Meanwhile,I’m still trying to come up with a Latin American or African welfare state, and the only one I can think of is Cuba.

True, Cuba is not Denmark. But maybe it would be more to the point to observe that Cuba is not Haiti, nor even the Dominican Republic.

What Cuba’s health-care system demonstrates, actually, is how much can be accomplished by hard work and co-operation with very limited resources. Not a strong argument for Goldberg’s position, but also not very relevant to policy-making in the U.S.

I believe you are correct on the progress of distinctions.

I will cease to debate the subject of the Chinese; it was merely an illustration of the potential for a cultural explanation for a lot of phenomena with a bearing on public policy, which I believe can be very powerful.

This is an interesting question, but partly because it begs a further question: when does a trait become ‘cultural’ (as opposed to political, free-willed, a choice or indulgence)? Given the allegedly firm divisions in American society now, and the alleged unlikeliness of any individual changing their allegiance between red and blue, I’d say the 2 classifications mark 2 cultural camps: they may only be 50, 20 or 5 years old, but they seem to be self-reproducing (or dialectically reproducing).

My impression (and I can’t back this up in a thesis) is that distinctions tend to start out political, or habitual, or in any arbitrary way: when they’ve been reproduced for some years they grow the label ‘cultural,’ and when they’ve ben reproduced longer than anyone can remember (which also may not be many years) they grow the label ‘ethnic.’

I don’t want to get into debates on the overseas Chinese: there’s an enormous literature on them, which uniformally concludes that they enjoy repeatable success as a community for reasons that remain somewhat mysterious. Whether this is because of any specifically Chinese trait, or because they constitute a marginal trade diaspora, or whether any credence can be given to ‘rational stranger’ arguments, or whether they have ‘commercial confidence’ like Weberian protestants, or whether it’s the lingering ghost of Zheng He (aka Sampo Kong) watching over them remains entirely unclear. I think it’s at least as plausible as the other (quite earnestly supported) arguments above, that they acquired a reputation and a group identity, across Southeast Asian and European colonial communities, as useful brokers for manufactured goods that could not be had elsewhere – a reputation that rested as much on the reluctance of Chinese governments to engage in wholesale trade of these items as on any special entrepreneurship on the part of the overseas communities – and that this reputation became a reproducing and portable element of their culture, capable of being slipped over both the high- and low-class new immigrants that poured out of Hokkien and Fukien, in much the same way that alleged American entrepreneurialism was slipped over successive waves of European and other immigrants in the US. This hypothesis is completely unprovable, but the comparison to the US does at least suggest that biological arguments are complete bunk (as does the very extensive intermarriage between Chinese elites and other, native and non-native groups in places like, for instance, Thailand, producing a hybrid, often “Chinese” but as often “national” elite that possesses much the same characteristics in those nations).

Damn. I said I didn’t want to get into these debates. Too late, maybe.

Their ancestors are also almost purely of exceedingly humble origins…

It doesn’t matter what their origin is. Like I said: out of a billion peasants there will be tens of millions of extremely talented people. This is just the way it is, the law of nature. See Lomonosov, for example.

…and their children and grandchildren continue to succeed there, and in any third country they move to, like the US. We are not talking about a filtered set of smart, ambitious people, we are talking about a self-perpetuating population of these, there are no more filters.

But at this point there’s a different kind of filtering at work: once the first generation of immigrants succeeded – their children and grandchildren are now firmly in the upper class of the local society (moneywise, at least) with all the benefits that brings.

In other words (if I could use the stereotype here): extremely ambitious first generation will immigrate and become (relatively) rich by operating and expanding their laundry business and, because of that, the second generation will be able to become professionals or businessmen. And once you became a professional, your descendants are likely to be professionals as well.

That’s my theory anyway.

I mean, find a bunch of Chinese in China who do nothing but smoke opium all day and bring them to California (they wouldn’t come themselves, obviously). Check in a couple of generations – don’t you think self-perpetuation mechanism will affect their descendants too?

You took this as ethnic nationalism ? It seems to me that LKY was just stating facts.

I don’t have the slightest bit of Chinese ancestry (that I know of) btw.

On the origins of the overseas Chinese – from an interview with Lee Kwan Yew, on a conversation he had with Deng Xiaoping –
“We are the descendants of the landless peasants of south China. You have the mandarins, the writers, the thinkers and all the bright people. You can do better.” He looked at me, but said nothing. In November 1992, during his famous tour of the southern provinces, he said, “Learn from Singapore,” and “Do better than them.”

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,501051212-1137705,00.html

American liberals, at least the political variety have no understanding of culture. The one thing they don’t want to admit is that they’re products of it. That’s the only argument I make here.
Goldberg’s comments are pretty basic stuff. The social basis of social democracy: the Scandinavian “model” is neither intellectual nor economic. Culture is not an invention,
Interesting that American culture is developing some social democratic characteristics. Academics are subject to this as much as anyone (though they’re the last to know).

I remember sitting in a bar a few years ago with some friends, 2 Frenchmen and a Brit from Manchester. We chatted a bit about the domesticated European male: the “Euroweenie.” In the end we raised our glasses to the working classes of the the British Isles, started a fight and trashed the bar.
2 cheers for barbarism.

The Chinese (in China) have indeed had their IQ’s tested, in statistically significant numbers and with some rigor in sampling, and the resulting average IQ’s are indeed high. I think we can conclude that the average IQ of the 1.3 billion Chinese is higher than the world average.

But the Chinese we are talking about (Amy Chua’s people and my old classmates) are for the most part overseas Chinese, maybe 50 million people counting Taiwan. These did not come straight from China, they have typically been at least one generation removed. Their ancestors made the migration and were perhaps filtered in their first country (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, etc.), and their children and grandchildren continue to succeed there, and in any third country they move to, like the US. We are not talking about a filtered set of smart, ambitious people, we are talking about a self-perpetuating population of these, there are no more filters.

Their ancestors are also almost purely of exceedingly humble origins in China, people who effectively sold themselves into slavery. I don’t think that was a filter that selected an upper cut of the population.

How’s this for an explanation?

And as for speaking to toddlers, I have my doubts about the conclusions in that bit of research, beyond the sample size. The talking part could easily be an irrelevant (to success) element of behavior that smart, educated people do more often than others, and not a mechanism for programming achievement. With a larger and culturally broader sample they may have come to very different conclusions.

There are some other such studies that have come to other odd conclusions in studying child-rearing behavior. Some have asserted that the success model is a non-authoritarian, relaxed style of parenting. This does not square with what I know of Chinese parenting.

A lot more research is needed.