Bangladesh is 98% ethnic Bengali; you can read about their crime here http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1011.html#c... ("U.S. citizens should avoid walking alone after dark, carrying large sums of money, or wearing expensive jewelry").

Lesotho is 99.7 percent Basotho, with an intentional homicide rate seven times higher than the U.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

Meanwhile, Singapore, split between large numbers of Chinese, Malays and Indians is one of the safest places in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Singapore). Also safe is Switzerland, which is so ethnically diverse there are three official languages, each widely spoken within the country. (http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1034.html#c...) .

I think the efficiency gained depends on the culture gaining it. Japan has decided that they value safety. In Bangladesh there are probably different assumptions you can make. I don't know what they are and I don't want to speculate because I don't have any experience living there.

edit: also wanted to add... even though Switzerland is ethnically diverse and speaks many different languages, I would still call it a mono-culture. The swiss are also sometimes criticized for being unique in their ways and resistant to change. Culture is not the same as race or language.

Sure, but you attributed safety and other "efficiencies" in Japan to "monoculture." You also wrote, "Multiculturalism means lowest common denominator."

Now you seem to be attributing safety in Japan not to monoculture but to /Japanese/ culture. Fair enough.

In that case, what would happen if 10 million Japanese moved to Bangladesh, making it more multicultural? Would it be a less "efficient" culture? Would it be anchored by the "lowest common denominator," or would the nation improve through the infusion of new cultural values? It seems doubtful that, after conducting this thought experiment, most people could honestly conclude that, "Multiculturalism means lowest common denominator." It likewise seems hard to imagine Singapore in its present state -- including efficiency-wise -- if all those ethnic Chinese has never migrated there.

The big context here is that you were defending Japan against criticism that it is a "closed off culture" and "too exclusive, too slow to change." That criticism is very well earned; for all its many virtues, there is a disturbing level of racism in Japan, against Koreans and Americans of black heritage (usually in military service there but not always, see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101880815-...). There is also the matter of Japan's depressingly extended economic stagnation, going on 20 years old now, which is widely and credibly explained as being closely tied to an unwillingness to embrace new, often foreign values around business, corporate culture, risk taking, credit and competition.

The one time I visited Japan, for two weeks, I conjured many positive words to describe the country. "Efficient" was not one of them. The grueling, sit-at-your desk 14 hour workdays that are de rigueur in Japan are not particularly efficient. The make-work jobs everywhere also seemed inefficient, like the guy in a uniform bowing in apology non-stop to people driving by a construction detour in the road, or the full time ticket taker/thanker in the back of the bus who collected my payment stub. The many ritual greetings and apologies also did not seem efficient.

I have a hard time seeing how multiculturalism would not ENHANCE Japan's efficiency -- and economy.

Update:

"The swiss are also sometimes criticized for being unique in their ways and resistant to change. Culture is not the same as race or language."

In that case, Brooklyn is a monoculture of New Yorkers, or Americans, and your original distinction between it and Japan is rather meaningless.

Yes I wasn't careful enough in my writing. I mean to say that monoculture allows you to optimize around your values. Lowest common denominator sounds too judgmental but I mean it in the set-theory kind of way. I probably should just have said "common values".

what would happen if 10 million Japanese moved to Bangladesh, making it more multicultural? Would it be a less "efficient" culture?

Yes, I think there would be certain generalizations that you could no longer depend on being true. I don't know what they would be. Maybe it would be better, maybe worse. Maybe it would be you would have to order a wider variety of food at your wedding to make everyone happy. I don't know. I would say that's a reduction in efficiency.

I am aware of racism here and I don't think it's good. I don't think Japanese companies are economically efficient but they pretty good at reflecting Japanese values. I eat a restricted diet and it's an inconvenience that people assume that I just eat the standard issue Japanese cuisine. A lot of people complain about that but I understand why it is that way.

I don't see what is so controversial about what I'm trying to say. I'm saying that having to always be tolerant for the way other people do things trades something off compared to living where everyone already does things mostly the way you would.

I would politely challenge, however, the idea that there's roughly equal virtue between Brooklyn-style embraced diversity vs Japan-style conformity. Not only does multiculturalism have a genuine moral attractiveness, which should not be dismissed, it makes for a stronger, more resilient country over the long term. Fresh ideas, fresh values, fresh labor, fresh taxpayers, fresh consumers, fresh inventors and indeed fresh culture are stengths that have been indispensable in allowing the U.S. to overcome its many deep (and often chronic) flaws and attain the level of economic and cultural success that it has. Similarly, a tendency toward xenophobia has hampered Japan's many intrinsic strengths, which have nevertheless been strong enough to set the country as an (oft misinterpreted) example of How To Win.

TLDR: Monoculture is a harmful, false optimization at the national level (though quite useful within, say, an apartment, church or startup incubator).

"No matter how powerful we may be fighting-wise, a system where all the parts react the same way is a system with a fatal flaw. Like individual, like organization. Overspecialization leads to death."

When I visited Zurich a couple of years ago I saw things unimaginable for my city, like people leaving their unchained bikes outside their apartment buildings.

Your examples look a lot like shooting a straw man... if he had said monocultures always imply civilization, his argument would be dead right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland

Wait, you live in Tokyo, don't you? (I think we met at one of the meetups)

Everybody locks their bikes here, and even so bycicle theft is common (well, at least compared to the other types of crime). My own bycicle was stolen while I was out of the country for a couple of weeks...

That said, I understand that's not the main point of your comment.

Also, the biggest bike thief is probably the city. ;-)

I've had three bikes stolen since I first came here in 1998---one of them twice! The cops found one of my bikes a year and a half after it was stolen. Within six months it was stolen again!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Japan

Furthermore, anyone who has a mountain bike or crossbike does chain them to posts with 1/2" steel chains. The far more common "mama-chari" type bikes are the ones with the built-in locks.

edit: Just thought of another little anecdote: I was sitting outside roppongi hills eating a bento on a bench when a woman with a kid and a little dog walked by. The dog stopped to poop and when he was finished she quickly scurried away into her high-rise.

My wife and I were flabbergasted. An old woman and her husband walking by gave her the glare and you could see everyone nearby was shocked. About 5 minutes later she came out without the dog but with the kid and a woman from the front desk of her building. They cleaned it up. I guess she didn't have a bag with her and she wanted to drop the dog off and then grab a bag from her house. During the five minutes that it was there, I was thinking how I should have said something.

So far, I've gotten ignored a lot, a couple of sheepish looks or mutterings, and I've been assaulted once (after returning a dropped cigarette to the owner, she threw the coffee drink at me, littering further.)

I strongly exhort all decent people to make a point of transmitting their values loudly, clearly, and defensibly. If only vandals and thugs feel free to express their beliefs in public, where will that lead us?

a) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6947744.stm

b) You are directly trying to impose your value over someone else's value, with the assumption that you are correct. One has to be very careful sure you are not just projecting your frustration at the littering. What they are doing is completely correct for their worldview, which has a boundary round about where their clothing is.

If someone litters at all then they probably haven't much of an awareness outside of their own egocentric POV and it seems quite unlikely that a single intervention by yourself is going to change that, unless they are a kid of less than ~ ten years of age.

I like to smile and pick the litter up as a gift. If they notice they notice, if they don't they don't.

I feel this takes political correctness too far. What if someone else's values are that theft is fine, if they need something. If you see someone stealing a bike, should you do nothing because you don't want to impose your values on them?

2. Litter travels beyond the boundary of the litterer's clothing, so I do not see the consistency of your model.

What makes you think that? From the story it seems clear that the confrontation took place due to the victim questioning the murderer's right to throw litter in to his sister's car.

Sadly, young men who would kill over such a minor thing as this are not uncommon in London.

([0] Some say that science has a third leg now: computation.)