151–160 of 245 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a novel observation, eg Kapuscinski's "In the Shadow of the Sun" describes the same phenomenon: it's very difficult to get ahead because anything above bare subsistence is immediately siphoned off by your kin.
The flip side is that it's very difficult to fall too far behind as well. Your kin have an obligation to support you, too.
The factual material about funeral spending costs is very interesting, but when it gets into "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies" it seems rather… unsupported? That's a sweeping statement that actually requires understanding the whole picture, and the whole picture is not being presented. Is there reason to think the author truly has all the context to make these claims?
On a factual level the relationship between kinship societies and economic headwinds is fairly well documented [1] [2]. The mechanism is the same reason that communist/socialist societies often fail: when wealth belongs to everyone, nobody has either the incentive or the means to accumulate wealth, which prevents capital formation within the society [3]. The part that the article glosses over is that "Kinship societi…
Why are you assuming capital formation is even beneficial for people? Poor workers in Arkansas do not benefit when Ford sells their crappy wares around the world. Children in Utah aren't getting a better education when Zuckerberg sells more ads.
The factual material about funeral spending costs is very interesting, but when it gets into "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies" it seems rather… unsupported? That's a sweeping statement that actually requires understanding the whole picture, and the whole picture is not being presented. Is there reason to think the author truly has all the context to make these claims?
I am Ugandan. These kind of burials are unheard of in my country. The Author is labeling this an “African” thing which is just the usual daft nonsense. A number of Ghanaian and Nigerian tribes bury their dead like this , it is more a celebration of life. This is like taking something a small town in Louisiana does and declaring it an “American” tradition.
His article has a link to an article about Uganda called How the deceased are robbing the living . [1] I know approximately nothing about Uganda, and I have no way of evaluating the article. Especially since I haven’t read it yet. But it does contradict Madradavid’s statement that these kind of burials are unheard of there. [1] https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/magazines/life/how-the-dece...
My point is that the Author has picked a practice by a couple of tribes on a Continent so diverse and large you could fit the states, the UK, and still have space for 30 or so more countries, and passed it off as the norm.
Funerals can be expensive, anywhere. I don't want you going away with the impression that all these poor Africans are using up all their hard-earned savings to throw these outlandish burial ceremonies.
>Kinship societies are actively hostile to economic growth, because economic growth undermines the basis of kinship: that is why kinship societies demand constant, visible sacrifices of wealth—funerals being the most spectacular—that make it extraordinarily difficult for any individual to accumulate capital, reinvest their assets, and pull ahead. The funeral is a window into a system of wealth destruction that serves…
> Consumer spending is not "wealth destruction" -- who makes the fantasy coffins? Who prints the banners? Local businesses! If the local businesses were instead being hired to dig holes and fill them up again... oh wait, they literally are, except they're also instructed to make very elaborate artworks and put them in the holes before shoveling in the dirt. Anyway: Can you please examine the movement of real resource…
We can say "but it plainly isn't purposeful", but the same applies to pets, vacations, every kind of art and craft, fancy cuisine, pure mathematics, dance music festivals, religion and all associated economic activity, all sports ... I'll stop there, but the two main points are: firstly, the value in life is about a lot more than moving real resources, or paper, or food and shelter; secondly, nobody knows what it is all about, man. It's hugely a matter of opinion, what's good and worthwhile. Economic activity is perhaps the ongoing process of making guesses about the answers.
Our values, i.e. the things we do to gain the approval of each other, has a huge effect on how we live. Much larger than I had expected.
Some people (not limited to Africa -- common also in e.g. rural India) value lifecycle rituals, like coming-of-age parties, marriages, and funerals. Those are the reasons they make money. They don't make money for something else and then blow it on a funeral. They made money specifically for the funeral.
I make money to be able to eventually unchain myself from the daily grind and spend my later years doing armchair research. Some people near me make money to buy a fancy home and pay eyewatering amounts of mortgage interest to their bank. And some people further from me make money to spend on lavish funerals.
It's easy to feel superior about any of these, but I struggle to see how one is better than the other. They're all restricting the way we live and imposed on us from society, they're just different from each other.
The factual material about funeral spending costs is very interesting, but when it gets into "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies" it seems rather… unsupported? That's a sweeping statement that actually requires understanding the whole picture, and the whole picture is not being presented. Is there reason to think the author truly has all the context to make these claims?
Korea used to have something similar to this phenomenon, although it wasn’t for the funeral. When the oldest man (probably the grandfather of a big family) has his 60th birthday, the entire family had to celebrate with basically throwing a days-long party. It was like a family duty for the rest of the family, and it was embedded into the culture so deeply so they wouldn’t simply think about the alternative of having…
There's an interesting film focused on this topic: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1499420/ The author traveled through Cameroon and documented, among other things, the realities of having a backlog of dead one must properly bury. Turns out not everyone can afford putting their deceased relatives in a freezer - especially for extended periods of time, so sometimes the dead are stored in a separate storage area next to the…
> so sometimes the dead are stored in a separate storage area next to the home until the living gather the necessary funds Isn't this an own goal when it comes to disease?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2017/oct/13/cleani... (warning: graphic)
This was an eye-opener for me when I read C.A. Gregory's Savage Money . Our values, i.e. the things we do to gain the approval of each other, has a huge effect on how we live. Much larger than I had expected. Some people (not limited to Africa -- common also in e.g. rural India) value lifecycle rituals, like coming-of-age parties, marriages, and funerals. Those are the reasons they make money. They don't make money f…
Did you see the examples that those women started actually getting healthcare as soon as they had their own bank account?
The picture you paint is about respecting what people do with their surplus money. The picture the article paints is that in those societies you don't even take care of your basic needs and you never get to have surplus money. So debating which use of surplus money is better is besides the point.