Ethiopia in the 2010s. By Anatoly Karlin.

Ethiopia has long done quite well by Sub-Saharan African standards. It has a good record of human accomplishment, being the only country in the region to have developed a literary corpus before European colonialism.

But it was, until recently, extremely poor. But no longer so after a decade of some of the highest growth rates in the world …

This is a vindication for the HBD [Human Biodiversity] theory of economic growth, which says that over the long-term, as countries exit Malthusian traps and adopt development best practices, they should converge to a level correspondent with their human capital.

Ethiopian polygenic IQ probably isn’t significantly worse than Kenya’s, which has the best psychometric performance in SSA [Sub-Saharan Africa], so I expect Ethiopia to sail smoothly to its level (political shocks aside). But whether it can continue China-level growth beyond a Kenyan GDPpc of ~$5,000 is another matter.

That’s a concise summary of HBD, which is grounded in empirical reality.

Which of course totally contradicts the “all large groups of people have the same statistical characteristics” belief of the left. This self serving totem of the left, by which any differences in group outcomes must be due to discrimination, is an invitation for the left to come in and equalize group outcomes by whatever means are necessary. Who cares if they are fighting reality, so long as they are in power? “Let’s give it a try!” they say.