How Indian families took over the Antwerp diamond trade from orthodox Jews

Steve Sailer writes:

As a commenter pointed out about my review of This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto by Suketu Mehta, the scion of an Indian diamond merchant clan, diamond merchants are about the last who ought to lecture white Americans on their failures of inclusion and diversity.

The diamond business is globalist yet intensely nepotistic. I knew an American woman who got a job in the Los Angeles diamond district but then went to work for an insurance company due to discrimination against women and non-Indians.

Indians have recently pushed Orthodox Jewish diamond businessmen largely out of their stronghold in Antwerp, Belgium, in part by being more clannish than the Orthodox Jews.

The secret to the diamond business is arranged marriages and the threat of ostracism, as dawned on me while having the diamond ring appraised to make sure the retailer hadn’t cheated me. The appraiser on Wabash spent about 20 minutes squinting at it through a microscope before telling me about its microscopic flaws.

That’s a big transaction cost. It’s much more efficient to be able to trust somebody you are doing business with when he tells you orally that the diamond is flawless. But how do you trust him? Because if he gets a reputation for cheating his relatives, his children will never find spouses…

Food taboos are an old way to head off fraternity with outsiders, much less intermarriage. Sharing a meal with somebody tends to lead toward greater sympathy, but if sharing a meal is impractical due to food taboos …