Yes, your point and other points around the web I’ve seen make his argument about north and south Italy very controversial to say the least. He does have data to back it up, where he presents distance to nearest church as a predictor for how well a population will fare, and south Italy didn’t have the churches that north the Italy had

▲

sethammons 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

All the basketball players are tall. Ergo, if we want to be taller, we should all play basketball.

	▲	psidium 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, maybe I was not clear but I’m in doubt of the Italy claim in the book and that’s why I remember it

▲

cortesoft 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This would only work as evidence if church placement was random. Could be a correlation with a different cause.