

How I Became One of the Most Successful Art Smugglers in the World - robg
http://www.vice.com/read/how-i-became-one-of-the-most-successful-art-smugglers-in-the-world

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BryanB55
Cool story I guess but at the end I'm left wondering how much of it is true
and how much is exaggerated just to sound 'cool'. I can't help but pick up
quite a bit of arrogance in his answers.

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mathattack
I was thinking the same. How do you know these stories aren't BS? "Oh, I did
some shady things in the 60s..."

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theprodigy
I love reading Vice. Truth is stranger than fiction.

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at-fates-hands
Agreed. I just got sucked into the site for an hour and had no idea.

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tomrod
Hah! Me too!

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jaggederest
I highly recommend the Vice Guide to Liberia, if you want to hear about some
of the lesser-known failures of colonialism.

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cup
Did colonialism ever produce anything but failure for the native inhabitants?

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lmm
Malaysia is probably the best success story, but you can easily make a case
that India was better off under colonial rule than before or immediately
after.

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guylhem
India was the producer of the most sough-after goods in the world - so much
that when robbery threatened land commerce, some people thought it was a good
idea to try a workaround and commission seaships to try to reach it from
around the globle - where america stood in the way.

The damage inflicted to India have been huge. It is only starting to recover.
My bets for the next world superpower are not on China (due to upcoming
demographics problems), but on India.

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tomrod
I thought India also had demographic issues?

My money is on Brazil and Argentina.

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guylhem
B & A are going to be good, but IMHO not as good as India. I see India at the
#1 spot around 2050. More people - as a billion. More education, and people
moving back from the US to share their experience. Democracy (improving), and
a wariness of how leftist reforms seriously damaged their country in the past.
If they can fix the bureaucracy, it's going to be quite hot. (and BTW I'm not
indian, this is not some personal bias - I just see a lot of potential)

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tomrod
Fair enough. The future is bright, surely.

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propercoil
Vice is awesome

