Why is the Philippines Poor?

According to Adam Smith, there are three basic factors needed to be a major economic power:

1. The people must have a good moral system
2. The people must not be stupid
3. The country must have access to the ocean

Natural resources are not so important as long as the basics are available (i.e. the country is not barren like the Sahara or Antartica)

Economic power is in the value that a society creates. This produced value is transmitted through exchange which is facilitated by morals.

• If your employee steals from you, then you fire him – the produced value of society is reduced.
• If your customer does not pay, then you never transact with him again, and value transmitted in society is reduced.

An important aspect of morality is the ability for obedience or subordination. The employees have to be obedient to their bosses so they can produce great things through their division of labour.

• China’s success largely comes from their emperors’ ability instill obedience in its citizens to make great walls and cheap products.
• Africa follows a tribal moral system leading to tribal war, so they don’t even produce value and are consistently poor.

Even if a society has a good moral system and can prosper by itself, it would not be an economic power if its people were stupid. Unlike animals which are satisfied with eating the same things, humans have progressive desires which change regularly. The people have to be smart enough to adapt to such changes. The Aztecs were a prosperous tribe until the Spanish came and wiped them out simply because the Spanish could innovate to satisfy their desire for gold.

Once a country has both morals and intelligence to produce value, it needs access to oceans to transmit that value to the world. The Swiss have factors #1 and #2, but is landlocked, so we have never heard of Swiss colonization.

The Philippines only has #3. It has no comprehensive moral system as proven by massacres, killings, pasaway, petty crime, rapes, etc. This is because it adopted the Christian moral system which punishes immorality with hell, which really doesn’t exist and only works on weak minds. Once a person steals and does not experience hell, he will steal again and steal higher quality things, until he realizes that the most efficient way is to become a politician. Repeat this process through the years and you will naturally end up with a corrupt government. I think South America matches the Philippine situation very well as they also adopted Christianity and are filled with drugs, killings and crime. They leave their country as illegal workers into the US, just as Filipinos leave as OFWs.

Some areas of the Philippines still have tribes which reject mainstream education, so the economy does not develop in those areas. For Lumad schools, even holding class is a struggle | Philstar.com

Therefore, the overall solution is to have #1 and #2. The details of these solutions are explained as Maharlikanism