Why Do Indians **** At Such High Rates? Why Is A Country of Such Smart People So Poor?

Simone and Malcolm walk through a widely circulated write-up on izzat—the North Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi honor/reputation system—after Homath quote-tweeted it. They treat it the same way they treat critiques of Western hookup culture, Chinese face, or American individualism: as a cultural technology that can either support or sabotage flourishing.

They read the original Kiwi Farms post, then fact-check it. Izzat is a real, documented concept of collective family/clan honor. It is not practiced by all Indians. It is concentrated among many Hindi and Muslim communities in the north and is a poor fit for Jain, Christian, and Buddhist communities. Admitting fault can be treated as humiliating the whole group. Disputes can escalate past the original slight. Police and officials sometimes avoid taking sides. Honor killings are the part the original post underplayed: UNFPA and NGO estimates put worldwide honor killings in the thousands per year, and peer-reviewed work ties izzat to those cases in India and Pakistan. The 2017 Delhi toilet/urination murder they cite is a real case.

They also cover jugaad (workaround culture that can mean frugal innovation or cheating the rule), H-1B co-ethnic hiring and the Cognizant discrimination findings, Air India training scandals, and why a high-performing Indian diaspora can coexist with a country that still struggles with public goods and trust. Malcolm’s secondary explanation: License Raj and the post-independence decision to treat British rule as synonymous with capitalism.

Firsthand: their travel business had clients from many countries. Indian sub-agencies, they say, repeatedly broke vendor contracts, hid large bills, and scammed end customers—including after second chances. They live in a majority-Indian neighborhood and like their neighbors. The argument is about norms and selection, not “all Indians.”

They close by comparing this to Africans, Chinese, and Indians criticizing Western individualism and hookup culture, and by arguing that slapping “racist” on a pattern debate makes the backlash worse (Streisand effect), especially after Canada’s diploma-mill wave.

Weekend episodes and citations: Patreon / Substack.Books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG

Show Notes

The Izaat Post

On November 2nd, 2025, @XJosh posted three recent Kiwifarms screenshots to X, saying: Kiwi Farms user breaks down ‘Izzat’, the Indian subcontinent’s cultural honor system. It effectively explains every single trope about Indian behavior: they all participate in an invisible clout-chasing game that involves screwing over everyone as much as possible. Worth the read

The screenshots, showing a post by GluttonousManSlob read:

Hi. I didn’t see this term mentioned in the thread, so I wanted to share this all with you. It’s about Izzat. Some posts have mentioned ‘saving face’, which is Izzat, but I wanted to elaborate on it.

Izzat has no direct translation into English. We only have terms that can broach the same concept such as ‘honour’ or ‘reputation’ or ‘face’. Izzat is so much more than that. It’s a zero-sum game of collective honour shared by whole groups of people, all of whom take it very, very seriously. A system like this isn’t just foreign to Enlightenment values, but I’d argue it’s antithetical to every sensible form of governance on the planet. It will destroy any system that assumes good faith.

Izzat conflicts are not about who is right and who is wrong. It’s about who wins and who loses. This means it’s a zero-sum game where just about any action is justified (including murder) to restore the lost Izzat. Izzat is a limited social currency and the easiest way to get it is to take it from someone else. Winning is righteous in Izzat. Losing is unrighteous. This means that if someone plays the game of izzat well enough, they can get away with just about anything (murder, rape, scamming, cheating, stealing). The only morality in Izzat is the protection of your group’s collective ego. The only appropriate response when your Izzat is attacked is the complete destruction of whoever insulted it.

Two people get into an argument. They might escalate, but chances are it won’t be that bad. i.e. ‘Sorry I broke your garden gnome.’ With two Indians in an argument, the stakes are always deadly thanks to Izzat. Neither of them can back down, nor can they admit fault. Admitting fault is seen as deliberately humiliating yourself. Not only that, but because Izzat is shared, you are shaming everyone who shares your Izzat. So, admitting fault or taking responsibility for a problem is a form of social suicide. This means even if the dispute was over something completely f*****g stupid or trivial (like a broken garden gnome), it could spiral into a decades long honour feud.

Izzat is also the reason why police are reluctant to get involved in disputes. Because Izzat is a zero-sum game, all participants are involved in the game. If a policeman sides with one family over another in an Izzat dispute, this means that he’s deliberately taking the side of that family and dishonouring the other. This marks him for retribution by the offending party. Without parties being able to be impartial, then centralized authority cannot effectively function.

Let’s say someone in India complains about a broken water pipe. Instead of the problem being addressed, the official responsible for the water pipe denies it’s a problem and counterattacks him instead, because daring to question his efficacy in his role was challenging his Izzat. So the official destroys the person who brought the problem up. The water pipe never gets fixed.

Izzat is also the reason why Indian managers are so infamous for hiring more Indians. It’s because from the manager’s perspective, he’s using his position to gain an invisible social currency. Merit and actual qualifications come second to that idea. If he hired a westerner, he would not gain or even lose Izzat by doing so. He has a very strong cultural incentive not to be impartial. Meanwhile, if he can strong-arm dozens of Indians into a company, he is gaining huge quantities of Izzat and conspirators who owe an absolute debt to him.

It’s not uncommon to see Indians gloat about their success in the west. And yes, izzat is very much a system that enables short term success. But the fundamental reality is the prosperity that these Indians find so attractive in the first place wouldn’t exist if the west practiced something similar to Izzat. Our systems can only exist on the assumption of good faith, and not a majority of people exploiting them for destructive short term gain. On top of that, if an Indian causes the systems and companies he comes into contact with to collapse, then he can just go back to India with his plunder. He has no stakes in the long-term prosperity, functionality or stability of these systems. The stakes are completely asymmetrical in the Indian’s favour.

You all know about that infamous video of that Indian scamming a food bank. Once again, winning is righteous. Losing is not. By employing ‘clever’ means (jugaad), he successfully extracted more resources for himself and his family. From the perspective of jugaad, a rule is not something to respect, but merely an obstacle to the Indian’s own gain. Since he cheated the system and wasn’t caught, he is seen as a righteous and dignified man in the Izzat framework.

* We can attest to this being an issue: One of the businesses we ran had clients from all over the world: The USA, Spain, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and India

* While we had occasional issues with Venezuelan clients getting in trouble by helping people flee the country (pretty reasonable) for the most part our agency clients were reasonable

* However, our Indian clients were so systematically scammy that we had to completely change our terms

* They violated major vendor contracts so egregiously we almost lost key vendors that were crucial for our business operations

* One racked up $60,000 in expenses in a way that was obscured from us and then disappeared, leaving us with the bill

* We also started hearing from these clients’ direct customers, who were being scammed by them

I read a story in India about a man offering to pay another man to use a public toilet instead of defecating openly. The latter left and came back with several friends and beat the former to death. The problem was not that he was defecating openly, but that he was criticised for doing so. And with Izzat, it’s not an eye-for-an-eye. Izzat is often an eye-for-a-whole-head. Disproportionately and brutally annihilating your enemies is the correct move to make because you take back your lost Izzat and then some. This kind of vindictiveness would be rightly seen as horrifying and disgusting in most of the world.

There was a greentext from 4chan (I don’t have it so bear with me). Anon knew an Indian. This Indian would make outlandish claims (he could benchpress 500kg, he was a billionaire, he did arms deals with the US government). Anon said he didn’t believe the Indian. The Indian reacted with righteous indignation. The situation escalated to the point where the Indian was emailing Anon death threats. Anon responded by forwarding the emails to the police. The Indian killed himself. Anon was left baffled at the whole situation and had no idea what the f**k just happened.

So, without Izzat, this looks like an utterly insane and pointless sequence of events. But with Izzat? The Indian’s actions suddenly make sense. He was boasting to increase his Izzat, and when Anon simply stated his disbelief, it was seen as a vicious attack on his Izzat. The Indian escalated the situation to restore the lost Izzat. When the police got involved, the dispute had become public, so the Indian’s shame had increased to unbearable levels. He committed suicide in order to save his remaining Izzat. Anon had no idea what Izzat was, or if he did, he didn’t mention it, yet the Indian’s actions perfectly align with this framework. This is what makes me believe the green text was genuine.

The western idea of merit is competence in a role. Merit in Izzat is determined by what lengths you will go to to achieve a goal, with competence merely being one path. It often becomes a secondary path, as printing a degree that says you’re qualified to be a jet pilot is just as good as being able to actually fly a jet in the eyes of Izzat. In other words, Izzat selects for appearance over authentic merit or morality.

* NOTE: He’s probably using the jet pilot example in reference to a very real issue with Air India: Regulators have repeatedly cited Air India for inadequate or falsified pilot training — from unapproved simulators and skipped monitoring requirements to outright fraudulent training logs — with the most serious recent scrutiny coming after the 2025 Ahmedabad crash.

Now, a counterargument an Indian might make is ‘Izzat is a dated word’ or ‘We don’t use that word.’ I like to compare it to the word vendetta. Vendetta in Italian has a very specific meaning (a familial blood feud where revenge must be taken to restore honour etc). This word would not exist if this didn’t reflect a specific facet of Italian life. Izzat is no different. Hell, I’ve had to write several paragraphs just to explain what the hell Izzat is. It isn’t an archaic term either. It’s well and truly alive in the modern Indian lexicon.

If izzat were regularly discussed openly, this would be considered one of the greatest possible insults in the Izzat framework. Izzat is why Indians do mass reports, death threats, false flags and various other underhanded tactics when a westerner exposes something they don’t want people to see (such as the poop throwing festival). If I knew something like that existed in the west, I would say ‘wow that’s disgusting, we should stop this’. But in India, the problem is not the point. The point is the problem being exposed and the perceived insult to izzat from exposing the problem. The water pipe never gets fixed.

The one saving grace is Izzat performs awfully in the long term. Once Indians displace you, they will go back to playing this insane game among themselves. It’s what happened to companies that got hit by Izzat. This is also why there aren’t any homegrown Indian companies that have the same influence as Microsoft or Google. Whenever they start getting ahead, their companies implode from infighting, nobody doing their jobs, everybody trying to cheat each other and nobody addressing critical issues. Systems that delegate authority and work on good faith eventually win out over zero-sum honour feuding. Izzat cannot maintain complex systems because its players are only concerned with short term gain.

With the west, the issue is that it often fails to live up to its own ideals. It’s not a perfect system, but we can course correct and address problems pragmatically. With Izzat, Indians live up to those ideals very, very often. When you see the dysfunctionality of India, remember that it’s a feature of Izzat, not a bug.

Jugaad as a term also warrants more explanation, but my post is long enough as it is.

Fact Checks

Accurate

* Izzat is a real South Asian concept of honor, family reputation, and social standing

* especially of the family, clan, caste, or community rather than just the individual.

* It is used across religions in North India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

* A 2017 Delhi toilet/urinating case that OP cites (I did not bother to read it) is real.

* Ravinder Kumar, an e-rickshaw driver, offered two young men a few rupees to use a nearby public toilet instead of urinating on the roadside. They left, returned with a group, and beat him to death. The post slightly misstates it as open defecation, but the incident happened and illustrates extreme, disproportionate reaction to public shaming. It is not evidence that “two Indians in an argument” always risk decades-long deadly feuds.

* Many Indians did freak out after Tyler Oliviera went to the Indian poop festival

* Food-bank videos of Indian international students exist and were controversial.

* Clips from Canada, Ireland, and elsewhere showed students (sometimes explaining how to access university or community food programs) using resources.

* Some cases were framed as scams; others were official student supports. Debates followed about need vs. opportunism.

* Jugaad (improvisation/workaround, sometimes cutting corners) is a real term with both positive (“frugal innovation”) and negative (“half-baked shortcut, rule-bending”) connotations in India.

* Networking and favoritism in some Indian tech/H-1B circles is widely reported.

* Indian nationals dominate H-1B visas.

* There are documented patterns of regional/caste/language clustering, allegations of Indian managers preferring co-ethnics, visa-holder exploitation, and at least one major lawsuit (Cognizant) finding discrimination against non-Indians. Immigrant ethnic networks are common across groups; attributing it primarily to “gaining Izzat” is speculative.

Beyond Just What OP Says:

* Izaat is to thank for honor killings in these regions (see: “For the Sake of Family and Tradition: Honour Killings in India and Pakistan”, which explicitly identifies izzat s a central framework that helps explain and justify honour killings in India and Pakistan.)

* From their abstract:

* “The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that the annual worldwide number of honour killings is as high as 5,000 women and girls, though some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) estimate as many as 20,000 honour killings annually worldwide.”

* “Despite limited statistics, research shows that honour killings occur amongst women of different ages, religions, and social status, wealth, education, and location.”

* Other experiments found that high-caste rural North Indian men showed more retaliatory attitudes to slights than low-caste men. Admitting error can carry social cost in status-conscious settings. Police and officials sometimes handle “community matters” poorly due to panchayats, influence, or fear of escalation

Unverifiable

* The anecdotes he presents (however our anecdotes are verifiable)

Inaccurate

* India is not a cultural monolith; Izzat is not universally practiced (Most Indians do not treat every disagreement as an existential honor feud.)

* (At least per peer-reviewed academic researchers), Izzat is not “undiscussable” in the way the post claims (e.g. OP states that Izzat openly is “one of the greatest possible insults.”—the term appears routinely in news, literature, activism, and everyday speech.

* “Any action including murder is justified” and “eye-for-a-whole-head” as the default for trivial slights. Honor violence is real but concentrated on specific triggers (women’s conduct, caste, marriage). Most interpersonal disputes in India do not become blood feuds. Treating this as the operating system for all Indians is false.

* “Police cannot be impartial because siding with anyone “marks them for retribution.” Authorities do intervene, prosecute, and sometimes fail—for the same mix of corruption, overload, community pressure, and incompetence seen in many countries. The claim that centralized authority is inherently impossible is not supported.”

Posts Critiquing Western Culture

* An African diaspora poster: Djehuty Ma’at-Ra @DjehutySpeaks: 😂😂😂 These people are impacted by the West and Western ways. The American environment is imbalanced and toxic, anti-communal/community. They (certain Blacks) are looking through Western lens and not African lens. Western = individualism; African/Eastern = communalism/family oriented. “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

* An Indonesian-Chinese poster林 Linnamon @_linnamon_: Ironically instead of empowering a person, individualism is more likely to destroys a person’s purpose in life. You don’t have any goal except worldly hedonism. Don’t ask again why so many folks are easily depressed and become antisocial when this is the value of your society 👇

* He’s pointing to someone’s post reading “society is based on self interest”

* A video posted by @viprabuddhi of a Canadian Chinese man (often labeled “Chinese Historian” in the replies) walking through how Western hookup and drinking culture wrecks family formation and women’s long-term outcomes. He links casual sex, campus/date rape, alcohol-fueled decisions, one-night stands, unwanted pregnancies, and later divorce to women looking “terrible” by their 30s and families that cannot stay together. He argues Westernized Asian women who absorb the same pattern are described as following the same collapse.

* Indian accounts repeatedly frame Western culture as the vector that broke family discipline:

* @IshBhatt197: “It’s all because of following blindly to western culture ....families are broken..no morals...no values....FREEDOM...FAKE FEMINISM....”

* Dr. Van Nostrand @RSD270: “This entire thing, such shows, the kind of humour, this dating & hooking up culture, is all adopted under peer pressure from the west, this doesn’t come naturally to our society, and it shows. Only those unswayed by this will survive in the long run, rest will drown in degeneracy”

* shailputri (quater life crises) @shailputri_gd quote tweeting:

* Radha 🌟 @SheIsTheFire, who posted: “Dear women, Never ever, I repeat, NEVER EVER, discuss your past with your husband or your would-be-husband. Some things need to go with you to your grave! Or else there is a big chance your partner will make sure he digs a living grave for you with whatever you shared with him out of pure honesty and trust. Not everyone has the maturity to understand relationships and the life choices of a woman! #TwishaSharma #TwishaSharmaDeathCase”

* Bit of a spoiler about the western criticism of Izzat we’re about to get into

* With: “western feminism taught indian women about sexual liberation but failed to impart them with the faustian spirit of anglo feminism white women hoed openly and didnt give a f**k about what society thought of em meanwhile women here wanna hoe and still be perceived as sati savitri”

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins [0:00]:. Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited, I think, to be chatting with you today even though we’re speedrunning our doom on YouTube because it’s Homath, who’s now going by Homath equals psychomath on X now, recently quote tweeted this 2025 post on the Indian concept of Izzat writing, please read every word, then go back and read it again. The Indian problem is set to grow exponentially. And initially, skipping the write up shared, which portrays Izzat, this concept, as a a zero sum system of collective honor that drives conflict and corruption and favoritism and institutional dysfunction among Indians. I just went straight to the comments, and maybe it was like, oh, man. This is racist. I can’t take this seriously. But then it was like, wait. Other groups criticize elements of Western culture all the time. And when people do this, Westerners don’t freak out or yell racist. In fact, we often agree and then engage in discourse about it.

Malcolm Collins [1:00]:And Well, hold on. It’s not just Western culture. Like, uh, people constantly talk about how saving face creates major systemic problems within Chinese culture.

Simone Collins [1:11]:Yeah. 100%. Yeah. This isn’t just an anti Indian thing. Um, but I I actually think that racism becomes worse. And we’ve talked about this just recently when people slap legitimate critiques of bad behavior with the label of racism. So what we’re gonna do, okay, is we’re gonna read the write up on Izan. It’s kinda long, so I’m gonna take some choice quotes. Then we’re gonna fact check it. Okay, YouTube. We’re gonna fact check it, and then we’re gonna review posts critiquing facets of Western culture that are problematic so that we can see, look, this is not this is not a one-sided thing. This is a collective discourse that we all should be having even if we all sound a little angry at people when we do it. And then we’re gonna discuss all of these cultural shortcomings with the same approach we discussed the failings of Western culture, all from the perspective of cultural technologies and or traits that either contribute to or hamper human flourishing. Okay? So let’s get into the Ezat post. Hold on. Hold on.

Malcolm Collins [2:06]:Hold on. That’s a that is a lot of hand waving Simone just did to try to say, I’m gonna be super racist against Indians.

Simone Collins [2:13]:I don’t wanna be demonic. Stop.

Malcolm Collins [2:16]:Simone Simone, I I will add the caveat. I have actually, in real life, never met an Indian person I didn’t like. The

Simone Collins [2:25]:What about the Indians who stole tens of thousands of dollars from them? Met them.

Malcolm Collins [2:33]:They they I never talked to them. That was you who was communicating with them. But I will say that there are problems. Like, there are systemic issues that we need to address, um, and talking about these issues is important to seriously addressing them. Continue. Simone. You you you are so

Simone Collins [2:52]:It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. Okay. On November 20 on 11/02/2025, at x Josh posted three recent Kiwi Farm screenshots to x saying, Kiwi Farm’s user breaks down Izat, the Indian subcontinent’s cultural honor system. It effectively explains every single trope about Indian behavior. They all participate in an invisible clout chasing game that involves screwing over everyone as much as possible. Worth the read. And the screenshots show this post by Gluttonous Manslob, Fair Kiwi Farms. I’m just gonna read some excerpts from it. Alright? So we’ll just jump right in. The gluttonous manslob typed, we only have terms that can broach the same concept such as honor or reputation or face. Izzat is so much more than that. It’s a zero sum game of collective honor shared by the whole groups of people, all of whom take it very, very seriously. A system like this isn’t just foreign to enlightenment values, but I’d argue it’s antithetical to every sensible form of governance on the planet. It will destroy any system that assumes good faith. Izzat conflicts sorry. Izzat conflicts are not about who is right and who is wrong. It’s about who wins and who loses. This means it’s a zero sum game where just about any action is justified, including murder, to restore the lost Izzat. Izzat is a limited social currency, and the easiest way to get it is to take it from someone else. Winning is righteous in Izzat. Losing is unrighteous. This means that if someone plays the game of Yzat well enough, they can get away with just about anything, murder, rape, scamming, cheating, stealing. The only morality in Yzat is the protection of your group’s collective ego. The only appropriate response when your Yzat is attacked is a complete destruction of whoever insulted it. Two people get into an argument. They might escalate, but chances are it won’t be that bad. I e, sorry. I broke your garden gnome with two Indians in an argument. The stakes are always deadly to Ezat. Neither of them can back down nor then can they admit fault. Admitting fault is seen as deliberately humiliating yourself. Not only that, but because Ezat is shared, you’re shimming everyone who shares your Ezat. So admitting fault or taking responsibility for a problem is a form of social suicide. This means if the dispute was over something completely f*****g stupid or trivial, like a broken garden gnome, it could spiral into decades long honor feud.

Malcolm Collins [5:25]:So I I’ve gotta I’ve gotta already have a caveat here

Simone Collins [5:28]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [5:28]:Because the moment you started reading this, I was like, this is completely incompatible with a number of Indian cultures Yeah. As a concept.

Simone Collins [5:38]:Yes.

Malcolm Collins [5:38]:And I was like for you, I was like, this is, like, the opposite of Jainism. Like, if you ever met, like, a Jain, you would know that whatever is being described here is the exact opposite of Jainism in in every Jain value. So I was like, okay. Where is this actually in India? So Izzat is not actually practiced over all of India. It is an Arabic derived word

Simone Collins [6:05]:It is. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [6:06]:Particularly in North India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Yeah.

Simone Collins [6:10]:But also, Malcolm, keep in mind, right, percentage of rural population. Indians are 18.3 of the world population. Pakistanis are 3.2% of the world population. Chains are point 07% of the population. So to be like, but chains, the the yes. One of the biggest things with the the sweeping claims that what gluttonous fact, gluttonous slob says, it’s wrong to say this is universal. Also, the this concept is such that even if a small

Malcolm Collins [6:43]:No. No. No. No. No. No. Hold on. It’s not wrong to say that it’s universal. Certain things you can say about a cultural group or whatever, but being aware that you’re talking about a concept that is mostly tied to one group among a group that already hates each other. Right?

Simone Collins [7:06]:Like Yes. For real.

Malcolm Collins [7:07]:And Hindi Indians are, like, practically about to have a an ethnically civil war.

Simone Collins [7:14]:Recently almost get there. When we were traveling with the kids, there was something about that. Like, a war was almost diverted or whatever. Remember? They’re always at the verge. Don’t they do that play war every day at the border? You know what I’m talking about?

Malcolm Collins [7:30]:Yeah. So the the the point yes. But the point here being, right, is you are severely kneecapping yourself if among your enemy troop like, you’re like, these people are our enemy. Uh-huh. And only 40% of those people are your enemy and the other 60% actually wanna murder that 40%.

Simone Collins [7:50]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [7:50]:You have completely what are you doing?

Simone Collins [7:54]:Totally.

Malcolm Collins [7:54]:What are you doing? You are throwing away your ability to actually win any sort of larger game by being myopically racist a in a bad way. Like, I I I believe in educated racism. If you want to learn about another culture and how they’re unique, but don’t confuse like, the Christian Indians don’t practice this system either. It’s not practiced in their regions.

Speaker 7 [8:18]:It’s also not recorded in Buddhist communities.

Malcolm Collins [8:22]:Stoking internal ethnic tensions is one of your greatest strengths when you are we did this with the Native Americans like crazy. Why are you What? No. Sorry. But I I the point being is that’s how you actually win. That’s how like, if you’re actually playing any sort of game of, like, I care about my ethnic group’s best interest, you undermine those best interests by saying all Indians are bad. Okay? Yeah. You grow those interests by being like some Indian groups we get along with. Some Indian groups are do have cultures that are antithetical to ours, and you go to the Indian groups that are you get along with, and you go, hey. Indians who we get along with, we do trade. We like each other a lot. And you know what? I haven’t liked that group over there for a really long time. And they’re like, you know what? We haven’t liked them either. And then we say, okay. It’s so weird. I happen to bring a bunch of guns along. So I’m just gonna leave them here, and we’ll come back in a week and see how things went. And you Simone’s looking into the distance, but that is basically what The United States has been doing with Israel for the past fifty years. People are like, why do we keep giving them military technology? I wonder. Anyway, continue.

Speaker 8 [9:49]:And it’s also important to remember that the relative difference you have with a group based on one in particular cultural difference, like, say, Just because you’re like, I disagree with this cultural practice, and it leads to friction with my group does not mean that the two groups are totally incompatible. It just means you may need to treat them differently. As we’ll talk about later in this we have a travel business. And every single time and and note, we’ve worked with thousands of clients from all over the world, and we have dealt with very few scams. But literally every single time we have worked with an Indian client, we have had them attempt to scam people. And that led us to implement different policies around how we onboard our Indian clients. And that is just the way you deal with something like this. for even if I have a problem with, I might have more of a problem with cultural groups that have norms around marrying children. and I might think, no. That’s really bad. Or I might have more problems with cultural groups that have a mandate to eradicate my people, which Indians don’t have. and some groups genuinely do that we also allow in as immigrants. It’s important to remember all these things relative to each other and not take these absolutist positions of I hate this group or I hate this group or I hate this group because the people who take those positions, they end up doing more to isolate our communities. Like, you can recognize differences in groups. You can recognize problems within groups while still saying, like I get it at the beginning of this, every individual Indian I have ever met, I have liked.

Simone Collins [11:29]:I shall continue reading from the, yes, admittedly very sweeping write up, which I don’t endorse. I’m just reading this is part of the beginning of the discourse. Anyway, he writes, is also the reason why police are reluctant to get involved in disputes because Ezat is a zero sum game. All participants are involved in the game. If a policeman sides with one family over another in an Ezat dispute, this means he’s deliberately taking the side of that family and dishonoring the other. This marks him for retribution by the offending party. Without the parties being able to be impartial, then centralized authority cannot effectively function. Let’s say someone in India complains about a broken water pipe. Instead of the problem being addressed, the official is responsible for the water pipe, denies it’s a problem, and counterattacks him instead because daring to question his efficacy and his role was challenging his. So the official destroys the person who brought the problem up. The water pipe never gets fixed. Izzat is the reason why Indian managers are so infamous for hiring more Indians. It’s because from the manager’s perspective, he’s hiring his position sorry. He’s using his position to gain an invisible social currency. Merit and actual qualifications come second to that idea. If he hired a westerner, he would not gain or even lose Izzat by doing so. He has a very strong cultural incentive to not be impartial. Meanwhile, if he can strong-arm dozens of Indians into a company, he is gaining huge quantities of Vizat and his conspirators who owe an absolute debt to him. It’s not

Malcolm Collins [13:00]:uncommon Sorry, Simone. I have to I have to cut in here. I I I misspoke. I I did more research. It is actually also common among the Hindi group. So they so it’s common among both the Hindi and the Muslim Indians, and it’s not common among the Jain and the Christian Indians.

Simone Collins [13:13]:Well, that makes sense. Um, because when people say Western, they they they typically mean Christian. And Jane is just like, let’s never hurry.

Malcolm Collins [13:21]:Whatever. The Christian Indians have been there since the first wave of conversions. There have been Christian communities in India as long as there’s been Christian communities in Italy.

Simone Collins [13:31]:That why does that surprise you?

Malcolm Collins [13:32]:No. But the point I’m making is that’s not Western. Christianity is is an old religion in India. It’s not like a they’re

Simone Collins [13:38]:not like a Western. What I mean to say is when people are talking about Western civilization, they’re typically talking about Christian civilization.

Malcolm Collins [13:44]:Okay. Okay. Continue.

Simone Collins [13:45]:It’s not uncommon to see Indians gloat about their success in the West. And, yes, Izzat is very much a system that enables short term success, but the fundamental reality is that prosperity oh, the fundamental reality of that prosperity that these Indians find so attractive in the first place wouldn’t exist if the West practice something similar to Isat. Our systems can exist only on the assumption of good faith and not a majority of people exploiting them for destructive short term gain. On top of that, if an Indian causes the symptoms and systems and companies he comes into contact with to collapse, then he could just go back to India with his plunder. He has no stakes in the long term prosperity, functionality, or stability of these systems. These stakes are completely asymmetrical in the Indian’s favor. You all know about the infamous video of that Indian scamming a food bank. Once again, winning is righteous, losing is not. By employing a clever means to God this is another concept he

Malcolm Collins [14:39]:could have gone into, but he

Simone Collins [14:40]:chose not to because it would be a whole new can of worms. He successfully extracted more resources for himself and his family. From the perspective of Jugadh, a rule is not something to respect, but merely an obstacle to the Indian’s own gain. Mhmm. Since he cheated the system and wasn’t caught, he’s seen as righteous and dignified man with the EZOP framework. Now I can go ahead and fact check this right away because I would normally have not believed this, but we can attest to this being an issue. Yeah. Because one of the businesses we ran had clients from all over the world. It had clients in The USA, in Spain, in Italy, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and, yes, also India. And while we had occasional issues with Venezuelan clients, typically, who are getting in trouble by literally just trying to help Venezuelans flee Venezuela. Like, it was a constant issue. But they were also, like, I kinda get it. I think you can too. The the the the Indian clients we had became such an issue that we had to completely change our client onboarding policies in a way where before we were able to trust our clients basically with a whole bunch of things that we just had to completely shut down after we were discovered by Indian clients. So among other things, they’ve violated major vendor contracts of ours that we depended on for the business to function such that we almost lost them entirely. Like, those vendors were like, look. Look at all these these horrible rules you’ve broken at scale to make a bunch of money. We’re gonna pull your plates at this it’s it’s a sorry. This is, a very convoluted airline term. But, like, we were we were running a travel agency, and these airlines were like, you will not be able to book tickets with us anymore because of all this cheating. And it was because of an Indian sub agency doing all this in our name. Um, one, racked up over $60,000 in expenses in a way that was obscured from us being very clever, Chugot, and then disappeared, leaving us with the bill. And we also started hearing from the direct customers of these clients of ours, these, like, sub agencies that transacted in our name, who were being totally scammed by them. And we’re like, oh, we can’t we can’t do this anymore. And they

Malcolm Collins [16:48]:were prolific

Simone Collins [16:49]:in what they did. Yeah. The reason we started working with them in the first place was because when they first came on, they were like, oh, we’re so professional. Let’s be let’s work together. This is gonna be great. And they were really good with technology, we’re like, wow. What a great partner. This is gonna be fantastic because most of the agencies that we worked with were very low tech. The volume comes in. It’s high. Everything seems great. And then all of a sudden, you know, airlines, like, we’re we’re pulling your plates. Customers are like, I’m you know, you you stole $10,000 from me. And then, like, you know, oh, by the way, here’s a bill for $60,000. And then the client is like, this was horrible. Zero remorse. Zero remorse. In fact, we had some instances where we tried to reconcile with some of these clients because, like, they gave us a lot of excuses, And we gave two of them second chances. You wanna know what they did right after that? Immediately did it again. Immediately. Yes. And that I mean, I I genuinely didn’t get it because I was like, no one could possibly be doing this on purpose. That’s crazy. And then I read this, and I’m like, maybe that was it. You know?

Malcolm Collins [17:51]:Well, I think that this okay. So I get I guess it’s the Hindis and the Muslims we keep out, and we bring in the Jains and the Christians. Okay.

Simone Collins [17:57]:This is

Malcolm Collins [17:58]:the way this is the way we handle it. Right?

Simone Collins [17:59]:Well, there aren’t very many.

Malcolm Collins [18:02]:There there there’s a lot of them. You forget how big India is. It might be a small percentage of the overall population. Okay. I’ll

Simone Collins [18:16]:Yeah. We’re looking it up. Okay? Christians make up 2.3% of the total population in India according to the official 2011 census of India.

Malcolm Collins [18:26]:Give it

Simone Collins [18:27]:a I I would million people.

Malcolm Collins [18:29]:Okay. So a Christian 28,000,000 people, you said? Mhmm. Okay. So how many Christians are in Germany?

Simone Collins [18:37]:Okay. Fair. Fair. Good point. Good point. Let’s see. How many Christians are in Italy? Probably better.

Malcolm Collins [18:44]:Yeah. I’ll I’ll do the Christians are in Germany.

Simone Collins [18:52]:38,000,000 people.

Malcolm Collins [18:53]:34,000,000 in Germany. There are 27,800,000. So, like, 28,000,000 in India. So, like, not much smaller than Germany.

Simone Collins [19:02]:Okay. Oh, fair. Fair then. Fair. Yeah. India is big. It’s big. It’s big, and it’s very diverse and very varied. And the okay. We’re cool with the Jains and the Christians. Anyway, I I did blog. I I took out a bunch of the I I’m skipping forward. He continues. The Western idea of merit is a is competence in a role. Merit in is determined by what lengths you will go to to achieve a goal with competence merely being one path. It often becomes a secondary path as printing a degree that says you’re qualified to be a jet pilot is just as good as being able to actually fly a jet in the eyes of Yzat. In other words, Yzat selects for appearance over authentic merit or morality. Now this is funny because at first, I tried to use just to save on, like, tokens because we already pay for the subscription, I tried to fact check this using Grok. And Grok’s like, well, it’s not it’s not fair to say that Indians are just making up their pilot credentials. But, again, you and I know how to reach travel industry about Air India. And I think that the writer of this, like, explicitly used that example of a jet pilot qualification, um, in reference to Air India. Regulators have repeatedly cited Air India for inadequate or falsified pilot training from unapproved simulators and skipped monitoring requirements to outright fraudulent training logs with the most serious recent scrutiny coming after the twenty twenty five Ahmedabad crash. And that is not the the only crash recently, but the Air India is, like, famous. Like, everyone in the in the industry jokes in being, like reckless airline. India. Yeah. For real. Yeah. As long as he doesn’t get on an Air India flight, it’s like, oh, The that airline that doesn’t have real pilots. It’s like a known open joke. So I found it, like, really alarming that Grock was like, well, it’s

Malcolm Collins [20:54]:not very good. Like, no. So she had to go to rfab.ai, rfab.ai. It’s a site we run, and then go into productivity tools and then go into based AI and use the Rhodes model,

Simone Collins [21:06]:which

Malcolm Collins [21:06]:we use for I had to use it for an episode recently because Grock just cannot handle some things. Um, and if you want an honest AI, Rhodes is the only one in there

Simone Collins [21:17]:out there.

Malcolm Collins [21:18]:Like like, genuine. It’s the it’s the it’s the but it it is actually good at dealing with these types of topics. Yeah.

Simone Collins [21:24]:Yeah. And, I mean, the only reason I would have known that, like, Grok was being so skewed was because I actually knew about the Air India stuff myself. I was like, oh, that’s not true. Anyway, he continues. Now a counterargument an Indian might make is, isad is a dated word or we don’t use that word. I like to compare it to the word vendetta. Vendetta in Italian has a very specific meaning, a familial blood feud where revenge must be taken to restore honor, etcetera. This word would not exist if it didn’t reflect a specific facet of Italian life. Izzat is no different. Hell, I’ve had to write several paragraphs just to explain what the hell Izzat is. It isn’t an archaic term either. It’s well and truly alive in the modern Indian lexicon. If is that were regularly discussed openly, this would be considered one of the greatest possible insults in the is that framework. ISAT is why Indians do mass reports, death threats, false flags, and other and various other underhanded tactics when a westerner exposes something they don’t want people to see, such as the poop throwing festival, which Tyler Olavira did, if you remember. Yeah. If I knew something like that existed.

Malcolm Collins [22:29]:It’s it’s a part of your cultural history. What do what do you the the response to it made it look worse than the event itself.

Simone Collins [22:36]:Yeah. This person says to my earlier point, if I knew something like that existed in the West, I would say, wow. That’s disgusting. We should stop this. But in India, the problem is not the point. The point is the problem being exposed and the perceived insult to a zod from exposing the problem. The water pipe never gets fixed. This is the last paragraph I’m almost done. With the West, the issue is that it often fails to live up to its own ideals. It is not a perfect system, but we can course correct and address problems pragmatically. With the Azat, Indians live up to those ideals very, very often. When you see the dysfunctionality of India, remember that it’s a feature of Azat, not a bug. Any thoughts before you back

Malcolm Collins [23:12]:back check? What I find very interesting about this is I think one of, uh, and and there’s a secondary explanation to this that we might do a full episode on. One of the big questions, you know, when you see these giant trash mounds and all these starving people in India and stuff like that, the question that you ask is why? India isn’t okay. I I won’t make a direct comparison here. Let’s say, um, when I look at Indians in The United States and how they often perform, um, uh, when compared to other ethnic groups that post colonization have become considerably wealthy, such as Koreans or Japanese or Chinese, they are not particularly dissimilar.

Simone Collins [24:00]:They often perform exceptionally. We we live in a a very densely Indian immigrant community, which is awesome. The kids are awesome. The families are awesome. It’s it’s a wonderful community.

Malcolm Collins [24:11]:What she said because you were talking over me, it didn’t come out.

Simone Collins [24:13]:Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Malcolm Collins [24:14]:She said we live we, Malcolm and Simone, live in a majority Indian community. Our community is 70% Indian. And it’s like, I feel much better living in this community than in most communities because at least they’re anti woke. At least they’re they’re anti the the BS the schools are doing. You know? At least their kids

Simone Collins [24:34]:They’re really nice. We kids too. We mostly know them because of their kids because that you know, our kids play together and stuff. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [24:42]:With all of that being the case and and and I say at least because there’s other immigrant communities where I would absolutely be terrified about that. So the the point that I’m making here is why is it that Indians are successful in other countries, but their own country has failed to build a civilization at the level of something like what Korea or Japan has done? And the answer this would answer a lot of that. If this is commonly practiced by the dominant ethnic religious cultural group, the Hindis, which it appears to be, then it’s a big problem for the country continuing to develop. It’s it’s something that is going to lead to issues. That is that is really sad, and I and I think you could see that. Like, it it is genuinely perplexing how India is still so poor. However, there is a secondary answer as to why India is so poor, which you may also not be familiar with.

Simone Collins [25:40]:Is it oh, I mean, I I assume that the average person listening to this is gonna be like, well, that’s because Brahmins are immigrating, and you’re only seeing one small facet of India’s whole range.

Malcolm Collins [25:49]:Also true. Brahmins are quite genetically distinct from other groups in India. They are as

Simone Collins [25:54]:Right. And if you wanna take a leftist framing to it, these people have inherited wealth and systemic advantage in the country.

Malcolm Collins [25:59]:Yeah. If you it would we don’t take that. If you a a Brahmin is genetically distinct from a non Brahmin as a German is from a Greek. And, like, nobody expects a Greek to work.

Speaker 4 [26:11]:Afreganathans are good people. Good people? They’re Greeks, and Greeks are just Jews without money.

Simone Collins [26:18]:So, like We’re really going for it today, aren’t we, Malcolm? I’ve gotta

Malcolm Collins [26:22]:I’ve gotta do the the Greek

Simone Collins [26:24]:Patreon and Substack, ladies and gentlemen. Please help. Please help. Please send help.

Malcolm Collins [26:30]:But, yeah, the the point I’m making here. Okay? The point is is, yes, the Brahmins are part of it. Right? Like, we definitely get the cream of the crop of India, or at least at a point in American history, we got the cream of the crop of India. And those are the friends that I grew up around and you grew up around. That’s not necessarily true of the existing immigration wave right now where you have a much larger immigrant groups coming over. Um, but the secondary issue is that when India began to build its own society after they the British left and typically, British colonies do really well, like America, Canada, South Africa, Australia. And the more they move away from a British system like South Africa attempted to, the worse they do. But so India was really set up to do quite well. And the the reason, Hong Kong, another one that did really well, is when the British left, they decided, like, psycho idiots, that British colonism meant that colonism was tied to capitalism. And so what they wanted to do was be something other than capitalist. But they also didn’t wanna be fully communist. And so they developed a a socialist system that was incredibly damaging to their economic development, where you would have to get, like, 48 forms to, like, just start a business or, like, change something about how your business operates or just move goods and stuff like this. It was just, like, paperwork upon paperwork for everything. And they only dropped it in, like, the late eighties. So they’re basically starting from, like, square one pretty recently.

Simone Collins [28:26]:Fair enough. Yeah. Wanna get to the fact checking?

Malcolm Collins [28:31]:Yeah.

Simone Collins [28:32]:Alright. Because I I really I had to I I wanted to make sure everything here. And I

Malcolm Collins [28:36]:wanna know what this other word is that he talked about.

Simone Collins [28:38]:Oh, it’s basically just cleverness and resourcefulness. But in a way, they can lead to a lot of scamming because it seems to be not more to morality. But, I mean, I think there are similar concepts that you’ll see, like, in the Jack Tales. I mean Yeah. Is kind of a not very nice sometimes. You know? Like, he gets some money to buy something, and he gets magic beans. And then

Malcolm Collins [29:01]:he kills the giant Morality. Yeah. Is in Jacktail’s morality, um, the person who you wrong typically needs to be invading on your land or property or your region or think they’re better than you.

Simone Collins [29:14]:Excuse me. The giant in the clouds was doing the only thing. They think they’re better than you is a big one. Better. I mean, he wanted to eat him.

Malcolm Collins [29:24]:Right. But the the the and it’s not done for status in the community. It’s not done you you know, you might get money for your family. Right? But it certainly wouldn’t be something that other people in the community would lodge you for. Like, Jack is never lauded as intelligent by other people in the community. He he gains no form of status for his feats. He does it just with people. But much closer to 4chan than Izat. Fair enough. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s effing with people for the for the sake for the zen Not the lulls. Of effing with people. Yes. Oh my

Simone Collins [30:02]:god. Yeah. To use a millennial term because we’re old. I just love that. I love being old. Can’t wait till I’m 62. Anyway, true. Baby. True. Yeah. Me too. But you’re gonna need to help me out tonight. I’m having some pretty severe cramping, and I’m bleeding a little, and I’m really worried. So help me out. I need to go to bed early and just, like, maybe rest in bed.

Speaker 5 [30:24]:So, sadly, she did end up having a miscarriage, and we, yesterday, went out and buried the baby. And we’ll obviously keep trying. This will be number six for us, so we’ve been very blessed. And that’s something that we should continue to be appreciative of, but we ended up taking most of the day off today for the first time in, god, at least five years. Maybe maybe since I married her taking a day off. But, yeah, obviously, still making sure you guys get an episode every day. I’m not gonna break that that chain since we launched the channel. Like and subscribe if you appreciate that we try to make sure that happens. As to whether or not we’ll do an episode on it, we might.

Speaker 9 [31:12]:The reason we may wanna do an episode on it is because, emotionally, this affected both of us much more than the death of our moms, which happened at different times in our marriage, and that surprised us.

Simone Collins [31:23]:Is that is a real South Asian concept of honor and family reputation and social standing. It is real. There there’s peer reviewed research on it. I’ve linked to it in the show notes, which are on sub second Patreon. It’s especially, uh, the social standing matters in the context of the family, the clan, the cast, or the community rather than just the individual. It’s used across regions in Northern India and Pakistan and Bangladesh. A 2017 Delhi toilet urination case that OP sites in his write up, which I didn’t bother to read, is real. It involved this man named Ravinder Kumar, who was an e rickshaw driver, who saw two men, two young men urinating outside, and he offered them a few rupees to use in nearby public toilet instead of peeing in public. And they left and then returned with a group and then beat him to death. And that is is a is an example that he cited of of That’s severe. Like, how could your country operate like that? That is a question. Yes. That is that is a real question. And when I heard that story, I was like, well, that’s probably gonna be one of those unsubstantiated anecdotal things. No. Definitely not. Of course, we all know about the backlash that happened when Tyler Oliveira went to the Indian poop festival. And what I find so funny about that too was he was very explicit in the video, which I’ve seen, that this is a small isolated village. It’s a very small population. It is an esoteric and weird festival. He wasn’t like, oh, this is a a holiday that all Indians celebrate. He never said that, which is why it’s so weird and unhinged that a lot of Indians had that reaction to it that they did. Um, also, the food bank videos of Indian international students do exist, like, of them being like, look. You can just take food from this, and it’s free. We’re quite controversial when they posted them. Clips from Canada, Ireland, and elsewhere showed students sometimes explaining how to access university or community food programs using resources. Some of the cases were framed as scams. Others were official student supports. Debates followed about need versus opportunism. Um, I don’t think these students actually needed them. Jugad, which is this concept of improvisation and workarounds and sometimes cutting corners is a very real term with both positive connotations like, oh, this is just frugal innovation and negative. Uh-oh. Sorry. I’m reading my notes. Where did I cut off? Yes.

Speaker 3 [33:50]:I got a couple of those here.

Simone Collins [33:52]:Oh, you did. Okay, buddy. We’re almost done recording.

Speaker 3 [33:54]:Two biggest ones.

Simone Collins [33:55]:That is so cute. A pumpkin.

Speaker 3 [34:00]:Aw. I got it from error Edwin’s mom. Oh, that’s pumpkin garden, and they want we have this.

Simone Collins [34:12]:A pumpkin guy? No. A pumpkin garden. That’s a homegrown pumpkin? Yes. So pretty.

Speaker 3 [34:19]:Some some of them has been one of these have been two of these have been eaten by a deer or little too.

Simone Collins [34:27]:But not that one? I like that you put it in

Speaker 3 [34:29]:palm tree. A fence. Now I will get some more buckets. We have

Malcolm Collins [34:32]:Oh, no.

Simone Collins [34:32]:The pumpkins we have growing are inside the fence, so we’re gonna be okay, I love you, buddy. Glad you had fun.

Speaker 3 [34:37]:Yeah. Yeah. But, actually, I had so fun. And I got to play with some of Edwin toys at his house. Wow. That’s the best part. And one of his helicopters.

Simone Collins [34:48]:Oh, I love the way you say helicopter.

Speaker 3 [34:50]:Has some cool things. I

Simone Collins [34:54]:Okay. Go on, Fred. Can I

Speaker 3 [34:55]:have my phone? I wanna see.

Simone Collins [34:58]:It’s on your work desk.

Speaker 3 [35:00]:Okay. Good.

Simone Collins [35:01]:Oh, no. No. No. Don’t sorry. Don’t go in there, though, because Tex is sleeping. So I’ll bring it down as soon as I come down. Okay? Mm-mm. No. He wakes up Tell him

Malcolm Collins [35:07]:his game console’s on the stairwell.

Simone Collins [35:09]:It’s not anymore, though. Oh, okay. Your your game console is on the bed in the hallway. If you’re very quiet, you can go get that. Okay?

Speaker 3 [35:16]:Very quiet?

Simone Collins [35:17]:Yeah. You’re you can get your game console. Okay. Yeah. So not don’t go all the way into the office where you and I work. Just to the hallway. He’s comically tiptoeing now. There he goes. Is he gonna be quiet enough? Oh, okay. Go ahead, buddy. You can do it. There he goes.

Malcolm Collins [35:45]:Look at the comical. What is he doing? It’s not necessary.

Simone Collins [35:52]:Anyway okay. Where was I? Right. So this this concept of Jugadh improvisation, workaround sometimes cutting corners is a real term that sometimes people view very positively. Like, you’re being frugal. You’re being innovative, but sometimes very negatively. Like, this was a half baked shortcut. You’re bending the rules. I’m and I’m sure that is kind of, like, the way that the for example, agencies that were completely missed okay. Go. Go. Go play. Go. Thank you very much. You’re extremely welcome that you can thank daddy for all that. Go enjoy your chips and your pumpkin, and I’ll see you downstairs very soon.

Speaker 3 [36:34]:Actually, I wanna make this for Halloween.