Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 February 26

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February 26

Portraits

Before photography, were people more likely to get their portraits painted when they were younger, and less likely as they aged? Or did age not seem to matter? 58.109.53.196 (talk) 06:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Probably whenever they could afford it. Portrait paintings weren't cheap, so some people couldn't pay for it until they made their fortune. For others, who inherited their wealth, this wasn't an issue. Of course, if they managed to squander it, then you might not see any portraits of their old age. Vanity might also play a part, so people might be more likely to have their portrait done when they were "at their prime". This may have been a bit younger for women than men, though, as the "distinguished older man" might have been preferred over a portrait of a woman the same age. StuRat (talk) 07:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Why is there need to be "at their prime" though? Since you're the one paying the painter can't you just say "Make me look 10 years and full of muscle"? Sorry for the stupid question. I know my hypothetical scenario rarely happens but I don't get why. I walk through rows of portrait paintings everyday and none of them seem to have been "beautified" with. Is it because of the portrait painter's professionalism? Some unspoken code of conduct perhaps? 99.245.35.136 (talk) 07:33, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

If anybody figured out that this is what you did (which is quite likely), then you would look quite vain. On the other hand, if you had a picture of you done in your prime, they would assume you just hadn't gotten around to having a more recent one painted. In comparison with modern times, if somebody asked for your photo, wouldn't you feel more guilty if you sent them a photoshopped version of you than one where you happened to look good naturally, even if it was a few years old ? StuRat (talk) 23:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

It happens sometimes. Supposedly Hans Holbein made Anne of Cleves more attractive in paintings than she was in real life. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:06, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

(ed conflict) They did. User pays & the fiddler plays the tune. The difference is between one who paints other people in portraiture and those who are society (or prestigious) portrait painters. There are heaps but can't think of them right away however, John Singer Sargent for one, made people look good. In wikipedia [1] the gallery will show you the range of portraits in general. With paint you can do anything photoshop can do to create idealised people. The idea isn't new. However people hired to paint a memento mori or flattering portrait did better than ask someone like Frida Kahlo who lost the gig when she painted a couple's late daughter in the truthful scene of her (for them, embarrassing) death. Then there was Lucien Freud's infamous portrait of the Queen of England. The important thing is to check with the client to suss out what their expectations are and the purpose for the painting. Manytexts (talk) 09:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Presuming you're referring to Dorothy Hale#Frida Kahlo painting, our article says it was her friend Clare Boothe Luce who hired Frida Kahlo, not Dorothy Hale's parents. It's not even clear to me if they ever saw the painting. Nil Einne (talk) 14:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Single-battle wars

Are there any examples of wars ended after a single battle? Cambalachero (talk) 13:43, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Anglo-Zanzibar War for one. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:44, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Battle of the Ten Kings --SupernovaExplosion ^Talk 13:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The Football War. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 22:27, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

2001 Indian–Bangladeshi border conflict --SupernovaExplosion ^Talk 22:31, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

follow-up

have there ever been any legitimate, full-scale wars declared by both sides that have been WON (not some truce or back to the status quo) without a single battle?--80.99.254.208 (talk) 14:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I can not think of any actual examples... but I can imagine a plausible scenario where this might have taken place: a small independent state might have declared war on a much larger, invading state (purely for honor's sake - knowing that it does not stand a chance), and then surrenders without a fight as the opposition armies advance into its territories. Blueboar (talk) 15:29, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

See The Mouse That Roared. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:19, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Have a look at the Anglo-Zanzibar War, also known as the 38 minute war. BrainyBabe (talk) 16:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I listed it as having a single battle above – which, given 500 people died, would be a fair designation. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)#

Oops, sorry, my attention slipped. Normal service has already resumed. BrainyBabe (talk) 19:37, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Our article on the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War claims that the war between the Scilly Isles and the Netherlands had no battles, since the Scilly fleet was forced to retreat by another navy before the Dutch arrived. However, it's not clear how legitimate a war it was. The Scilly fleets (the remainders of the Royalist navy from the civil war) were attacking Dutch shipping, and the Dutch turned up to stop them, but it seems the Dutch captain may not have had the authority to declare war. Smurrayinchester 18:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

How about the First War of Kappel, a religious war in Switzerland. A catholic priest was executed and a protestant pastor was burned at the stake to kick off the war. But once the cantons declared war and marched out, mediation ended the war.Tobyc75 (talk) 01:27, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Equity and Restatements of Law

Is there a restatement of law that specifically talks about equity? Which is it? And can someone give me a link to it? Thanks! Rabuve (talk) 16:24, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Can you be a bit more specific? Are you talking about money, i.e. "capital"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The OP was a Restatement of the Law on equity. The US isn't my jurisdiction, though. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:49, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

There's a Restatement of Restitution, as well as a Restatement of Judgments. Either should be close to what you're looking for. I don't believe there's an out and out Restatement for equity. Shadowjams (talk) 20:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Equity is too broad a subject to fit into a single Restatement. In addition to the Restatements that Shadowjams mentioned, the Restatements of Property and the Restatement of Trusts would broadly come within equity, as would significant portions of the Restatement of Contracts and probably some of the other Restatements. Also, bear in mind that law and equity have been merged in the large majority of American jurisdictions. John M Baker (talk) 18:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Cheap high quality education

Shouldn't an education in fields like literature, philosophy, mathematics and others be quite cheap, even at a high level? The low salaries of post-docs and having no need of labs won't make that expensive. Excluding the "brand" name universities, that should be possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by XPPaul (talk • contribs) 16:37, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Academics have managed to refuse the concept of teaching only positions, which means that, in general (an using an Australian workplace cry): 40:40:20. 40% teaching, 40% research, 20% service related duties. If we break this down by 35x48 (discounting long service, sick, parental, public holidays, etc) you get 672 hours for teaching duties. Let's work out a students serviceable structure, based on a teaching model with "primary" instruction and "secondary" instruction and "assessment", primary instruction being the delivery of considered expert opinion in a one way format, secondary instruction being the supervision of student thought in a two-way format, and "assessment" being any object designed to form or sum-up a student's learning. Primary assessment is often delivered as "lectures" being one or two hours by a semester length.

I am familiar with a very particular Australian employer, so I will speak in relation to material that is visible in their Enterprise Bargaining Agreement and their University Calendar. This university teaches humanities subjects as 12 weeks of 2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of tutorial face to face contact, with approximately 4500 words of assessment per student, with 4500 words of assessment being markable in one hour. The EBA claims that for lectures, for casuals, four hours of duty is required for each hour paid, and for tutorials 3 for the first, and 2 for each subsequent.

So the hour cost of teaching is 4x12x2 + 3x12 + 2xN where N is the number of repeat tutorials. In addition the marking cost is M (being the number of students). Assume that each tutorial is 25, a nice round number shown in Large Institution's time table, which is publicly visible. So for N=0 4x12x2+3x12+25 hours for course delivery. Or 157 hours of delivery. Add 49 hours for each additional tutorial. In addition to delivery, there's preparation (writing the damn course) which could take as long as a piece of string, but I'd suggest about 20-60 hours. So to deliver a hundred student course it takes 364 hours, or about half of an academic's workload in teaching for a year (672). So divide an academic's salary by 400 students to get the cost per student in labour.

Let's use Australia as the example again, with ANU's level B step 6 (terminal grade Lecturer, the entry level position in Australia for permanent staff, ie "tenured" in other systems). They're on 95,407, but the University has other obligations associated with them, which I would place at about 26% in immediately payable oncosts related to labour. So 120212 is the cost to the university, so the labour cost per student for a Lecturer is 300 a head. (Doing a similar sum using a PhD casual at the rate of $50 an hour + 26% gives: 114.66 per head, if we divide the academic cost by 40% we get 120 per head).

So teaching with PhD casuals isn't more efficient than teaching with PhD permanent staff, if the permanent staff make appropriate research outputs. At a paper output of 1 unit per year to remain employable (a unit being a chapter, journal article or conference paper), then we can price the cost of a journal article at $50,000.

For researchers working in this field, I'd suggest reading anything you can get by Robyn May, from Australia. The NTEU's Australian Universities' Review also has literature related to this. But, as I've demonstrated in the Australian case there's no financial advantage for hiring a PhD qualified casual as opposed to a permanent member of staff at Level B terminal. Obviously Level C D and E are more expensive, and would need to push out other outputs (PhD graduates, Masters programme courses, or more research). Correspondingly, I didn't evaluate the $38/hour non PhD qualified tutor, but their capacity to prepare a course and present lectures is lower, so they could only really substitute in for marking and tutorial teaching. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:30, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Obviously an academic without administrative support, a class room, a computer network, a library, a campus would be worthless, so you've got to price the costs of the support services when considering a final student cost. But for 2012 each EFTSL of humanities students (consider 8 students taking one course to equal an EFTSL) generates 5,168 in Federal funding (PDF) or 646 and using UWA's figures 706 in student contribution. Or a total of $1354 per student. Compare and contrast to the 300 per head of a Lecturer, 114.66 per head of a teaching only PhD casual, or (by calculation now) about $378 per head for a Level E Professor teaching a 400 student load. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:42, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

And to follow on further—Australia's "Banded" and "Clustered" funding model for commonwealth grant funding is related to a deal done between Vice Chancellors in the 1970s about "how much it would cost" to teach various courses. They split courses into three categories: chalk and talk; dry lab (sociology etc.); and, wet lab. Though this system has been overlaid with the "option" of Universities differentially funding courses (simulationist maths requires dry labs, for example); and an idea of a national system of priorities, and a national system of differential costs to students based on perceived life outcomes; the basic conception of different courses being groupable by costs remains. So Australia directly implemented your suggestion of cheaper humanities courses, and they still cost about $1400 a course in 2012 dollars. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:16, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The answer to the OP's question is yes. It should be possible, for it once was possible in (formerly) advanced nations like the USA. It should be affordable, and this would have great economic benefits for those who undervalue the intrinsic value of knowledge. The USA has worked very hard for decades to make education less affordable than it once was, to wreck one of its most valuable (economic) assets, its higher education system, by making it more like the USA's leading (economic) liability, its culture of business. Part of this process has been a grotesque proliferation of highly paid adminstrators who do nothing. Part of this is encapsulated in misjudgments like "Obviously an academic without administrative support, a class room, a computer network, a library, a campus would be worthless". Compare such a focus on distracting, peripheral matters to I. I. Rabi's famous retort to Dwight D. Eisenhower - "Mr. President, the faculty are not the employees of the university. They are the university.". Compare to a more modern official in another country, which understands and applies basic economics, unlike the USA & most of the advanced, developed nations. The banks of his country have become formally insolvent, having engaged essentially in disguised fiscal spending by making bad, unpayable "loans" to universities: "Asked how the University planned to pay it back, the Secretary simply commented with a smile, what would the bank do with a University campus?" [2]John Z (talk) 07:34, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Well for starters I'd make the library pay by access leveraging site-licensing against the cost of individual article retrieval, lease the commercial space on a competitive basis to push marketing commodity merchandisers at the lower end who want access to A and B demographics with high disposable income and a cultivated lack of debt awareness, marketise or divest any residences held, sell three quarters of the campus for real-estate, push provision of education services into online only modes, and burn the "brand" image over a five year horizon while I make KPIs. There is a fair bit a bank can do with the "externalities" of a University. And it is far easier to do so in the Australian or New Zealand contexts where many campuses are integrated into urban areas.

As far as academics working in an unsupported environment, this is only valid if you see lecturers as some kind of Stakhanovite, who is forcing hidden work down a food chain onto unpaid or underpaid lackeys. Losing the site licences would hurt almost all academics on a campus, as would losing that poor fucker who knows how to load paper and actually get the network printer to go. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:59, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I forgot—as far as affordability goes, it is completely fucked and nothing short of a combination of moral and physical force against the state, but also against the employers of graduates, will change the affordability of higher education. Affordability is an externality that employers first successfully pushed onto the state, and then in alliance both have pushed onto workers and the few children of management who bother with higher education. Fifelfoo (talk) 13:01, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Do Australian universities really solely use academic stuff for tutorials and marking? From my experience in the University of Auckland, that sort of stuff tends to use postgraduate students (who get paid a lot less), at least in the first and often second year. Obviously the academic staff still need some involvement but your figures seem to assume the hours are solely coming from the academic staff or specialised casuals. Nil Einne (talk) 12:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Unpaid labour by doctoral candidates in relation to teaching is illegal in Australia, it is similarly illegal in terms of research not connected with progression towards a degree but far more difficult to police. The Union has had a reasonably strong history in keeping casual pay rate up (to strongly suggest the use of permanents on a price basis), and casuals performing academic duties (tutoring, certain kinds of (and at certain times) demonstration. I only have anecdotal data that I can share regarding casual academics life profiles, but Robyn May has published in this area. Some people are permanently engaged as part-time casuals, working 24 weeks of face-to-face in a year. The "ideal type" in Australia is the doctoral candidate who does no more than 3-4 hours face to face over 24 weeks, being about 13 hours actually performed duties a week (including paid marking). The actual type is more often someone struggling in precarious work between up to five different campuses to stitch together a 50+ hour week over 24 weeks, not knowing their appointment stability until Week 0 or Week 1 of teaching. However, as noted, post-graduates do not generally (or legally) perform unpaid teaching duties. Casual academics (non PhD) are about $38 an hour at Group of 8s (check publicly available EBAs), whereas PhD possessing tutors are $50ish. Given that the EBAs I know best say that "PhD or performing course-coordination duties" for the higher rate, any attempt to substitute casuals for permanent (or fixed term contract...) staff would need to be budgeted around $50 an hour before paying on-costs on labour. In my humble opinion, when it comes to course-coordination and development, it is cheaper to force these duties out of the unpaid overtime of permanent staff, particularly given that a course repeats over three to five years minimum. A casual who can walk a way with an hours notice in Week 10 of the third year they're running the course has too much industrial muscle. A permanent who did the same thing would be engaged in illegal industrial activity. If your suggestion is that New Zealand casual academic staff, ie: doctoral student tutors, are not paid for work like the US system, I'm appalled and the TEU needs to kick the employers in the knee cap. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:51, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I never said unpaid. I just said get paid less. And note this doesn't just include PhD students but Masters or 4th year Honours students as well depending on the requirements. (Even 3rd year students may be able to get demonstrator hours for first year courses if they are good enough.) Note also I'm not referring to lectures or course development which AFAIK does usually fall to permanent staff and occasionally temporaries (possibily with a PhD but occasionally just people with Masters and decent teaching experience who have a fixed term contract, who I think are hired more to fill a temporary gap then because of cost reasons). My knowledge primarily relates to science and engineering, but it would seem surprising if humanities is any different, Nil Einne (talk) 13:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

There isn't a significant skill barrier (though there may be a quality or perceived quality barrier) against non doctoral candidates conducting lectures. From the point of view of the employer, in Australia, the life situation of the tutor doesn't particularly matter as long as they can get a sufficient number of casuals. The complaints about precarious working lives from permanently casual academics seem to be spread across the full spectrum of disciplines, including professional disciplines where the professional market is relatively "hungry" for labour. Also, a side effect of the pricing structure for casuals here is that one poor bastard doing 12 tutorials a week is cheaper than three poor bastards doing 4 tutorials—there are incentives not to hire your doctoral students for this. Fifelfoo (talk) 13:16, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I'm not sure if I understood your comments correctly, but if it's true even non PhDs like postgraduate students performing tutoring (which I believe in NZ usually includes marking including of exams) work in Australia earns $38, then I guess that's a significant difference. The rate in NZ is I believe closer to $20 + 7% (holiday pay) for postgraduate student tutors. (Demonstrators are I believe less, but I'm not sure of the current rate.) Median, average and minimum wages are lower in NZ, and I'm pretty sure this extends to academics, but I'm resonably certain the difference is greater then $38 vs $50. Of course it's not just the lower cost that makes it necessary to hire students, for large classes like some biological sciences ones, you can have 1000, possibly even more in a course. A large lecture theater may be able to accomodate this or alternative 2 lecture streamds, and it's usually considered acceptable for first year students. But of course for labs, 500 in a lab isn't remotely feasible. If you have labs alternate weeks with 50 students per lab for 3 hours, that's still 10 lab streams of 3 hours or 30 hours a week not counting preparation time and marking. P.S. In case I wasn't clear, the positions are not only paid but generally completely voluntary. Nil Einne (talk) 19:46, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying the NZ situation (I was shocked, but with Rogernomics, almost any abuse is believable). If we look at the University of Sydney instrument at schedule A (PDF). For full course development duties with lecturing, casually, a rate of "$235.23" an hour face to face for 4 hours of work total, or an hourly of $58.81. For tutorials, with course coordination or a PhD, $150.47/3 hours or $100.35/2 hours both of which equal the flat hourly rate of $50.16. For non PhD the flat hourly is $41.96. All of this is before on-costs. OP was talking about cheapening education through "The low salaries of post-docs." This isn't possible under current industrial instruments in Australia. Fifelfoo (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Pattie Boyd's Bio

I just got finished reading a book written by Pattie Boyd about her relationships with both Harrison and Clapton called "Wonderful Tonight", but I believe that there is an error on her page. She DID NOT HAVE ANY CHILDREN BY...either men. She has never had any children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbverrall (talk • contribs) 16:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Where does it say she has children? Adam Bishop (talk) 17:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

It's right there in the article: In 1967 she and George flew to San Francisco and gave birth to a baby boy. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:13, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Unless she actually did have children by either man, that statement is not an error. It does leave open the implication of having children with other men, and if that's not the case, then the wording could be better. But it's not an error. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:44, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there's an error. Saying she didn't have any children by either men means just that. I don't see how it could possibly lead to misunderstanding.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 18:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see it now, just some vandalism from yesterday morning. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Kudos. That's the type of question that could have also been posted to her article's talk page, although it might get a broader audience here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:01, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

History and Origin of Pasta

Dear Editor of Wikipedia,

I was reading an interesting article of new discovery on origin of noodles and followed by another similar article from National Geographic that suggested noodles were found in China 4000 years ago. This was well before Marco Polo re-discovered it in China and brought over to Italy.

I think that you need to update this evidence in your article on "pasta" which I believe are read by many around the world.

The link of the referred article by National Geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1012_051012_chinese_noodles.html

Thank you.

Best regards, SKY — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.153.128.84 (talk) 20:59, 26 February 2012 (UTC) 58.153.128.84 (talk) 01:36, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The National Geographic article is already referenced in Chinese noodles#History and Noodle#History. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:22, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Syrian uprising 2011-2012

There is some contradictions here. The al-Qaeda is obvious a very radical crazy Islamist's group. In the "Support for the opposition" section of the 2011–2012 Syrian uprising article, it states that the al-Qaeda is supporting the opposite against the government of Syria. Why would the al-Qaeda wants to do that? The opposite group wanted to overthrow the government of Syria and create a democracy government but the al-Qaeda wanted a total dictatorship. I don't understand how could the al-Qaeda possibly support the opposite?Pendragon5 (talk) 21:21, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The Syrian government is generally fairly friendly with the USA (Looking through the pages on Bashar al-Assad, it looks like I overstated Syria–United States relations, which are generally poor - Syria has been under US sanctions since 2004). Much like what happened in Egypt, bringing in democracy means there's a chance for Islamists to gain power. They'd prefer an Muslim Brotherhood-run democracy to a pro-US secular dictatorship. Smurrayinchester 21:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

It is likely Al Qaeda thinks spreading further disarray throughout the Middle East might drag the US into further conflicts. That gives them even more chances to call for jihad against what they will amost certainly claim are infidel crusaders. We've seen and heard it all before: drag the US into war then claim the US are only there to destroy Islam. Perhaps China and Russia have actually done the US a favour using their veto in the UN security council, though that haven't done the opposition in Syria any favours at all. Astronaut (talk) 21:54, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

"We've seen and heard it all before" is certainly an understatement. The sad part is that we don't seem to get any smarter about it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:59, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Also note that just because Al Qaeda want a dictatorship that doesn't mean they want the current dictatorship. They may want to bring it down and then try and bring a new one up in it's aftermath. For example, Bin Laden for many years wanted to replace the ruling House of Saud with his family in Saudi Arabia. He wanted a dictator, him, so he had to get rid of the current one (obviously, he was unsuccessful). 130.88.172.34 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC).

The Assad government is secular. Al Qaeda prefers theocratic dictatorships of their own design. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 22:31, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

A couple points:

1) Syria is friendly with Iran, which is a Shiite nation. Al Qaeda is a Sunni terrorist organization, so they hate each other.

2) They may think that a temporary alliance with democratic forces until they defeat the current government could work in their favor, after which they will then just murder anyone who opposes them and take over. This is similar to how the Taliban and Al Qaeda sought US help to overthrow the communist government installed in Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, then killed off most of the opposition to set up their own government there. StuRat (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

• StuRat is the closest to the truth here. Syria is a largely Sunni nation (its populace) run by Alawis (its leaders). Sunnis support Sunni. Bringing the Sunnis to power will necessarily increase Al-Qaeda's reach, as well as be a triumph of their ideology.
• The Shias in Syria and Iran do not get along well with the west (many people thought the Bush administration was going to invade Syria after Iraq). And in this case, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, until our mutual enemy is gone. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Old style to Gregorian date conversion

We currently show the birth date of Dimitri Alexandrovich Obolensky as "19 March (old style) 1882". What's that in the Gregorian calendar? Is there an on-line tool or look-up table I can use for other conversions? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

See Conversion between Julian and Gregorian calendars. 19 March 1882 old style corresponds to 31 March 1882 new style. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 22:51, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Article duly updated. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

USA/MEXICO

Why is Mexico standards ( society, econimics, etc ) so far below the USA's way of life, when they are cross boader neighbours. Should they have not greatly benefited being so close to the world's most advanced country. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ready4u2c (talk • contribs) 22:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The instability of the Mexican government is one factor. Unlike the US, which only had one civil war, they had several. Another point is the differences in the British and Spanish colonial models. The British focused on building the economy of the colony (and taxing the results), while the Spanish focused on extracting wealth, such as from gold and silver mines, and sending that wealth back to Spain. After the colonial period, these two systems left the US with a good infrastructure and left Mexico with little more than played-out mines. The British also left their colonies with a democratic tradition, while the Spanish did not (which might account for all the civil wars in Mexico). Note that these effects aren't limited to the US and Mexico; former British colonies elsewhere tend to be better off financially, and more democratic, than former Spanish colonies.StuRat (talk) 22:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

From the Marxist side, Hilferding and then Lenin on Imperialism thus through to Trotsky on uneven and combined development. Follow this up with some development studies proper, in particular world-systems theory. Basically: Mexico has been, and continues to be, a semi-colony of the United States. Or, rather, Imperialist Capital in the United States and Mexico has maintained different rates of growth and sectoral development both between the US and Mexico, and within the US and Mexico. Some of the reasons for this are to reduce labour's power, others to avoid periodic declines in the rate of profit by moving less capitalised industries to areas of cheaper labour. StuRat is also right: to the extent that the Mexican state had economic autonomy, the Mexican state has been less interested in the development of human conditions than comparable elements of the US state. (I'd argue class war had a role to play here, especially the wildcats of the 1940s in the war industries). Fifelfoo (talk) 22:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

(to OP) In what way Mexican society is below US standard? --SupernovaExplosion ^Talk 01:31, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The ones who want to come here obviously have high standards. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with StuRat above. Fifelfoo, on the other hand, has some odd rant about class warfare which doesn't appear to be based on reality and which never addresses why the US was powerful enough in the first place to be able to create a so-called empire over the Mexicans (and which ignores examples like Korea and Taiwan, which for decades were as much in the US sphere of influence, and which are no means subjugate to the US, given that they are first world nations). Here is the more likely answers:

• The US has a lot of arable land. This helps.
• The US is located further to the north. You will notice that countries which live in cold climates usually have better economies; there is a reason for that: that have to be harder working in order to survive in the first place. That's why Norweigen countries can have partially socialist economies, and it works, whereas it fails miserably in the Mediterranean nations. That is my haughty opinion, but it is my opinion.
• Protestant work ethic.
• The US is made up predominately of descendants of whites who were ambitious enough that they left everything in their home countries for a land thousands of miles away. As such, their genetic makeup may (or may not) leave them predisposed to more ambition. Mexico's genetic makeup is mostly indigenous.
• The Latin American system of power from the top encouraged corruption more than the English system of devolved powers. In the English system, everyone is accountable to each other and to the populous at large; in the Spanish system, people are only accountable to their higher-ups (who they can lie to more easily than lying to an entire people).

Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:46, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

What the hell are "Norweigen countries"? Anyway, I suppose you mean Scandinavian. In this case: since the recent past, Norway is wealthy due to its oil, but so is Kuwait. Finland is so wealthy like Spain, both are over the average world-wide, but just average within Europe. That just leaves Sweden, but you'll still need a better explanation regarding differences between it and other "Norweigen countries". (More about this wealthy because at the North nonsense at the bottom) XPPaul (talk) 14:12, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I refer you to Hilferding, Lenin, Trotsky, and Wallerstein; I also suggest to you that phrases such as "odd rant" and "doesn't appear to be based on reality" very strongly resemble personal attacks. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:47, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Not every negative comment is a personal attack, and those two are definitely not. They are about the words you used; they do not attack you personally, which is what a personal attack would be. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 18:37, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Another part of this question is answered yes, Mexico does benefit from the U.S. Mexican workers in the U.S. sent over $22 billion back home in 2007. (See Remittance#Latin America and the Caribbean) And a substantial number of Mexicans live in the U.S., 12 million, (half legally, half undocumented) while Mexico has a population of 112 million. 75.41.109.190 (talk) 05:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I think Magog's tone was a bit harsh, but his criticism was spot on; when the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems start to look like nails. Fifelfoo, you are known for answering every single question regarding history and politics and economics from a solely and purely Marxist perspective. It's certainly one way to look at the world, but I'd prefer if answers came from an entire toolbox and not just from the hammer (and sickle :) ). The story of Mexico is complex, as with any country, but it does come down to the lack of a stable government for a long time. Mexico, for the first 100 years of its existence as an independent nation, averaged something like a new government every 15 months. Things have been more stable in the 20th century, but the U.S. had quite a lead time with a stable national government over Mexico, and that counts for a lot. Mexico is still quite well-off, on a world-wide scale. It ranks comparitively high on the List of countries by Human Development Index, third among Latin American countries after Argentina and Uruguay, and higher than Brazil, which is more often than Mexico cited as one of the major developing powers. It's not the U.S., but it isn't a failed state either. Mexico is a stable, western democracy. Sadly, if it can't get the Mexican Drug War under control, it will continue to hamper its development. --Jayron32 05:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Porfirio Díaz's apocryphal "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!" sums it up well. On Fifelfoo - Heh, if anything I usually differ from the left. Guess I wield a sickle too. In any case the ref desk should not be about personalities. At times Mexico has perhaps benefitted from proximity, when the USA behaved less criminally than usual, e.g. under FDR, and Mexico was better governed than usual, under Lázaro Cárdenas say. Genetic predispositions toward ambition sound amusing. But even with no Mexican genes, I feel disposed to sacrifice such notions atop pyramids though. John Z (talk) 06:41, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

If we look at your primary assertion of political systems instability as deterministic in history, can you explain the French GDP and standard of living in 1900? Correspondingly, instability in Greek and Italian governments during the Cold War era were rife, and perhaps, the Greeks experienced superior stability (on some measures), yet the Italian and Greek economies were remarkably different in early 1980s, even though both experienced systematic armed class warfare in the period. Finally, for state stability we need glance no further than the period 1945 to 1989 in countries Germany and Eastwards; yet, despite short periods of heavy industrial output growth and an immediate boost in human development terms, these experienced systematic stagnation in both output and human indicies (and in some cases, precipitous declines in human indicies when comparing 1946 to 1950).

In the field of long term comparative historical development, I'd have a hard time of thinking why imperialism focused elements of Marxism wouldn't be relevant. As indicated by Wallerstein, they're fundamental to the arguments in the area as practiced. You might also note that I contribute with reference to literature that others can follow up, and only where there is a relevance, and further, by noting that this is a theoretical perspective of some interest to the reader rather than a totalising world view that must be adhered to. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:54, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Just a note about Magog's statement about people from cold climates being (usually) harder working than those from warm--first, there's more to a strong economy than hard working people. I'm reminded of that Internet meme going around saying that if hard work was enough, women in Africa would be the richest people on the planet. Second, for what it's worth, this kind of theory is called geographic determinism, and the theory has a spectrum between "hard" and "soft". In it's soft form it is clearly useful, but in it's hard form can be used as justification for dismissing whole peoples just because of where they live (eg, "Africans are poor because the heat makes them lazy"). Not to say Magog is doing this--just something to keep in mind when the theory comes up. Pfly (talk) 05:25, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Oop, just noticed our page Environmental determinism is better. Pfly (talk) 05:41, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd almost hate to bring it up, because it always gets cited when discussing economics and geography, but the canonical, seminal work on this topic is likely covered in Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is a must-read for anyone interested in this topic in broad terms. --Jayron32 05:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Heh, yep...and as our environmental determinism points out, his work stands out for deliberately avoiding or even seeking to disprove "racist and eurocentric theories of development", which are quite common in earlier works in environmental determinism. Pfly (talk) 05:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

An excellent follow-up work to GG&S is the much more recent 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, which takes the non-racial premises of GG&S even further; that even our scholarly opinions of pre-Columbian societies are skewed by Eurocentrism, and that it is likely that pre-Columbian America was far more developed than even the most generous historians have granted. In some ways it complements GG&S, by trying to dispell Eurocentrism, but in other ways it goes even farther, and in someways contradicts the basics of it, by taking even more radical views than GG&S, trying to show how even judging such societies as inferior (which GG&S does, even though it attempts non-racists way to explain the inferior) is faulty, and that in many ways, pre-Columbian societies were very advanced, just advanced in different ways, than European ones were. The three books which I always go to, in these sort of discussions are GG&S, 1491, and The Columbian Exchange. Of course, we've gone a bit astray from the OPs question, but for anyone genuinely interested in why some countries and societies have "come out on top" of history, those all provide an excellent set of understandings of the topic, and they are all imminently readible for the lay person. --Jayron32 06:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

If you haven't yet read Mann's 1493, give it a whirl. It's pretty great as well, a good facelift for Crosby plus a lot of new stuff. A gripping read, very well done. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:11, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I intend to. It hasn't been out a year yet, but when I learned about it, I intended to pick it up! Just kinda lazy about getting to the bookstore... --Jayron32 17:46, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Back on the topic of Mexican history (I agree about 1491!), there's an interesting take in the book The Comanche Empire. Hämäläinen argues that turbulent politics in Mexico City in the early-to-mid 19th century engendered, or went along with the central government dismissing the threat of northern Indian tribes--especially after 1835 when "political power in Mexico City moved from liberal federalists to conservative centralists" (see Siete Leyes). Central Mexico was unwilling or unable to counter massive Indian raids in northern Mexico (see Comanche–Mexico Wars), which continued for decades and devastated the country. Hämäläinen argues that the damage caused by the Comanche, Apache, and other raiders at this early, pivotal era for the Mexican Republic had major, lasting effects: "The decades of Comanche raiding in Texas and northern Mexico...had a lasting hemispheric legacy. The escalating violence left Mexico dangerously weakened during critical years in its history...The consequences were disastrous to the fledging republic..." [3] He puts the Mexican–American War in a new light, writing, for example, "If Mexico's collapse in 1847 was quick and complete, it was because the nation had to fight two invading powers at once..." pp. 234-235 Anyway, all this is just one example of how Mexico's early, post-colonial history was really rough--far far harder than the US's early post-colonial history. Pfly (talk) 06:36, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

About Magog: I do not notice that countries located to the north have better economies. The whole Mediterranean region was quite developed for a long, long time. And right now you can still go on with the comparisons: California vs. Lithuania, Hong Kong vs. Siberia, Singapure vs. Ireland, NYC vs. Eartern Germany. Incidentally, these theory only has value when you indeed believe in some implicit racist idea, which seems Magog's case, since apparently white are more ambitious than native Mexicans. Obviously, privileged people will always claim that their privilege is based on some intrinsic characteristic of them, and disregard how much the situation (in a very broad sense) makes us what we are. XPPaul (talk) 11:54, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

StuRat has given the best answer so far. A couple of other points. First, Britain and Spain were very different places in the 18th century. Britain was a comparatively liberal, less authoritarian, better-educated and wealthier society. Spain is still one of the least-wealthy Western European countries. Because of Britain's relatively liberal tradition, its American colonies were settled by independently minded entrepreneurs and what we would now call civil society groups, buttressed by individuals seeking a better life, who wanted to actually develop America. In contrast, Spanish America was more about exploiting the human and natural resources (like the colonization of Africa) and forcibly converting the natives to Catholicism. Although most of today's U.S. population is not of British descent, those that came later assimilated into that culture created by the colonists. Secondly, to follow up on what Magog said, the near-destruction of the Indian population of the American East Coast through disease and war, coupled with large-scale immigration and high colonist birth rates, meant the British colonies basically started as a blank slate to be filled with European wealth and culture. The European population of New Spain was tiny in comparison. There's nothing inherent in those of American Indian ancestry that makes them unable to create a developed economy. But they started from much farther behind in terms of wealth and education. In other words, the U.S. started as a "first world" country, while Mexico started as a Third World country. It's always been that way. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:09, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually the reason is because the USA was almost empty of population compared to Mexico, not because of Spain's or Britain's colonial model, but because most of the population in the US is of European descent and European off-shoots tend to be much richer and look much more European than former colonies whose population is mostly of native descent. Just have a look at the extreme poverty of Britain's former colonies --excluding Canada, the US, New Zealand and Australia (and maybe some tiny archipelago or island); all of them European off-shoots-- which are very poor even by Latin American standards. The exception to the European off-shoot rule-of-thumb appears to be Argentina, which is a formerly developed country and was one of the richest countries in the world in the 1930s but became an average income country afterwards --which is something quite incomprehensible. --Broadside Perceptor (talk) 13:06, 29 February 2012 (UTC)