Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

What people said (1)

• paulmist · 2026-04-10 in Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

  I think author's point is that wealth drives investment which drives economic growth. In the case of lavish funerals - warranted in kinship societies - the wealth is spent on relatively unproductive investments bearing high opportunity cost. The corollary and author's secondary point is the ineffective resource allocation e.g. through nepotism. My main (oversimplified!) takeaway from the article …