A Comment on ”How diversity will lead tothe collapse of civilization” by Stone Zhang.

My first impression of the title of this article was more of sociology / philosophy concept of arguments but when I finished reading it, I found myself puzzled; the piece was about economy so I read it again and still in my opinion the title doesn’t really represent the body because it’s mostly about “Capitalism” and “economic inequality” rather than “economic diversity". Beside the title and concept of this article there are some statements made by Stone that I would like to address:

1.   The article starts as: “Economy is the centerpiece of society” which I believe otherwise. A society, most commonly, known as: “a group of people with common territory, interaction, and culture”. The role of the economy is to establish formal relationships among people as their daily business of living.

2.   Natural Resources: Natural resources undoubtedly play an important role in the economy of many countries but it doesn’t guaranty the economic prosperity because depending on its easy revenue takes away motivations to develop other areas of economy and can cause corruption or conflicts. While some of the richest countries in natural resources remain undeveloped there are countries like Japan, South Korea or Switzerland who thrived to become world major exporters with no natural resources.

3.   I don’t deny that some of the wars are motivated by economic interest, however some others have geopolitical importance such as civil war in Syria which is the war between two global-regional rivals, Russia - Iran on one side and United States - Israel on the other side. Syria by itself does not carry any economical importance.

4.   Wealth inequality: The graph bellow is based on some of the facts from “Why Nations Fail” book written by Acemoglu and Robinson, and it demonstrates the growth of wealth inequality in some of countries from 1985 to 2012, however as it appears some countries have been able to slower it by offering a better social services to their citizens and more effective tax policies.

          I believe that wealth inequality will always remain as part of our society and technically it would be justifiable to some extend, however I am not as pessimistic as stone and trust that our society smartly will be adjusted and corrected accordingly in the process of evolving and progress.