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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. 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. Then she says that they are also suffering extreme poverty, indignity, and hopelessness. 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.
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. These two factors play out differently for different races. When they dominate a society, they also maintain boundaries as well as engage in kinship cooperation to advance their goals across borders. 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. 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.
The East Asians, and Asian Indians for example seem to have high levels of ethnocentrism or xenophobia. And this ban on intelligence being factored in is upheld by conservatives as well as liberals. So why are such a desperate people also so lazy. Once intelligence and ethnocentrism are taken into account, World on Fire starts making sense.
Chua is a Professor at Yale Law School. 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 claims that the three most powerful forces in the world are markets, democracy and ethnic hatred. 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.
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 smears nationalisation as racist `ethnically targeted confiscation'. She claims that nationalisation `damaged the economic growth of Asia, Africa and Latin America' and is just an `expression. 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. 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 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'. She warns of a backlash `against democracy by forces favourable to the market-dominant minority' - she appears to be part of this backlash. She reminds us that the theory was that free-market democracy would change the world, making it peaceful and prosperous. 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.
Chua's personal profile boosts the legitimacy of her argument as well; she was born to a wealthy family, has graduated in the top of her Ivy-League classes, and teaches at Yale, yet is willing to critique the notion of exporting capitalism. Professor Chua's explanations of the hazards of exporting "free market democracy" are detailed and reasonable enough to serve as defense against those detractors, who might characterize the thesis of the book as isolationist and/or anti-capitalist, based on the title. This is, in the writer's opinion, a rare display of objectivity, possibly spurred by Chua's related personal tragedy (discussed in the introduction). People of Professor Chua's socioeconomic status are the ones who usually perpetuate and benefit from such exportation. As I understand it (and hopefully I do), Chua's key assertion is that the exportation of free-market democracy to a lesser developed nation, is synonymous with establishing in the target nation a "market-dominant minority" (a small number of foreigners who control the economy), whose ethnic outsider-ness, coupled with their control over the economic health of a nation to which the minority may not have psychological ties beyond the economic, can stir resentment among the powerless natives toward the minority. This leads to a broad spectrum of political dissidence, which in its most extreme form has led to massacres time and time again.
Which is silliness at best and disastrous at worst. It is theoretically true that all men are equal before the Law. But one must learn to live with himself as well as others and I never claimed to be perfect. But the point is made).What makes some cultures dominate the market. And that makes it worth reading. The envy of the unfortunate can at times explode into pent-up bursts of shocking and spectacular hatred.
However the most probable explanation would be a combination of the two, mixed with the inscrutable whims of fortune. Specifically the phenomenon of a particular economic product becoming a cultural icon. The less fortunate would say it was because of immoral means. Another point alluded to is that "noblesse oblige" includes helping the honor as well as the material circumstance of others. But one thing Amy Chu did do is make some effort to helping us all to understand ourselves and understand each other.
Her main suggestion seems to be that market dominant minorities cultivate noblesse oblige. The French resentment of Macdonald's becomes understandable on this level.An interesting counterexample which Chu never mentioned is the relationship between Nepali and English. In any case, my individual sins are enough to get on with let alone worrying about my share in collective ones which is a dubious concept anyway. But I have read of plenty of examples of noblesse oblige, and it is not clear that they are all that effective in preventing hatred. Some individuals are simply more successful then others.
It shows many stories of different groups, which have prospered, often against remarkable adversity. The more fortunate are often more subtle. It gives the "market domination" relationship at various scales from the local to the global. They seldom hate strongly, but they can often have a habitual snobbery that they are not aware of themselves and which can hammer at the helpless feeling of the less fortunate.The book however is interesting on it's own aside from any "message" it carries. An obvious example is French and food. In Christian tradition, two of the worst sins are pride-obsession with one's own status; and envy-hatred of others for their good fortune. That was not the goal of course. And indeed their stories resonate with me as we.
The English wanted the Ghurka's to help maintain their power and they wanted the Sherpas to help win glory. But whatever the reason the relationship causes ill-effects on people. In a way Amy Chu's book is an example of what happens when these two vices contact each other on a massive scale.Now it may be true that all men are equal in God's eyes. Rather by giving them material benefits in return for services that increased the prestiege of Nepali(soldiering and mountain climbing), they managed to avoid humiliating them.
That of course is a hyperbole as the differences between cultures are more complex then those between baseball teams. The more fortunate would say that it is because of the good qualities their culture teaches. English are a classic market dominant minority. But that is just the point: self interest helped make the relationship better then many. It is not true that all are equal in other ways.
It is easier to avoid the mixture of vestigial cultural-guilt on the one hand, and resentment of other's resentment on the other when one realizes that such things are part of life and we all have to live with each other, one way or another. Which is all very well, and should be done anyway irrespective of self-interest. One reason for this can be seen: the English did not humiliate the Nepali like they did a number of other peoples. The writer never really had a solution to the problem and indeed that is just as well, as attempting to completely eliminate problems that are so ingrained comes very close to attempting to perfect mankind. This is a divergence from the book but it does give a clue, if not how to solve the problem at least how to reduce it.One thing that the book did for me which it might not do for everyone is that it took the emotional sting out.
She raises more questions then answers. That is an un-PC thing to say but no one really consistently believes in equality among groups anymore then among individuals(do you believe the Yankees and the local little league team are equal. The author seems to identify with "Market-dominant" minorities. I suppose some would say that that is just my own self-satisfaction talking.
Furthermore some cultures are more successful. Yet they have tended to get along reasonably well with Nepali. But she shows the abuse some members of these minorities have made of their good-fortune as well. As an Anglo-American I would prefer to believe the former explanation but I am obviously biased.
People's like the Ibo of Nigeria, the Jews, the Chinese, the Lebanese and so on.
Chua writes in a clear and easy style as she cites further examples of this phenomenon. A primary causal agent of genocide we often see but fail to understand may be deeply rooted in profound humiliation and poverty as a newly empowered oppressed majority lashes back indiscriminately at a now overwhelmed economic/politically-dominant minority or quite often their indigenous political enablers.The author enumerates an array of Southeast Asian countries where a Chinese minority is overwhelming an indigenous people: Myanmar (Burma), a 5% Chinese minority exploits teak, jade, and rubies; pre and post-Suharto Indonesia, a 3% Chinese minority controls nearly 70% of the country's economy; and so on.In Africa, she cites Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and Namibia where a minority white, South African elite extends its control over rich diamond mines: "South Africa's Oppenheimer family has controlled the richest diamond mines in the world since 1908"; the market-dominant minority Ibo of Nigeria, the Belgians giving rise to the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, and the Eritreans of Ethiopia.In Russia, the Jewish Russian oligarchs sparked renewed anti-semitism and Russian nationalism as the oft-inebriated Boris Yeltsin ignored, then encouraged the onset of "gladiator capitalism." Putin would later exploit these special interests to gain power, then cleverly appease the Russian people by virtually neutralizing them.The author also identifies similar market-dominant minorities -- the Indians, the Lebanese, the "pigmentocracy" of Mexico, Israel as a regional economic/politically-dominant minority in the Middle East, and the United States as a global economic/politically-dominant minority.Arguably, many readers may have implicitly sensed the issues treated in World on Fire. In World on Fire, Amy Chua proposes a thesis that is well researched, reality-based, and rooted in her experiences as an extended member of a Chinese Filipino family: The global spread of laissez-faire markets and nominal democracy has become a principal aggravating agent in group hatred and ethnic violence in some countries primarily outside the Western World where "economic-dominant minorities" concentrate enormous wealth and influence compared to the native, assimilated population. The reader is afforded a better understanding of these issues in many of the world's hotspots that are often disregarded by the world's mainstream media. Amy Chua's thesis neatly organizes and fairly explores the facts with nearly 35 pages of notes and references. In the Philippines, ethnic Chinese make up less than 2% of the population yet control 60% of the country's economy, once aided by the Chinese-protective dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. She further extends this model to comprehend the unintended consequences of globalization.Ms.
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