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Another important feature of the book is that it gives many vivid examples of ethnically targeted seizures and nationalizations in emerging markets. It provides information on who "market dominant minorities" in various corners of the world are and how they managed to get this dominance. "World on Fire" is one of the most useful and interesting books I have read in a while. If you hear that a government of an emerging market country starts a propaganda campaign against a certain ethnic group, it might be time for selling shares of companies that this group controls, and potentially liquidating all investment positions in this country. As a global investor, I have found that it is extremely important to understand origins of top managers' power within companies, and how these managers and their companies fit in the power structures of their countries. This understanding is especially important in emerging markets, which often have under-developed legislative protection of investor interests. Amy Chua has conducted excellent research and provided information that otherwise would have taken readers years to gather. Thank you.
The Spanish Civil War was mostly a straightforward conflict between left-wingers and fascists. I disagree. And so on. I don't deny that classes are often ethnically based. And what should be done about it. The author points out somewhere that most shops in Rwanda's capital Kigali were owned by East Indians.
Other parts of her analysis are equally problematic. Nor were the Tutsis actually in power in 1994, when the Rwandan genocide took place. But even as an analysis of ethnic strife, the book oversimplifies. The Whites have long been "market dominant" in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. "World on fire" argues that globalization has made matters worse, not better, in most Third World nations. Many of the market-dominant minorities mentioned in the book existed long before globalization. The only solution the author can come up with is a more benign, Rotary-humanitarian form of globalization, coupled with a more limited ().
The author believes the opposite, which simply isn't convincing. It's also difficult to see in what way the Tutsis have been benefited by globalization. It eventually turns out that the author, so seemingly critical of globalization, actually supports it. that the conflicts between "maket-dominant minorities" and "indigenous majorities" are about class. More capitalism and more democracy, introduced simultaneously, therefore mean more instability and ethnic strife. But that is irrelevant, since White peoples have always fought and killed each other, for instance during the world wars or the Balkan wars. democracy. Instead, she hopes that the fraternal associations of the market-dominant minorities realize that, for their own good, they should play it more fairly.
But what does it all mean. The Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi were dominant even before the advent of European colonialists. Nor does she reflect very deeply on the severe class conflicts in the Western world. At bottom, the author supports globalization, while suggesting that immediate democracy might not be such a good idea, since it gives the "indigenous majorities" a possibility to destabilize the situation. Oh, please. Further, in what sense were the Croats a market-dominant minority in Yugoslavia. And since class society has been working pretty well (more or less) for the past 10,000 years or so, it does have a certain "rationality" as well. Chua also constantly complains about "crony" capitalism, as if that was some kind of aberration.
For instance, she suggests that the United States is somehow "spreading democracy" around the globe. From this, I draw the conclusion that "class" or "socio-economic status group" is a more fundamental phenomenon than ethnicity. As Chua points out when discussing Indonesia: the Chinese tycoons and their families easily avoided the anti-Chinese riots by simply absconding to Singapore, with most of their money, letting the Chinese middle class take the brunt of the attacks. Her real problem turns out to be.democracy.
However, she never draws the obvious conclusion: that's because the conflicts, at bottom, *are* about class. Outside the dreams of libertarians, *all* large scale capitalism is by necessity crony-ridden. It's not a co-incidence that they bribe off the corrupted indigenous leadership, while turning the indigenous majority into sweat shop labour, slaves or serfs. The French revolution was as French as the ancien regime, and the Paris Commune was as French as Galliffet. Since the market-dominant minorities are often targeted by ethnic and class violence, why haven't they come up with this themselves, after all these years. Strictly speaking, the Tutsis aren't a *market* dominant minority, but a landed aristocracy. (Somebody might respond that these nations aren't "racially" heterogenous.
But just as often, they are *not* ethnically based. When all is said and done, this book, so seemingly critical of globalization and the greed of the dominant groups turns out to be another pro-establishment front for the same processes. The spread of laissez faire capitalism has made "market-dominant minorities" even more powerful than before. Still, they are classes. But this is a sidepoint, since the author doesn't define ethnicity in terms of "race"). Finally, Chua seems to dislike the Western European welfare states, while grudgingly admitting that they have overcome class strife in the Western world. They obviously weren't about ethnicity, since the haves and the have-nots usually belonged to the same "nation" or "race". Indeed, the federal army and apparatus were probably dominated by Serbs.
Precisely. The Croats didn't control the Serbian economy. Amy Chua denies (). In many nations, the US doesn't promote democracy (Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf states) or supports sham democracy (how likely is it that Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, got 90% of the popular vote in Rwanda, a predominantly Hutu nation). True, as far as it goes.
Besides, what about the United States, a predominantly White nation with a large Hispanic population that elected a Black African president. Nor do Israelis control the economies of the Arab states. But this is empirically disproven by many examples. Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Canada and Spain are ethnically heterogenous but stable, democratic and prosperous. The introduction of democracy has given the dispossessed "indigenous majorities" a chance to attack the market-dominant minorities.
I mean, market-dominant minorities aren't stupid. Bangladesh is ethnically and religiously homogenous but still Hell on earth. Chua never presents a unified theory about what on earth is going on, but she constantly veers towards the opinion that the bottom line is ethnical.
Ethnically homogenous nations supposedly make the transition to stable markets, democracy and prosperity better than ethnically heterogenous ones. She thinks it's a matter of ethnicity. So why should they mend their ways, unless forced to, perhaps by a democratically elected "indigenous" government. In Latin America, Chua herself admits that the conflicts were, for an extended period, couched in terms of class rather than ethnicity.
The Russian revolution was more complex, but most people on both sides were Russians. That, I think, is the whole point of the operation. As if that could stop the fire.
So, market savvy minority continues to dominate the scene. In the Philippines, the equally very low trust natives are at an even greater disadvantage because they are confronted with the high trust Chinese who are able to call upon loyalty across an extensive socio-community network.
- higher trust - People who can call upon an extensive community network: People who can call upon clan/extended family loyaltyPeople for who loyalty does not extend much beyond the immediate family - lower trust - Very low trust people are no match for those who can maintain more extensive radius's of loyalty and trust. I think this amounts to high trust cultures clashing with low trust cultures & very low trust cultures.
In Africa, the natives who are failing to maintain serious cooperation beyond the immediate family are losing out to East Indians who are calling upon more extensive extended families. Sometimes a low culture may be pushed into working together more by situation, emotion, etc, (e.g.
the anti-colonial "movement") but it doesn't last and they return to distrust, envy, and disloyalty towards each other. In both cases, the natives may "unite" and burn down the stores of the business minority -- really just explosions of rage -- but this "togetherness" doesn't seem to translate into any lasting action.
Chua's manner is whatever the causes, this is the situation (market dominant minority dominating business) and Chua reports rightly.
Then she says that they are also suffering extreme poverty, indignity, and hopelessness. The East Asians, and Asian Indians for example seem to have high levels of ethnocentrism or xenophobia. Chua's new book is an excellent overview of just how common it is for a country to be economically dominated by a minority group. Once intelligence and ethnocentrism are taken into account, World on Fire starts making sense. I can't blame Chua individually for this lack of insight, because almost universally the egalitarian stance is to never mention this as a cause of economic disparity. So why are such a desperate people also so lazy. These two factors play out differently for different races.
That is, they cooperate between kin groups all over the globe where they reside.True, our current promotion of democracy, globalization, free markets, etc. She takes us into the workings of many countries, providing numbers, how the races interact, and surprisingly she has provided a substantial amount of data that supports alternative theories from her own.For one, it supports Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen's observations that it is the level of average intelligence that determines what groups will prosper and which ones will be subordinated.For instance, Chua goes on to explain how the East Asian Chinese think Filipinos are lazy, unintelligent, and really don't want to work. When they dominate a society, they also maintain boundaries as well as engage in kinship cooperation to advance their goals across borders. She never gets beyond these simplistic explanations and she is unable to accept that the East Asian Chinese have an average IQ of about 105 versus an average IQ among South Asians of about 90. To understand the true causes of ethnic conflict in this book only two primary concepts need to be kept in mind that Chua fails to consider: the difference in average intelligence between the groups being discussed, and the level of ethnocentrism between different races. may be destabilizing, situations that would not be as violent had we not pursued these global programs - but that does not detract from the fact that the ethnic violence is due primarily to differences in the average intelligences of different racial groups. And this ban on intelligence being factored in is upheld by conservatives as well as liberals.
She claims that the three most powerful forces in the world are markets, democracy and ethnic hatred. She calls the Vietnamese government Hitlerian for confiscating the property of Chinese entrepreneurs in South Vietnam, yet admits that it did the same to `their Vietnamese counterparts'. Chua is a Professor at Yale Law School. She says that markets and democracy benefit different `groups', so that `free market democracy' is an unstable, toxic combination.Global integration and market policies have raised average incomes - but only by making the extremely rich even richer. She urges, "the best hope for democratic capitalism in the non-Western world lies with market-dominant minorities." So for democracy's sake, she backs minorities against majorities. She reminds us that the theory was that free-market democracy would change the world, making it peaceful and prosperous. She smears nationalisation as racist `ethnically targeted confiscation'.
of popular frustration and vengeance'. In Part 1 she describes globalisation's economic impact, in Part 2 its political consequences, and in Part 3 she warns that the USA should not export laissez-faire capitalism or overnight democracy. She claims that nationalisation `damaged the economic growth of Asia, Africa and Latin America' and is just an `expression. She points out that in many places markets have concentrated huge wealth into the hands of ethnic minorities - the Chinese in South-East Asia, Jews in Russia, whites in South Africa and Latin America, Israel in the Middle East and the USA in the world. In a population of 100,000, if the richest thousand people each get a million pounds more, and the other 99,000 lose £10,000 each, total incomes will rise by £10,000,000 and the average by £100.Her opposition to democracy becomes clearer as she goes on. She smears as autocratic and racist Hugo Chavez, `whose nationalisation and other anti-market policies seem to Westerners utterly irrational'.She concludes, "It is dangerous to see democracy as a panacea", but she never warns against seeing markets as a panacea. She warns of a backlash `against democracy by forces favourable to the market-dominant minority' - she appears to be part of this backlash.
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