The Hypocrisy Curtain
More evidence for the hypothesis that human brains are huge mainly to hypocritically evade rules: cultural barriers often consist in advantages locals get by knowing which rules they can safely break:
Tim Wu grew up in Canada with a white mother and a Taiwanese father, which allows him an interesting perspective on how whites and Asians perceive each other. … “There is this automatic assumption in any legal environment that Asians will have a particular talent for bitter labor,” …
By contrast, the white lawyers he encountered had a knack for portraying themselves as above all that. “White people have this instinct that is really important: to give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. You’re a quarterback. It’s a kind of arrogance that Asians are trained not to have. Someone told me not long after I moved to New York that in order to succeed, you have to understand which rules you’re supposed to break. If you break the wrong rules, you’re finished. And so the easiest thing to do is follow all the rules. But then you consign yourself to a lower status. The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you.”
This idea of a kind of rule-governed rule-breaking—where the rule book was unwritten but passed along in an innate cultural sense—is perhaps the best explanation I have heard of how the Bamboo Ceiling functions in practice. (more; HT John Wilson)
Imagine a situation where there are more competitive governments, whether through seasteads or charter cities. In that milieu, do you think that asians would do better or more or less the same as now?
Rule avoidance or rule breaking is as important cultural component inside Asia as anywhere. That said, the reality is the Asian elites press their entitlements, cling to their privileges, and fight against modern elements who threaten to break their hold on society and the economy.