Raptor wrote:I only stated industrialized because, at least in modern times, countries that are industrialized tend to be considered the most modern.
That's why I wrote 'poorly modernized.'
Raptor wrote:I still feel, given the statistics I have provided, that those nations are considered agricultural societies.
Agricultural societies are more agricultural for the sake of sustenance. Cash crops are as capitalist as heavy machinery as mall economies.
Raptor wrote:I am curious, though, why do you consider slavery being a modern system of the time?
It's among the earliest economic systems of the modern age. When Columbus came to America, the modern age began. Wouldn't you call 'plantations' modern? Africa is more a plantation than a series of independent farmers, the latter making an agricultural society, the former a modern one. For instance, Africans also do a lot of mining, which is more like the plantation than the farming. The economic system thus isn't agricultural but more resource gathering for the larger capitalist machine.
The above reminds you of a videogame, so the analogy should fit. Say, if you ever played StarCraft (or any of the RTS games), you had your workers who gathered resources and built things. That's kind of the role of Africa in the global economy. In this it's modern, whereas the critters that one runs across, that are neutral to the controlled races, are more agricultural society, surviving off the land for their own sake. Being low in the modern economy doesn't make one primitive. Resource gathering is considerably instrumental to the modern system: the capitalist machine.
Raptor wrote:Sounds like a good setup for dysgenic breeding, no? Among other problems.
Not at all, though it depends on what you mean. If intelligence can be selected for, will it be selected for in this sort of system? Probably not. But the premise isn't even established to lend to such a conversation, and the alternative, less breeding, doesn't lend to better selection either.
Raptor wrote:I only pay ~$6000 a year and I go to a top public university in my state.
In the U.S.? What about housing and food? I admit, I paid out-of-state, which plain burns a hole in one's pocket, but by the end of your four years, considering the high cost of housing, food, books and so forth, your financial contributions to the education system should be much greater than what's considered affordable for the average family to turn out for, say, five kids.