israel is not due the the climate or the resources - they are the ame as the neighboring country - but that of the immigrants from all over the world.