World on Fire
In the current affairs/globalisation tradition of Naomi Klein and Noreena Hertz; the most original contribution to the globalisation debate in years.Amy Chua's remarkable and provocative book explores the tensions of the post-Cold War globalising world. As global markets open, ethnic conflict worsens and democracy in developing nations can turn ugly and violent. Chua shows how free markets have concentrated disproportionate, often spectacular wealth in the hands of resented ethnic minorities - 'market-dominant minorities'. Adding democracy to this volatile mix can unleash suppressed ethnic hatred and bring to power 'ethno-nationalist' governments that pursue aggressive policies of confiscation and revenge. Chua also shows how individual countries may also be viewed as market-dominant minorities, a fact that may help to explain the rising tide of anti-American sentiment around the world and the visceral hatred of Americans expressed in recent acts of terrorism. Chua is not an anti-globalist. But she presciently warns that, far from making the world a better and safer place, democracy and capitalism - at least in the raw, unrestrained form in which they are currently being exported - are intensifying ethnic resentment and global violence, with potentially catastrophic results.
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What Hacker News says
- See also Amy Chua's book World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003).
- The Igbo are an example of a merchant minority, like both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, Armenians, Parsis and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Lebanese in West Africa, Latin America and elsewhere and Yankees in the US South. There’s always hostility to merchant minorities from the majority population but the degree of difference modulates the hostility. No Yankee enclave was ever burned in a pogrom in the South whereas Jews everywhere in the Old World, various Christians in the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese in SE Asia all dealt with those regularly enough. The Igbo tried to secede from Nigeria after independence and it was an utter bloodbath.
We know this is at least partly cultural because genetically Turks in Turkey are over 90% Greek or Armenian with some additional Balkan and Caucasus contribution and after mutual ethnic cleansing rid Turkey of Christians and the rest of the Balkans of Muslims Turks eventually filled those socioeconomic niches. Until Erdogan it looked like Turney would be richer than Greece pretty soon.
Any Chua wrote a great book on merchant minorites, World On Fire.
- > We can say "democracy is better", but there are instances where democracy doesn't work.
Just a book recommendation, but for people interested in learning more about these kinds of situations, I'd really recommend Amy Chua's "World on Fire."
- Slavery and the holocaust were both predicated on the simple idea that one kind of human was superior so I don't feel comfortable sitting around sipping tea and debating that.
On the Holocaust I'd argue the opposite point -- it was the denial of Jews genetically having a higher IQ that helped lead to the Holocaust. Jews had a level of wealth and achievement disproportionate to their population. So if you don't believe they are smarter and don't believe they have earned it, then the explanation you are left with is that they are tricky and their gains were ill-begotten. And if you read Amy Chua's book World on Fire you'll see this pattern over and over again. A certain ethnic group (Jews, Chinese, etc) does better everywhere they go. But then get demonized by the local population for their overachievement, and pogroms result.
Slavery and genocide have been around forever, since we were chimpanzees really. The Romans were enslaving Greeks and everyone else (who they respected for their intelligence). Slavery was not invented because of belief in racial differences. Slavery was invented because people like taking the sh*t of other people.
The NY Times publishes hundreds of articles a year on racial disparities. If you're going to make it a big issue, then you need to fully explore the reasons for the disparities based on the facts. Otherwise you will get the wrong answers, and the wrong solutions.
- Jews are a merchant minority. That explains most of it. Merchant minorities are subject to hostility even when the difference is as minor as being New Englanders in the South. Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Chinese in Southeast Asia, Jews all over Europe, they get much more hostility, and pogroms because they're rootless cosmopolitans. For much more check out World On Fire, Amy Chua.
The Chinese in Southeast Asia get the same Elders of Zion level conspiracy theorising and craziness. There are elements that are distinct to the history of the Jews, like the blood libel, but getting peasants to riot and kill rich people of a different ethnos has never been that difficult. Usually the ruling classes of the areas they live are much friendlier to merchant minorities than the peasantry.
- Very often once things divide into the rich and the poor, there is decreased mobility and often the divide is along ethnic lines. This increases tensions and reduces social cohesion. The rich actually stop caring about the lower classes and then either they deny rights to the lower class (e.g. dictatorship, occupation, etc.) or the lower class elects people who take away richness from the upper class (e.g. socialism, revolution, etc.) -- either way it is a mess once the divide becomes entrenched and social cohesion breaks down.
One book that covers this well is World on Fire: https://www.amazon.ca/World-Fire-Exporting-Democracy-Instabi...
