
'The West' is, in fact, the world's biggest gated community - krigath
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/walled-world
======
zozbot234
If "The West" is a gated community, how is it that so many countries are
managing to join "The West"? Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore
used not to be "Western" countries. Central and Eastern Europe, same thing.

I've never seen a gated community that was this easy to join. Just reform your
country's institutions, decide to start caring about economic freedom and
other basic liberties, and you're basically there.

~~~
eesmith
Are you using "The West" as a synonym for "developed country"? Compare
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Cultural_definit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Cultural_definition)
with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Economic_definit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Economic_definition)
.

> Cultural definition: In modern usage, Western world refers to Europe and to
> areas whose populations largely originate from Europe, through the Age of
> Discovery's imperialism

> Economic definition: The term "Western world" is sometimes interchangeably
> used with the term First World or developed countries, ... It is also used
> despite many developed countries or regions not being Western (e.g. Japan,
> Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao), and therefore left out
> when "Western world" is used to denote developed countries.

Minor point: Hong Kong has never been a country.

Regarding "Just reform your country's institutions", many countries still
struggle with the effects of European colonization, while the European
profited immensely.

As one example, it's hard to care about economic freedom "and other basic
liberties" when the US helps the UK overthrow your democratically elected
government in order to put a dictator in place, in order to protect Western
oil interests -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)
.

~~~
baud147258
I don't know all the European countries, but I'm pretty France didn't make any
money from its colonies.

~~~
eesmith
None from slavery and sugar?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire)

> As the French empire in North America grew, the French also began to build a
> smaller but more profitable empire in the West Indies. ... France's most
> important Caribbean colonial possession was established in 1664, when the
> colony of Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti) was founded on the western half of
> the Spanish island of Hispaniola. In the 18th century, Saint-Domingue grew
> to be the richest sugar colony in the Caribbean.

No money from Asia?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Indochina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Indochina)

> The principal reasons why French settlement did not grow in a manner similar
> to that in French North Africa (which had a population of over 1 million
> French civilians) were because French Indochina was seen as a colonie
> d'exploitation économique (economic colony) rather than a colonie de
> peuplement ...

> Funding for the colonial government came by means of taxes on locals and the
> French government established a near monopoly on the trade of opium, salt
> and rice alcohol. The French administration established quotas of
> consumption for each Vietnamese village, thereby compelling villagers to
> purchase and consume set amounts of these monopolised goods.

[https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/french-colonialism-in-
vi...](https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/french-colonialism-in-vietnam/)

> Indochina became one of France’s most lucrative colonial possessions. ...
> The real motive for French colonialism was profit and economic exploitation.
> French imperialism was driven by a demand for resources, raw materials and
> cheap labour. The development of colonised nations was scarcely considered,
> except where it happened to benefit French interests.

Or, [https://portside.org/2014-02-06/france-forces-africa-pay-
col...](https://portside.org/2014-02-06/france-forces-africa-pay-colonialism)

> When Sékou Touré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of french colonial
> empire, and opted for the country independence, the french colonial elite in
> Paris got so furious, and in a historic act of fury the french
> administration in Guinea destroyed everything in the country which
> represented what they called the benefits from french colonization. ...

> Sylvanus Olympio, the first president of the Republic of Togo, a tiny
> country in west Africa, found a middle ground solution with the French. ...
> agree to pay an annual debt to France for the so called benefits Togo got
> from french colonization. ... the amount estimated by France was so big that
> the reimbursement of the so called "colonial debt" was close to 40% of the
> country budget in 1963. ... On January 13, 1963, three days after he started
> printing his country own currency, a squad of illiterate soldiers backed by
> France killed the first elected president of newly independent Africa. ...

> It's such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is
> not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions
> dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out. ...

> Former French President Jacques Chirac recently spoke about the African
> nations money in France banks. Here is a video of him speaking about the
> french exploitation scheme. He is speaking in French, but here is a short
> excerpt transcript: "We have to be honest, and acknowledge that a big part
> of the money in our banks come precisely from the exploitation of the
> African continent."

Etc.

~~~
baud147258
Regarding portside, that's totally not a biased source "Our mission at
Portside is to provide information that empowers the left". And with some
unsourced informations that's laughable.

------
deogeo
Sure has a lot of immigration from outside the West for a gated community [1].
On the other hand, non-Western countries have near-zero Western immigration,
or even inter-continental migration among themselves. So much so that, when
viewed with a granularity on the scale of an India, China, or North-/Sub-
Saharan Africa, they're nearly perfectly homogeneous, in _stark_ contrast to
the "closed, gated" West.

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-
us-...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-
become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/)

~~~
eesmith
"Gated community" doesn't mean there's no population exchange. After all, the
initial population in a new gated community area may be zero.

Instead, I think a better metric is the number of people who move to X vs.
those who want _and can afford_ to move to X, but are prevented because of a
non-reciprocal policy by X.

(I'm fine with some restrictions - nearly all countries have some
restrictions; Svalbard, Norway being one of the rare exceptions. The above is
a hand-wavy way of trying to not get stuck on that detail. The main point is
that free movement of people/labor should be like the free movement of
money/capital.)

Think back to Jim Crow era US. Blacks may want to move to region of town but
not allowed by deed restriction. While whites could move to the few areas of
town "red-lined" for blacks, with no legal prohibition. They didn't - quite
the opposite, in a process known as "white-flight."

(Some blacks, particularly wealthy ones, could also move out, as well as black
people who were employed as help for white families.)

So, just because non-white regions have near-zero white immigration doesn't
mean that they are "closed, gated" and the the white areas are not. Which
suggests that your interpretation isn't a useful way of understanding what
"closed, gated" means.

There's also the physical dimension. Quoting the text:

> At the end of the Cold War, there were just 15 walls separating countries
> from each other. Now there are at least 70 walled borders worldwide. Since
> the fall of the Wall, thousands of miles of steel and concrete walls have
> gone up on international borders.

~~~
deogeo
> those who want and can afford to move to X, but are prevented because of a
> non-reciprocal policy by X.

It's easy to have open borders if hardly anyone takes advantage of it, so
looking at reciprocity isn't very relevant. Faced with rising immigration,
non-Western countries tend to adopt restrictions as well (see NPR link on
Brazil).

Furthermore, China will only grant citizenship to ethnic Chinese, whereas the
West takes in many Chinese immigrants, so in this case, the non-reciprocity is
in the other direction. A quick search failed to turn up what restrictions
other non-Western countries have, but there's no lack of border walls - a few
random examples from every non-Western continent:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-installs-laser-
wall...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-installs-laser-walls-border-
pakistan-n564051)

[https://www.seeker.com/why-india-is-building-the-longest-
bor...](https://www.seeker.com/why-india-is-building-the-longest-border-wall-
in-the-world-1501495427.html)

[https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/will-pakistans-wall-
work/](https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/will-pakistans-wall-work/)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2016/11/13/chinas-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2016/11/13/chinas-
building-a-wall-any-lessons-for-trump)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/16/184524306/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/16/184524306/brazil-
looks-to-build-a-10-000-mile-virtual-fence)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/22/western-
sahara...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/22/western-sahara-wall-
morocco-trump)

~~~
eesmith
"Faced with rising immigration, non-Western countries tend to adopt
restrictions as well"

Sure. The article itself mentions "Not all border walls are between the First
World and the Rest of the World." and uses as examples the wall between India
and Bangladesh (your #2 link) and Moracco's Berm (your #6), so clearly it
wasn't making the point that the West was the only gated community.

My point was to argue that your definition doesn't seem a reasonable as it
doesn't really apply to actual gated communities, much less the metaphorical
comparison used here.

Other interpretations may be more valid, and demonstrate the incorrectness of
"'The West' is, in fact, the world's biggest gated community", but I don't
think yours does.

------
sunstone
If I'm not mistaken Singapore and Bermuda have higher average incomes than the
US and Europe. On the other hand the people of Costa Rica, Uruguay and Chile
for example are mostly pretty happy with their circumstances as are other
middle income countries that are not kleptocracies. China too is coming up
fast in terms of income if not democracy. Hard to argue that it's not a gated
community too even if the gate is bi-directional in this case. Overall this
looks like a cherry picking exercise.

------
aaron695
I was sad they seem to be talking about a literal wall.

Not sure it has meaning or is even useful to know other than for sci-fi.

Even if you could politically take down [B. The Australian Defense Force
(ADF)], which you can't, approximately no one came through anyway... and once
in they are now behind the wall.

Compared with, The West seems to have a wall of language and culture that's
hard to break. Don't underestimate the value of fully understanding Game of
Thrones.

This you can change.

