Mick Hartley

This review by Australian academic Wolfgang Kasper, of a book on development and economic history (via AL Daily), is relevant to the point made here:

All those Australians engaged in devising policies to better the material lot of Aborigines and part-Aborigines should study Clark’s book. Moving from Paleolithic bands of foragers into a modern world within a few generations is unimaginably difficult. It requires that they jettison internal institutions and life attitudes that have been successful for survival over a thousand generations. This goes beyond shunning violence, learning basic numeracy and literacy, becoming self-responsible, and acquiring new work and saving practices—all of which are nevertheless a useful start. It also requires that affluent Australia abstains from subsidising counterproductive and untenable cultural attitudes or condoning practices which are patently unacceptable, even illegal, in other segments of our nation.