The Aspiring Polymath's Society discussion

What did you think of McMafia? What did you learn?

I'll come out and say it: I'm having trouble getting into this one. Is it only me? How's everyone else faring?

I've also been having trouble getting into it, mostly on account of the author being a leading expert on Balkan history and politics, while I have effectively ZERO knowledge of that area or its history.

I'm at about chapter 4, and it's starting to move away from the Balkans, so I am finding it a bit easier. Not sure if I will get through it though, it is rather dense :(

I read this book about children in poverty last year, and I thought it was fascinating. But I'd been working for two years with kids in poverty. While I was reading McMafia, I wondered how much I enjoyed that book had to do with how much it informed me about what I was experiencing. I wonder if McMafia would be riveting if I knew more about Bulgaria; sometimes dry and dense is exactly what I want with certain topics.

I'ma give it another college try, but yeah, I dunno if I'll make it to the end.

I'm 50 pages shy of finishing now and I can say with confidence: it gets way better.

Once we left the Balkans and moved into territories with which I am at least somewhat familiar, it became infinitely more interesting. The chapter on Canada was particularly fascinating to me, as it touches on the relationship between my country and the US with regard to marijuana prohibition politics. Glenny still reads, at times, like someone far too into his field to bother making the acronyms and references accessible to those who aren't, but I'm learning to forgive him for it ;)

I'm 90% convinced now that drugs should be decriminalized. All of them..... so it's been an interesting ride :)

So! Happy November! I did, in the end, give up on McMafia, I'm sad to say. I kept reading passages and realizing I hadn't really registered anything Glenny had said, and I'd have to go back - getting out of the Balkans was sounding like an enormous chore. Timing, probably; sometimes you gotta take these subjects at the right time.

But since I didn't make it through, I'm all the more curious to know what you thought of the later chapters. Highlights?

I'm with you on decriminalizing drugs, at least based on what little I know. The illegal drug trade is incredibly violent, and all that entire culture disappears as soon as there's a legal alternative. (Even if they're getting it illegally - under-aged drinkers manage to get booze without shooting anybody.) Amsterdam's been doing fine, their only problem is all the people coming from other countries for the legal drugs!

Just saying - still onboard for the reading group. :)

Sure!

There was a chapter on the yakuza that was very fascinating because of my interest in Japanese culture. In it, he discussed the strange insular nature of the gang, in comparison with the expanding globalization of almost every other major mob in the world. It helps them in that Japanese society is very accepting and almost reliant upon them; they help the government in natural disasters and are not generally bothered by the police, and their clients are happy to pay them protection money. Like the rest of Japanese society, the relationship between the mob and the citizens is built on respect. However, their unwillingness to move far beyond their borders makes them susceptible to collapse.... they may not be moving out, but gangs from China and Taiwan are moving in. It was a super interesting chapter that stood out from the rest for those reasons. My regret is that it couldn't be longer :(

As mentioned earlier, the chapter on Canadian/American relations also piqued my interest. It went over the case of the American marijuana activist who fled to British Columbia and got work growing medicinal marijuana, legally, until the government sold him out and he was extradited to the US to serve a long sentence. I'd heard about his case briefly a few years ago, but I got to learn a lot more about it (and get angrier) reading it in detail. The chapter also touched on the broader drug trade from Canada to the US and strongly evoked the prohibition era of the 20's and 30's. The Canadian government would stand to make a LOT of money if they legalized marijuana. I'm not sure why it hasn't happened yet.

Those were the two chapters that really stood out for me, because they had personal relevance. Some of the other interesting (and horrifying?) chapters were on the Nigerian scamming trade, the Columbian drug cartels (so horrifying), and the sex trade in Dubai. I don't remember which chapter it was, but there was one that talked about coltan (a mineral from Africa used in electronics) and how so much of what we use every day in the first world has been paid for in part by slave labour and/or death, in support of organized crime. That was an eye-opener :(

Wow. I may give this one another go, perhaps cherry-picking certain chapters.

I was under the vague belief that marijuana was, to some extent, legal in Canada - I remember a joke on Conan O'Brien about Canada changing the maple leaf on its flag to a pot leaf (har-de-har). I suppose that may have been the legalization of medicinal marijuana, though, back before that was common enough in the states that it'd still be newsworthy. And I had no idea that the Nigerian scamming trade was remotely organized, though I'd heard it was some startling percentage of their GDP.

Mostly I've been finally reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, about the Spanish Civil War in the 30's. And I grabbed my copy of Musicophilia this afternoon!

Yeah, the Baltic chapters really paled in comparison to the others, imo. It's a shame he starts with them, and for that long =_=

Pot is not legal in Canada for anything that isn't medicinal, but the criminal laws against it are extremely lax by comparison to those in the the US. Most police forces won't give more than a smack on the wrist for possession (except in smaller towns populated by rich old white folk), though the RCMP is still quite serious about busting grow-ops.... even though they recognize that they will only hit a fraction of them, hardly enough to make a dent on the trade at large. I think most of my generation thinks it's a waste of money, and I suspect that we will see it decriminalized if we can ever get the conservatives out of power.

I'll let you lead the discussion for Musicophilia; I read it a few years ago and have a copy here I can flip through so I'll be happy to talk about it, I just won't be re-reading it fully :)