World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [149]
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To be sure, not all child labor is conducted under “indentured slave” conditions. Moreover, members of the “indigenous” business community also violate workplace and safety laws, and “indigenous” political elites often tolerate such violations in exchange for bribes or kickbacks. But the perception among an economically disadvantaged majority that a disproportionately wealthy “outsider” minority disregards the country’s laws and exploits the indigenous population can only exacerbate ethnic resentment.
What to do about such illicit practices is less obvious. As economists put it, there is a “collective action” problem. In theory, if any single firm decides to comply with workplace and other regulations when its competitors do not, the likely effect is to put the compliant firm out of business. As a result, calling on individual businesses to take corrective measures is unlikely to have much effect. On the other hand, looking to the state is not promising either. The obvious problem is that the governmental actors who would have to implement reform are often the same ones corruptly benefiting from the violations.
One as-yet unexploited resource may be the surprisingly strong ethnic organizations, both commercial and social, that many market-dominant minorities already have in the developing world. Chinese “chambers of commerce” and “clan associations” can be found throughout Southeast Asia; Indian and Lebanese counterparts exist, respectively, in East and West Africa; similar associations exist among the Bamiléké, Ibo, Kikuyu, and other “entrepreneurial” African groups. The success of these organizations in overcoming collective action problems in a variety of commercial contexts—through informal trust, peer pressure, and monitoring practices—has been widely observed. If leaders of the minority communities in a given developing country can be persuaded of the importance of, and overall gains to be had from, eliminating corrupt or illicit business practices, these organizations may have the right set of incentives and capabilities to play a significant role.
Apart from breaking the law, market-dominant minorities sometimes engage in behavior that indigenous majorities find objectionable for a variety of reasons, some of which are themselves objectionable. Market-dominant minorities are often criticized for acting “insularly,” for indulging in “conspicuous consumption,” or for “flaunting” their ethnic pride. As a Chinese-Indonesian economist presciently worried in 1997:
I see the problem through the eyes of my pribumi friends: I see the shopping malls, the posh restaurants, the hotels and lavish weddings, full of young Chinese who don’t seem to have any interest in national problems. These people don’t know they’re living on a time bomb. They don’t mix with native Indonesians, so they don’t know how much they’re envied and resented.
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But what is to be done about ethnic minorities who “don’t mix” with the indigenous majorities around them? This is a tricky and morally complex issue. It is hardly clear that forced assimilation and acculturation, even if it were possible, would be desirable. Nevertheless, as will be discussed in the next section, there are important constructive measures that market-dominant outsider groups might take to counter the perception (justified or not) of their insularity and indifference to the welfare of the nation.
A More Honorable Way:
Voluntary Generosity by Market-Dominant Minorities
After my aunt was murdered in 1994, my other family members in the Philippines hired personal bodyguards, erected barbed-wire fences, and bought some man-eating watchdogs. This is also how many whites in South Africa, Jewish oligarchs in Russia, and other market-dominant minorities live—in fear.
Similarly, after September 11, Americans across the country despaired that our lives might never be the same again. We spoke of our “loss of innocence” and worried that we might have to give up our free and open way of life in order to protect ourselves