Lebanon: Worst economic collapse in 150 years | Hacker News Reader

Lebanon: Worst economic collapse in 150 years

abc.net.au

57 pointsjgmasters26 comments

Lebanon is basically reverting to mean, going from a multi-cultural and Christian dominated nation, to a Muslim nation:

https://www.economist.com/img/b/580/852/90/sites/default/fil...

The Christian age bracket in the 21-25 age range is 25%, 50 years ago it was 50%.

Historically, Lebanon has never been Muslim, the mountains served as isolation from the religious changes of the region, and it was a major centre of Christianity during the crusades, and remained connected with Europe.

But in the 20th century, French colonialists enlarged the territory to encompass large areas of Syria, which held Muslim populations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon#Ottoman_Lebanon_and_Fr...

These populations proceeded to overtake the Christian populations, with the fertility rate in 1971 being 5.44 for Muslims and 3.56 for Christians.

This divide remains, in 2004 the fertility rate for Muslims in Lebanon was 1.82, for Christians 1.53:

https://www.lstatic.org/PDF/demographenglish.pdf

A 2009 study found cousin marriage rates of 30% for Muslims and 16.5% for Christians, cousin marriage is commonplace throughout the Muslim world:

https://marciainhorn.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/inhorn-arti...

In 2019 the GDP per capita of Lebanon was $7583. It will eventually (and seems like rapidly) fall to match its Muslim neighbours eg. Jordan ($4405) Egypt ($1667) Syria ($2032).

I realise that these topics are unpopular, but you cannot divorce the economic and social downfall of Lebanon from the demographic changes taking place there.

Further, those same demographic changes are taking place elsewhere too, e.g. take the fertility rates of Native (Christian) and Muslim European populations and project forward a few decades. Lebanon is but a proverbial canary.

There is no European country that is gonna have a Muslim majoriry by 2050, the closest one seems to be Sweden but its estimated to become around 20% Muslim by 2050. A lot is dependent on immigration policy. But sure, problems could arise regardless who holds the majority. I do think Europe is VERY far from having Lebanon level problems but we will see.

Was/were the leadership(s) that is blamed for this catastrophe Muslim?

No. The “analysis” above is anti-muslim nonsense.

The main roles in the government of Lebanon are split among Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims and Christians. The president is Christian. The prime minister and speaker of parliament are muslim (one Shia and the other Sunni).

I am not saying this was a good system - quite obviously it has not worked well. But to blame all of this on Muslims is nonsense.

Also important: some features of Lebanese government are invariant to demographic changes bc the government has declined to conduct a new census.

For reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Lebanon

The government of the Republic doesn’t actually govern swathes of the nation, which are essentially under a parallel Shia Muslim government (Hezbollah)

Your “analysis” kinda leaves out that salient fact

I don't agree with the idea that a country being Christian means it'll be successful and it being Muslim meaning it'll be a disaster, but surely you can't just disregard demographic changes as "anti-Muslim nonsense".

I too categorically don't agree with blaming it on Muslims, I do however reserve judgement about blaming it on Islam - it could have had an effect or it could not.

I find it curious that many of the comments here are talking about demographic changes and religion while signaling out Muslims and/or Islam as one of the primary causes.

There are plenty of other countries in the world that have economic problems where the Muslim population is insignificant.

> There are plenty of other countries in the world that have economic problems where the Muslim population is insignificant.

Absolutely true. I still don't think the hypothesis should be rejected just on the grounds of it sounding Islamophobic, it should be rejected on the grounds of it being incorrect.

As I see it, it's not about $religion but religious orthodoxy. Primary cause would be "too much religion".

Most of them have common failings though: corruption, depression of women, lack of freedom of speech, resistance for democratic institutions etc etc. It could be argued that Islam, especially the unmoderate kind, contributes to these failings. In fact most Orthodox religions do.

Rather than a religious issue, perhaps the problem was that the Lebanese diaspora was incentivized with high interest rates to deposit their foreign currency in local banks, which was systemically looted by corrupt officials which eventually collapsed in money printing? Or that’s the understanding I have gathered from Lebanese commenters observing the shenanigans.

> That was until 2016, when banks began offering remarkable interest rates for new deposits of dollars - an officially accepted currency in the dollarised economy - and even more extraordinary rates for Lebanese pound deposits.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-lebanon-crisis-financial-...

Islam has grown in a troubled country, but how does that imply there's a casual relationship between Islam and poverty/social instability? This is like arguing the use of umbrellas causes the rain - how do your figures prove which part is the cause, and which part is the effect? Or if it's because of something(s) else entirely besides the rise in Islamic population?

Reading the economist, it's been obvious for several years that Lebanon's economy was going to collapse, despite coming out of the GFC well. Take this article from 2018. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/08/30/... Interest rates of 8-9% on US dollar denominated accounts. A 20%, of GDP, foreign account deficit. It was clear that they were paying out interest from deposits and it was unsustainable.

I have no expertise on this topic so I can't agree or disagree with this analysis, but I'd like to commend you on speaking your thoughts.

Too often I have found HN to downvote a comment that goes against the grain until it's dead - can we not have a civilised discussion around difficult topics?

Arab countries (whatever religion), in particular, seem to be mired in corruption. And corruption seems, to me, to be a low trust equilibrium of societies that is hard to get out of.

The cycle seems to go: You can't trust authority to help you, So you must rely on your family or patronage to get ahead, In return you become obligated to your own network, If you get authority you misuse your power to favour your own (besides everyone else is doing it), and outsiders can't trust authority to help them.

The lack of trust discourages investment. Why invest if someone else will use their power to take the proceeds away. It seems to me the this is the main reason that there still are poor countries in the world.

I've heard that there is an afghan saying: "brother before cousin, cousin before clan, clan before country." But the examples are endless: Arab clan/sect networks, Mafia bosses, Roman Patricians, Feudal lords, Chinese Guanxi patronage networks, African tribal networks.

> I realise that these topics are unpopular, but you cannot divorce the economic and social downfall of Lebanon from the demographic changes taking place there.

You could run a global regular expression substitution and replace Christian with white, Muslim with black, and Lebanon with the US. It would also work by replacing Muslim with Hispanics or illegals with the other substitutions as mentioned earlier.

So when you read that people believed lesbians cause hurricanes, or jews cause the plague, you think 'how could people be so stupid!' but if you add some figures, some magic words ('populations', 'demographics'), I find myself nodding along! Muslims cause economic crises!

Truly humbling analysis.

You forgot the civil war which led to Christians and Jewish people to flee, something very common in the Middle East. There's "peace" until there's no peace and only a group of people is allowed to stay.

Your comment is beyond distasteful, it's lazy and racist.

You need more than "LOOK, MUSLIMS!" to show some sort of link... And you haven't shown us anything but that. Shocking that the GDP fell in the aftermath of a catastrophic explosion that knocked out trade and caused a massive humanitarian problem.

Naaaah, it's probably just the Muslims, eh?

1.8 children per Muslim and 1.53 per Christian, wow that is extremely low by almost any standard, especially for the middle east

At the time of the explosion, I suspected that the damage caused would be a net positive economically for Lebanon as there would be an increase in development due to the necessary construction and repair.

Clearly, I could not have been more wrong. Of course, neighboring Syria is in no position to aid Lebanon, but Israel could do well to aid a neighbour and benefit from a stable friendly country in the region. Of course, Lebanon's relationship with Hezbollah, would make that difficult.

Can Carlos Ghosn not put on his cape and sort his home country out?

Look up the broken window fallacy

I'm familiar with broken window fallacy. Not sure how it relates to my comment. That's like saying we should give up on improvements in any developing region because they're in a bad neighborhood. Quite defeatist I'd say.

They mean - Parable of the broken window

Destruction like this is awful, these people have no where to sleep (Some figures at 300,000 lost homes ), they are stressed, they will work less.

There's no reason to think this is good for the economy. In war at least you kill people and steal their stuff which increases your wealth.

Try Keynes, "If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines"

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2011/08/paul-krugman-reminds...

This is different. Rather than let money sit, you create something stupid which isn't perfect but better than nothing. It has good arguments against it, but it's a more reasonable idea.

Also even if Broken Windows Theory is wrong, that doesn't mean give up on a region. It means fix underlying issues.

I however think Broken Windows Theory is correct. It brings back pride, but I take it at more of the literal sense, fixing the look of the neighbourhood, not criminal enforcement.

If the window is poisonous then destroying it to replace it with a good window may result in a net gain. The fallacy begins when people start smashing perfectly good windows.

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