I'll try to keep to the OP, since it seem to be leaning on geopolitics rather than actual governance.
Has anyone here played CiV? In that game each Civ usually have a start bias which determine what environment they will spawn in. (Usually in keeping with the historical Civ, Arabia starts on deserts, Russia near tundra, etc).
That's pretty much how I see real life Civs. You are spawned somewhere and unlike in a game, you don't have the option to restart. You basically just use whatever resources you have and adapt to your environment. You of course have a way to change what is currently being practiced but your start would have a big impact on your future. For example, if the only available renewable energy technology is solar and you live in a place that is either too cloudy or snowy for the rest of the year, you wouldn't be able to use that.
Environmental determination (or racism according to SJWs)? That certainly plays a role, sure. But it doesnt explain everything by and of itself. You mentioned Civilization series (great by the way), so you should be fully aware, that starting location is but one of many variables in the game. Player (aka work ethics) can be another, reflecting that even in the same environment some people perform better than others.
"A people’s religion, their faith, creates their culture, and their culture creates their civilization." - Buchanan
Thats quite difficult to simulate properly in a videogame, the relationship between faith and actual value system of the people. So thats where player comes as literal deus ex machina.
Hi, I'm not trying to underestimate human determination and ingenuity but trying to understand how things got the way they are. And yeah, SJWs automatically equate environmental determination to racism, which is unfair and stops any constructive conversation.
People in the New World and Subsaharan Africa lagged because of the conditions they started with rather than a defect of the people living there (the usual explanation of colonialists). For example, things could have been different in the New World if they have the draft and livestock animals present in the Old World.
Reason I'm interested is coz I live in a country with those conditions mention in OP's link (tropical climate with hot, humid, rainless summers and a rainy season where most of the year's rainfall are dumped within a few months).
