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This is simply where I disagree with you on where the burden of proof lies, at this point in time particularly.
Genes > Institutions is simply and Occams Razor solution compared to the Diamondian History + Geography + Path Dependence > Institutions solution.
Diamondism has had the full support of the establishment and academy for over half a century at this point, and produced nothing persuasive. Instead, often entire points that are being asserted as fact are simply rebutted by looking at, for instance, the geography that actually exists or existed, or a list of animals that exist or existed in a place. When the same set of easily rebuttable set of ideas that all resemble each other are always easily wack-a-moled one by one, its not a good sign for the overarching theory or set of theories that is outputting those theories. And that is a fundamental problem for environmental and historical theories at this point.
I do agree with some of your observations, GDP is the war machine, of course. But that is limited. Everyone knows if you gave the Congo's most elite squad American equipment and drones and satellite, they couldn't protect their own President from an equal sized group of Marines if he was holed up in some cabin in the woods. Maybe if it was something overwhelmingly strategically advantageous like a mountain cabin they could do it, but Italians throwing rocks were able to deter many landings in WWI. No one thinks the Italian tech and GDP were superior to the British at the time.
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