Comment by sushshshsh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sushshshsh | Hacker News Reader

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The reason for the "civil disturbance" in Albania in 1997-1998 is very interesting to study: the collapse of nation wide Ponzi schemes.

Several different Albanian Ponzi schemes were basically marketing themselves as banks, and they were real legitimate businesses with IT employees and salesmen and everything.

Eventually almost every Albanian had money tied up in these schemes in one way or another, and one by one they all started to go bust as the leaders ran away with the money or were otherwise unable to payout interest on deposits, or even return initial principal deposits.

As a result, the nation rioted, and the PM decided to flee.

Realizing this, certain elements in the Albanian population decided to raid the local police armories for military equipment of all times. And what resulted was an interesting and tragic case study of what happens when several different armed factions and many thousands of bandits begin to commit violence against anyone and everyone under the guise of "re-establishing law and order".

Indeed, a very good case to learn from for people saying "such things can't happen" in a modern civil state country.

Albania is of course not the best examples of a "Western" country, but it is far more than, say, what ex-Soviet states were.

Imagine a few big banks falling in the same manner in a particularly low point for ones country. In a few breakdowns of civil states so far, since the WW2, the prime majority fell to "lightning out of the blue"

> Albania is of course not the best examples of a "Western" country, but it is far more than, say, what ex-Soviet states were

I'm not sure if I'd fully agree with that characterization. Sure, the Balkans as a whole had bit their own thing going on (probably can thank Tito for that), but Albania was still ruled by iron-handed communist regime and at least based on surface reading seemed to be deeper in the (Stalinist/Communist) ideology than many others, including post-Stalin Soviet Union.

I think socialists being still relatively strong during 90s probably contributed in part to the crisis. Overall it's important to remember that the country was still on its first post-communist decade.

Found this contemporary reporting from 1997, while the language is maybe bit excessively colorful it still paints a picture how the country was perceived at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20190412111815/https://www.balti...

> Albania was still ruled by iron-handed communist regime and at least based on surface reading seemed to be deeper in the (Stalinist/Communist) ideology than many others, including post-Stalin Soviet Union.

I don't understand this part given that the rest of your post, and the article you link, makes it clear that they had transitioned out of communism 6 years previously. But yeah they were still terribly poor and perhaps worse off under the post-communist regime. They were seen as more backward and less Western than, say, post-Soviet Latvia which was already deep in talks to join the EU - something that remains a long way off for Albania more than 20 years later.

The quote was referring to the pre transition period, related to how Albanians were in immediate past living in a more authoritarian system than even the SU. And hence were pretty far from a western country culturally.

Quote from the GP linked article:" Capitalism ran amok, transforming Tirana into a 20th-century version of Dodge City, filled with gun-toting lawmen, abrasive money-changers and tough guys dressed in leather."

They may have transitioned from communism, but communism leaves psychological scars (or rather adaptations) which are passed on for generations through culture. The nature of authoritarian socialism is such that it breeds mistrust and selfishness in private.

Is Albania considered a western country at all? I never thought of it as such.

Albania has been a member of NATO since 2009, and (just this year) has begun negotiations to join the EU.

Not every "Western" country is a NATO member, but NATO members are usually counted as "Western". Similarly, EU member states generally count as "Western", and a country formally negotiating to join the EU probably falls in that bucket too.

Turkey is possibly the big exception to the generalisations that "NATO member"="Western" and "negotiating to join the EU"="Western". However, Turkey used to have much more of a pro-Western orientation when it was ruled for decades by secular nationalists. It is only in the last 20 or so years, with Turkey being ruled by the religiously conservative AKP, that Turkey has been moving away from a "Western" identity. But Albania's politics are very different from those of Turkey. Albania's politics are dominated by secular parties. While both Turkey and Albania are majority Muslim, the kind of religious conservatism which is the driving force behind the current Turkish government is far less popular among Albanians.

How do you view it?

I see things like this as the memetic equivalent of the Columbian Exchange; the population lacks immunity to the schemes that are endemic in capitalism, so as soon as one arrives the whole population is infected very quickly.

Rare Earth's Evan Hadfield did a great episode on this, "The Pyramid Scheme that Collapsed a Nation":

https://invidio.us/watch?v=lMUtU0tOmNE

This might happen in Western countries, especially in the US where people have guns, in the case COVID-19 pushes the real economy over the edge.

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