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Comment by littletimmy | Hacker News Reader

Here's the problem: once you allow ascribing a particular laudatory quality to a certain group, you HAVE to concede that certain groups have bad qualities. That is, unless group qualities are only good, a claim for which there is no evidence whatsoever.

So... Gujaratis have an ethic of capitalistic success. Are you also comfortable saying Blacks have an ethic of failure, Jews have an ethic of in-group morality, Gypsies have an ethic of stealing, and so on? If you are not, then you are arbitrarily imposing a limit that qualities assigned to a group must only be good. If you are, congratulations! You are now racist.

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Of course cultures have attributes - that's what defines them as a separate culture. Not everybody around the world is the same. That would be PC blather. Folks are different, and we can celebrate that.

Your argument is basically slippery slope.

The article merely documents the entrepreneurial genius of the Gujarati community which is worth lauding. Gujarati is not a race.

The article itself contains formulations like "Like the Jews, Chinese, English, Scots and Lebanese, they have come to form an impressive global commercial network.", suggesting that this about more than just the community. At the very least, it must be the values that matter. And once you acknowledge that some sets of values are preferable to others, and that different religions come with different values, you are already very close to sliding down the slippery slope from the original comment.

Of course some cultural values are better than others. Some cultures are highly sexist/racist/xenophobic/homophobic. Would you say these values are no better or worse than any other?

> "Like the Jews, Chinese, English, Scots and Lebanese, they have come to form an impressive global commercial network."

English people as merchants or commercial folks on an individual level, I haven't heard of that. Maybe from Europe the Italians or Greeks to some extent, that's true but English people, I don't think that his/her observation is correct.

The article is referring to these diasporas forming 'global commercial networks', so I think your interpretation is slightly off. Interesting article. Gujarati's are also responsible for some of the finest 'Indian' cuisine around too!

I was arguing that on an individual level English people don't rank higher when it comes to entrepreneurship. I was not arguing that the British Empire wasn't commercially successful or that it didn't manage to accumulate wealth from their colonies if that what you were alluding to in your reply.

English people didn't make it commercially « on their own » but with the help of their state or empire globally and this is a historical fact and thus the comparison to the Chinese, Levantines or Jews who mostly acted on personal initiatives is not apt one.

The English were known as a "nation of shopkeepers"[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_shopkeepers

Gujaratis are not a race or religion, it's you who are taking things to racial level

They're an ethnicity, yes. But you get my point. Native Americans are an ethnicity, but criticizing them as a group is looked down upon pretty heavily.

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