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Comment by droithomme | Hacker News Reader

Not all cultures are the same. The article assumes a universal culture and values of "buyer beware" in which personal assurances, friendship, and honor, all mean nothing at all whatsoever.

This is not how most of the world sees things.

In the eyes of those who were assured of sure things, the brutal dismemberment and evisceration of the scammers, their families, and their pets, is justified, reasonable, and pretty certain to happen at some point, to protect one's honor.

If one wishes to do business in other cultures one should understand those cultures.

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Yes, the LIA should probably have tried to understand British and American culture better before dumping money into Citigroup via Goldman Sachs. But even if they had bothered—and that's a big ‘if’, since Qaddafi was not really known to play well with others—would that have changed anything? The market would've still crashed and the LIA would still be justifiably irate about losing a lot of money.

If the court case is in London, that suggests the business was being done in London (or at least the accounts were being kept there), so shouldn't the Libyans be the ones to understand the other culture?

In western culture, yes. In Libyan culture, I'm guessing no.

The particular cultural value you're appealing to here is rule of law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law

It is a value I'm personally fond of. But it's not the only way to run a country. I'm going to go out on a limb an suggest that a guy who engineered a coup, declared himself "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya," and stayed in power 40 years was maybe not the biggest fan of the theory that "law should govern a nation, as opposed to being governed by arbitrary decisions of individual government officials".

Actually, somewhat more generally, if culture X is going to conduct some business with culture Y, which culture dictates the norms of the transaction?

In theory you'd assume the engaging party (either proactive sellers or proactive buyers) would adapt to the cultural practices of the ones they're reaching out to, but to some degree it probably doesn't align with human nature all of the time.

    > Not all cultures are the same

No. The one in question armed the IRA and friends, blew up an American civilian airliner over Scotland, and shot a British police officer who was protecting their embassy. Babes in the wood.

so west disposed of him only to create proper civil war in that country, with ISIS cells and in the end, kill at least tens of thousands indirectly, still counting.

way to go west! something about lesser evil and whatnot

When people begin by describing Westerners as too noble and too high-minded that they're taken advantage of by other cultures, your comment will be on fleek. Until then, the originating comment smacks of Enlightenment-era anti-Semtisim with the roles reversed.

Sorry, but this is so reductive that it descends into prejudice.

The Gadhaffi regime is to blame for all of these things; pinning them on 'Libyan culture' is not even wrong.

I'm not sure what else to say. Please consider editing this comment; I'm sure it was poorly worded as a response to the original poster, and you don't actually mean this.

I mean this. A facile defence of a whole nation on the basis that they aren't sufficiently savvy or worldly wise and the mean Westerners took advantage of their trusting nature is as offensive as - and shown to be as such by comparison with - an equally reductionist counter point. It's simply the grossly offensive "noble savage" idea rehashed.

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