Globalism and Opportunity

I'm a day late posting about prosperity, partly because I'm not sure what to say, how to find the positives in this subject considering the current economic climate and the state of the world. I've been watching some interesting videos lately exploring some theories as to why prosperity is so unequally divided in the world, and so I guess I can share those ideas and some implications.

The video is called Guns, Germs and Steel and it's based on the work of Jared Diamond (who wrote a book of the same name, published in 2005). You can watch it for yourself on YouTube if you like. I didn't actually get through the whole thing because there was too much repetition to hold my interest, but I got the basic idea. Societies are unequal in wealth because they started with unequal resources.

Basically, Europeans started with wheat, barley, and some of the best animals available for domestication: pigs, horses, cows, and sheep. The failure of, for instance, North American societies to reach the level of productivity of European civilizations was not due to any lack of intelligence or ingenuity of the people, but rather because there were no animals suitable to pull a plow.

To me this offers a hope that as the world becomes more globalized, some currently impoverished civilizations will be able to use their skills and local resources to ensure a steady supply of nourishment that will then enable their people to focus their talents on creating abundance and prosperity for themselves and for humanity. They may have started out with a bad hand, but because of the abundant grain production of the United States, there are more opportunities than ever before.