8 ms·

Albanian Civil War

68 points by apsec112 6y ago

pyuser583 6y ago
“Eat The Rich” by P.J. O’Rourke has an excellent chapter on the early 1990s Albanian economy. He described it as a “pyramid scheme based economy.” He described the primary means of law enforcement as blood feuds, which were “pyramid schemes of death.” The chapter’s title is “Bad Capitalism.”
- sokols 6y ago
  "Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe" from Fred Abrahams is a good book as well.
- ardit33 6y ago
  It was not even true capitalism, but more of a anarchy/libertarian place, where anything goes... and in almost naively way people invested in things that didn't make sense... I have 'libertarian' friends that just never lived in a true libertarian society. Albania was a libertarian/anarchic place, because coming out of Communism, the government was too inept to apply the laws... and it ended up becoming a 'anything goes' type of society. Want to build in a place without a permit? Sure.. go ahead... roads, infrasturcutre be damned... want to open a TV station, go ahead. That other guy is using the samme frequenncy? Just by a bigger transmitter to drown out the competitionl.. Pirated moves on TV, all the time. Cinemas just couldn't functionn. Why pay for a movie, while the local TV is just showing it right now.... Things settled by 'strong men', where the biggest gangster usually wins.... for while, until the competition settles scores and he ends up killed. The country is still suffering with the urban mess that period left... where things were built with no regard of urban development whatsoever. Libertarism... just like Communnism, are naive ideas that ultimately don't work. They always end up with few people gaining power over everybody else (either the communist elite, or oligarcic rich)
  - macintux 6y ago
    I used to think it was primarily Objectivism that was giving libertarianism a bad name, but the older I get the less hope I have that a libertarian government can succeed at the core mission: protecting its people.
  - mumblerino 6y ago
    > They always end up with few people gaining power over everybody else It sounds a lot like a famous democratic country with that 1% thing
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > Albania was a libertarian/anarchic place, because coming out of Communism, the government was too inept to apply the laws. Libertarism... just like Communnism, are naive ideas that ultimately don't work. Libertarianism is not the same thing as anarchism or the total lack of government. It means a government that's restricted to enforcing natural rights and fairly resolving disputes via courts.
    - germinalphrase 6y ago
      How are “natural rights” defined in this context?
  - ch4s3 6y ago
    What you’re describing is literally rule by strongman on the local level. A number of pre nation state cultures functioned this way. Libertarians by contrast believe in rule of law and enforcement of contracts. They usually also espouse non-agression. Anarchists usually have lots of consensus meetings.
- Natsu 6y ago
  "Eat the Rich" has always struck me as an odd slogan to use given that it was literally true in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge had a thing for murdering people and eating their livers.
  - pyuser583 6y ago
    The Onions “Our Dumb Century” had an article about the Khmer Rouge switching to a skull based economy.
pas 6y ago
Some editorialized vlog thing, probably not for everyone: https://youtu.be/lMUtU0tOmNE https://youtu.be/lMUtU0tOmNE - a YouTube channel called Rare Earth has a few videos shot in Albania, the linked one focuses on the pyramid scheme and the collapse
Spooky23 6y ago
No, it was sparked by phenomenally bad policy made as the country shifted away from communist economic principles. IMF guidance was to allow banks and other financial entities to operate with little or no effective supervision. Shockingly, 100% deposit interest rates and scams emerged and essentially took over the country’s financial system. It think it’s reasonable to say that someone like Lenin sparked a revolution against a long standing problematic regime like the Tsar that was living in the Napoleonic era in 1917. This situation was nothing like that.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Lenin didn't spark a revolution against the tsar. The tsar had already been deposed for months (in the wake of the February Revolution) by the time Lenin returned from exile and led the October Revolution against the post-tsar government then leading Russia.
ardit33 6y ago
Albanian here, and it wasn't a civil war.... more of general unrest against the government, which was forced to resign and be replaced by a transitory one... A civil war requires several factions, while this was more of a un -coordinated massive unrest.... Most of the deaths happened during the unrests between bands, people settling scores, etc... This is similar to the June unrests and looting in the US, but squared, with weapons and more... (from army depots, as most of the army refused to try to squash the demonstrations, and just went home) Also, the money problem was just the spark, as there was some major unhappiness with the government then, that started with election frauds in 1996 committed by the government. The whole thing lasted about a month or so in March, and it honestly felt something like the movie "The Purge". The government failed, there was no police in the streets, the army went home, people had weapons, looting and robbing were common, by 'masked people', it was not a good month... Eventually things calmed down. Italy sent some monitoring troops, to help with the transition of the new Goverment... All the weapons that got out of the army depots, ended up furnishing the Kosovo Liberation Army, and eventually the Kosova war in 1998-99, that ended up with Kosova's independence... (Kosovo, is 90% Albanian, and they were trying to get independence peacefully, after to the Yugoslavian break-up to no avail. The Albanian unrest and some US help helped them out in the end). So, I guess there was one good thing that came out of the whole mess. Ps. We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was planing at some point to send a invading force to the South, so it could 'pacify' the place (and potentially anex it). It would not have ended up well. Albania at that time had so many weapons left from the Communnist era, and it wouldn't had gone well for them.
- vmception 6y ago
  > Most of the deaths happened during the unrests between bands, people settling scores That’s scary
  - ardit33 6y ago
    About 3k un-natural deaths in total for the year, in a country of 3mill. Which is a lot, but considering the country has about 30 mini-regions/towns, it is about 100 deaths per region. (in contrast, Oakland, CA has about 60-110 murders a year, (depending on the year). Currently the whole country has about 50-60 murders per year, which is close to the E.U. average, When I saw the movie 'The Purge', I was like: that's like Albania in 97....
rshnotsecure 6y ago
Civilians across Eastern Europe protested and helped bring about the fall of communism based on their belief that the West would bring a superior way of life, government, and economy to their countries. For whatever reason, it all failed. Assuming slightly higher oil prices than we have now, life under the USSR would likely be better. Some particularly egregious things the West / Wall Street did: 1. No plan to absorb the massive amount of laid off secret police and military members. These ppl would turn to organized crime very quickly. Same mistake made in Iraq in 2003. 2. Giving Russia garbage loans they were in no position to pay back and had to be repaid in dollars only. An absolute disaster that Goldman Sachs was mostly responsible for. 3. EU was completely unprepared, for what has now become, the greatest migration in human history. The best and brightest left Eastern Europe in droves, causing massive brain drain that helped usher in the collapse of regime after regime. 4. Sending a CIA team to Moscow in 1996 to directly override the wishes of the Russian people. In defense, the USA was worried in a reasonable way that the communist party would win in a landslide at the polls. But regardless that should have been their choice. 5. Not focusing on Afghanistan after leaving in the late 1980's, letting jihadism further spread to Chechyna and the devastating war from 1994-1996 their. Causes terrorism on a 9/11 scale in Moscow, hundreds of Russian tanks destroyed, just insanity. [2] - https://quillandquire.com/review/sale-of-the-century-russia-s-wild-ride-from-communism-to-capitalism/ https://quillandquire.com/review/sale-of-the-century-russia-... [4] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt... [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War
- apsec112 6y ago
  Creating and implementing a plan to hire millions of people would have required much more intervention in Russia's internal affairs than just trying to push an election one way or the other.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  > No plan to absorb the massive amount of laid off secret police and military members. These ppl would turn to organized crime very quickly. Same mistake made in Iraq in 2003. We'd get the same thing if we actually defunded police and shrank the military in the US. We're one weak but aggressive left-wing elected government away from an American ISIL.
eruci 6y ago
It wasn't civil war, it was anarchy. I was there. People lost the money they thought they had 'invested' for irrational high returns (sometimes over 20% a month). Then they started protesting when the schemes collapsed. Certain groups first attacked the police. Police melted away. Anarchy ensued.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  Police melted away and in fact the government fled. And also, it was the 90s, in a "third world" or at least "second world" country-- 20% a month was natural considering US mortgages were like 14% a year at that time.
  - asah 6y ago
    At no point in the 1990s was the US mortgage rate above 11%, and mostly it was 7-8%: http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html
    - sushshshsh 6y ago
      "What is regression to the mean" "Everyone surely paid the same average rate of 11%"
  - wp381640 6y ago
    There's a pretty big difference between 20% a month and 14% per year
  - sharpneli 6y ago
    20% per month is almost 900% per year.
sushshshsh 6y ago
And HN censors yet another title into meaninglessness. The original title, which explained that the war was caused by nationwide pyramid schemes that went tits up all at the same time, sparking mass riots, was entirely accurate and descriptive.
oblio 6y ago
There was a gallows humor type joke in Romania, I don't know if it's actually of Albanian origin. The mayor of Tirana (the capital) calls the police chief. Mayor: I heard something about some protesters in the city center, how many are they? Police chief: Not many, only about 4 magazines worth.
ronyfadel 6y ago
Interestingly, Lebanon today could fall into similar anarchy. People's money is currently locked up in banks after years of exorbitant returns (15%+ interest) from what the central bank had called "financial engineering".
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Shouldn’t the devastation from the Beirut blast already have incited this by now? What other dominoes need to fall?
  - ronyfadel 6y ago
    People are currently tired, devastated and numb. Most people I know have applied to emigrate to Europe/North America. That’s a good question.. I don’t think it’s about a trigger (another domino falling), but possibly about no dominoes falling (big events) for a while, but daily struggles bottling up until it explodes in the street.
aazaa 6y ago
An article linked by the Wikipedia article puts the scale of the Ponzi schemes into perspective: > ... At their peak, the nominal value of the pyramid schemes' liabilities amounted to almost half of the country's GDP. ... https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/albania.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/albania.ht... What neither the Wikipedia article nor the Global Security piece quite explain is the economic recovery after Operation Alba (which ended the violence). Conventional wisdom says that an economy seeing such a massive deflationary shock will need extensive external aid in the form of bailouts, loans, and debt forgiveness. This piece from the IMF in 2000 makes no mention of a specific international aid package: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/pdf/jarvis.pdf https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/pdf/jarvi... If anything, it sounds like the country picked itself up off the mat: > The long-term effects of the pyramid scheme phenome- non are likely to be limited, reflecting not only the resilience of the Albanian economy but also—and, perhaps, most important—the government’s adjustment efforts and its refusal to bail out depositors. Prices and wages are extremely flexible in Albania; as a result, the government was able to cut real public sector wages substantially in 1997 (by leaving nominal wages unchanged), and the economy suffered no loss of competitiveness when the lek appreciated. The new government’s willingness to tackle the budget deficit and undertake long-overdue structural reforms was also crucial. However, the social effects were profound. In addition to the loss of life, thousands of people were impoverished either by their unwise investments in the pyramid schemes or by the destruction of their property in the ensuing violence. Less tangible, but also significant, are the effects on confidence in Albania. The resilience of the Albanian people is consider- able and has been more severely tested in the past. But the pyramid scheme phenomenon was a sobering setback.
optimalsolver 6y ago
I'm reminded of XKCD's purple links comic: https://xkcd.com/1051/ https://xkcd.com/1051/
tyingq 6y ago
Less serious, but a question I've had for a while, and I assume Albanians are in the thread. There's quite a lot of pizza and "Italian" joints in the US that use Italian jargon and decor, but when you ask, the ownership is strongly Albanian. Is there a backstory to this sort of "hidden" Albanian domination of US pizza and Italian restaurants? I do get the obvious "across the Adriatic" connection, but other countries border Italy as well, and don't have the same strong correlation in restaurant ownership.
- fishtacos 6y ago
  There are a few reasons I can think of: There has been a historical connection to Italy for centuries, with tens of thousands (estimates up to ~100,000) that settled there during the Middle Ages through roughly the 1800s, due to the Ottoman invasion (known as Arberesh). Related to this, there was a military alliance between more than one Italian monarch and Albania (technically not a cohesive Albania, but the de-facto leader of the time, and incidentally, national hero, Skanderbeg) due to the Ottoman threat in the 1400s. During the post-WWII communist regime, Italy was our closest neighbor from the west. Culturally closed off to the rest of the world, their TV and radio signals provided a glimpse of it in a country where there was 1 TV and 1 radio station, both regime-controlled. Conjecture, but it makes sense to me that there would be a gradual identification/comfort level with that culture. The actual reason though: simply immigration. After the regime fell, beginning with the exodus of 1991, by the mid 90s, there were about a half million Albanians living in Italy, and by the end of the 90s, close to a million. You bet the majority worked blue collar/black market jobs wherever they could find them. That experience translates into a similar field in the US (where they primarily immigrated to, although I'm sure equally applicable to other nations) I could've just written "immigration" but I thought you might appreciate a more thorough perspective. This topic has come up a ton with friends and colleagues before - you're not the first. EDIT: Also perhaps because... Italian food is cheap, easy to make and very popular, thus profitable ;)
  - tyingq 6y ago
    Appreciate the detailed answer. I wasn't aware of the scale (1M) of the post 1990 immigration. That's pretty impressive given that Albania's current population is 2.8M.

68 points by apsec112 6y ago

“Eat The Rich” by P.J. O’Rourke has an excellent chapter on the early 1990s Albanian economy. He described it as a “pyramid scheme based economy.” He described the primary means of law enforcement as blood feuds, which were “pyramid schemes of death.” The chapter’s title is “Bad Capitalism.”

sokols 6y ago
"Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe" from Fred Abrahams is a good book as well.
ardit33 6y ago
It was not even true capitalism, but more of a anarchy/libertarian place, where anything goes... and in almost naively way people invested in things that didn't make sense... I have 'libertarian' friends that just never lived in a true libertarian society. Albania was a libertarian/anarchic place, because coming out of Communism, the government was too inept to apply the laws... and it ended up becoming a 'anything goes' type of society. Want to build in a place without a permit? Sure.. go ahead... roads, infrasturcutre be damned... want to open a TV station, go ahead. That other guy is using the samme frequenncy? Just by a bigger transmitter to drown out the competitionl.. Pirated moves on TV, all the time. Cinemas just couldn't functionn. Why pay for a movie, while the local TV is just showing it right now.... Things settled by 'strong men', where the biggest gangster usually wins.... for while, until the competition settles scores and he ends up killed. The country is still suffering with the urban mess that period left... where things were built with no regard of urban development whatsoever. Libertarism... just like Communnism, are naive ideas that ultimately don't work. They always end up with few people gaining power over everybody else (either the communist elite, or oligarcic rich)
- macintux 6y ago
  I used to think it was primarily Objectivism that was giving libertarianism a bad name, but the older I get the less hope I have that a libertarian government can succeed at the core mission: protecting its people.
- mumblerino 6y ago
  > They always end up with few people gaining power over everybody else It sounds a lot like a famous democratic country with that 1% thing
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > Albania was a libertarian/anarchic place, because coming out of Communism, the government was too inept to apply the laws. Libertarism... just like Communnism, are naive ideas that ultimately don't work. Libertarianism is not the same thing as anarchism or the total lack of government. It means a government that's restricted to enforcing natural rights and fairly resolving disputes via courts.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    How are “natural rights” defined in this context?
- ch4s3 6y ago
  What you’re describing is literally rule by strongman on the local level. A number of pre nation state cultures functioned this way. Libertarians by contrast believe in rule of law and enforcement of contracts. They usually also espouse non-agression. Anarchists usually have lots of consensus meetings.
Natsu 6y ago
"Eat the Rich" has always struck me as an odd slogan to use given that it was literally true in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge had a thing for murdering people and eating their livers.
- pyuser583 6y ago
  The Onions “Our Dumb Century” had an article about the Khmer Rouge switching to a skull based economy.

pas 6y ago

Some editorialized vlog thing, probably not for everyone: https://youtu.be/lMUtU0tOmNE https://youtu.be/lMUtU0tOmNE - a YouTube channel called Rare Earth has a few videos shot in Albania, the linked one focuses on the pyramid scheme and the collapse

Spooky23 6y ago

No, it was sparked by phenomenally bad policy made as the country shifted away from communist economic principles. IMF guidance was to allow banks and other financial entities to operate with little or no effective supervision. Shockingly, 100% deposit interest rates and scams emerged and essentially took over the country’s financial system. It think it’s reasonable to say that someone like Lenin sparked a revolution against a long standing problematic regime like the Tsar that was living in the Napoleonic era in 1917. This situation was nothing like that.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Lenin didn't spark a revolution against the tsar. The tsar had already been deposed for months (in the wake of the February Revolution) by the time Lenin returned from exile and led the October Revolution against the post-tsar government then leading Russia.

ardit33 6y ago

Albanian here, and it wasn't a civil war.... more of general unrest against the government, which was forced to resign and be replaced by a transitory one... A civil war requires several factions, while this was more of a un -coordinated massive unrest.... Most of the deaths happened during the unrests between bands, people settling scores, etc... This is similar to the June unrests and looting in the US, but squared, with weapons and more... (from army depots, as most of the army refused to try to squash the demonstrations, and just went home) Also, the money problem was just the spark, as there was some major unhappiness with the government then, that started with election frauds in 1996 committed by the government. The whole thing lasted about a month or so in March, and it honestly felt something like the movie "The Purge". The government failed, there was no police in the streets, the army went home, people had weapons, looting and robbing were common, by 'masked people', it was not a good month... Eventually things calmed down. Italy sent some monitoring troops, to help with the transition of the new Goverment... All the weapons that got out of the army depots, ended up furnishing the Kosovo Liberation Army, and eventually the Kosova war in 1998-99, that ended up with Kosova's independence... (Kosovo, is 90% Albanian, and they were trying to get independence peacefully, after to the Yugoslavian break-up to no avail. The Albanian unrest and some US help helped them out in the end). So, I guess there was one good thing that came out of the whole mess. Ps. We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was planing at some point to send a invading force to the South, so it could 'pacify' the place (and potentially anex it). It would not have ended up well. Albania at that time had so many weapons left from the Communnist era, and it wouldn't had gone well for them.

vmception 6y ago
> Most of the deaths happened during the unrests between bands, people settling scores That’s scary
- ardit33 6y ago
  About 3k un-natural deaths in total for the year, in a country of 3mill. Which is a lot, but considering the country has about 30 mini-regions/towns, it is about 100 deaths per region. (in contrast, Oakland, CA has about 60-110 murders a year, (depending on the year). Currently the whole country has about 50-60 murders per year, which is close to the E.U. average, When I saw the movie 'The Purge', I was like: that's like Albania in 97....

rshnotsecure 6y ago

Civilians across Eastern Europe protested and helped bring about the fall of communism based on their belief that the West would bring a superior way of life, government, and economy to their countries. For whatever reason, it all failed. Assuming slightly higher oil prices than we have now, life under the USSR would likely be better. Some particularly egregious things the West / Wall Street did: 1. No plan to absorb the massive amount of laid off secret police and military members. These ppl would turn to organized crime very quickly. Same mistake made in Iraq in 2003. 2. Giving Russia garbage loans they were in no position to pay back and had to be repaid in dollars only. An absolute disaster that Goldman Sachs was mostly responsible for. 3. EU was completely unprepared, for what has now become, the greatest migration in human history. The best and brightest left Eastern Europe in droves, causing massive brain drain that helped usher in the collapse of regime after regime. 4. Sending a CIA team to Moscow in 1996 to directly override the wishes of the Russian people. In defense, the USA was worried in a reasonable way that the communist party would win in a landslide at the polls. But regardless that should have been their choice. 5. Not focusing on Afghanistan after leaving in the late 1980's, letting jihadism further spread to Chechyna and the devastating war from 1994-1996 their. Causes terrorism on a 9/11 scale in Moscow, hundreds of Russian tanks destroyed, just insanity. [2] - https://quillandquire.com/review/sale-of-the-century-russia-s-wild-ride-from-communism-to-capitalism/ https://quillandquire.com/review/sale-of-the-century-russia-... [4] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt... [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War

apsec112 6y ago
Creating and implementing a plan to hire millions of people would have required much more intervention in Russia's internal affairs than just trying to push an election one way or the other.
pessimizer 6y ago
> No plan to absorb the massive amount of laid off secret police and military members. These ppl would turn to organized crime very quickly. Same mistake made in Iraq in 2003. We'd get the same thing if we actually defunded police and shrank the military in the US. We're one weak but aggressive left-wing elected government away from an American ISIL.

eruci 6y ago

It wasn't civil war, it was anarchy. I was there. People lost the money they thought they had 'invested' for irrational high returns (sometimes over 20% a month). Then they started protesting when the schemes collapsed. Certain groups first attacked the police. Police melted away. Anarchy ensued.

sushshshsh 6y ago
Police melted away and in fact the government fled. And also, it was the 90s, in a "third world" or at least "second world" country-- 20% a month was natural considering US mortgages were like 14% a year at that time.
- asah 6y ago
  At no point in the 1990s was the US mortgage rate above 11%, and mostly it was 7-8%: http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html
  - sushshshsh 6y ago
    "What is regression to the mean" "Everyone surely paid the same average rate of 11%"
- wp381640 6y ago
  There's a pretty big difference between 20% a month and 14% per year
- sharpneli 6y ago
  20% per month is almost 900% per year.

sushshshsh 6y ago

And HN censors yet another title into meaninglessness. The original title, which explained that the war was caused by nationwide pyramid schemes that went tits up all at the same time, sparking mass riots, was entirely accurate and descriptive.

oblio 6y ago

There was a gallows humor type joke in Romania, I don't know if it's actually of Albanian origin. The mayor of Tirana (the capital) calls the police chief. Mayor: I heard something about some protesters in the city center, how many are they? Police chief: Not many, only about 4 magazines worth.

ronyfadel 6y ago

Interestingly, Lebanon today could fall into similar anarchy. People's money is currently locked up in banks after years of exorbitant returns (15%+ interest) from what the central bank had called "financial engineering".

runawaybottle 6y ago
Shouldn’t the devastation from the Beirut blast already have incited this by now? What other dominoes need to fall?
- ronyfadel 6y ago
  People are currently tired, devastated and numb. Most people I know have applied to emigrate to Europe/North America. That’s a good question.. I don’t think it’s about a trigger (another domino falling), but possibly about no dominoes falling (big events) for a while, but daily struggles bottling up until it explodes in the street.

aazaa 6y ago

An article linked by the Wikipedia article puts the scale of the Ponzi schemes into perspective: > ... At their peak, the nominal value of the pyramid schemes' liabilities amounted to almost half of the country's GDP. ... https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/albania.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/albania.ht... What neither the Wikipedia article nor the Global Security piece quite explain is the economic recovery after Operation Alba (which ended the violence). Conventional wisdom says that an economy seeing such a massive deflationary shock will need extensive external aid in the form of bailouts, loans, and debt forgiveness. This piece from the IMF in 2000 makes no mention of a specific international aid package: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/pdf/jarvis.pdf https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/pdf/jarvi... If anything, it sounds like the country picked itself up off the mat: > The long-term effects of the pyramid scheme phenome- non are likely to be limited, reflecting not only the resilience of the Albanian economy but also—and, perhaps, most important—the government’s adjustment efforts and its refusal to bail out depositors. Prices and wages are extremely flexible in Albania; as a result, the government was able to cut real public sector wages substantially in 1997 (by leaving nominal wages unchanged), and the economy suffered no loss of competitiveness when the lek appreciated. The new government’s willingness to tackle the budget deficit and undertake long-overdue structural reforms was also crucial. However, the social effects were profound. In addition to the loss of life, thousands of people were impoverished either by their unwise investments in the pyramid schemes or by the destruction of their property in the ensuing violence. Less tangible, but also significant, are the effects on confidence in Albania. The resilience of the Albanian people is consider- able and has been more severely tested in the past. But the pyramid scheme phenomenon was a sobering setback.

optimalsolver 6y ago

I'm reminded of XKCD's purple links comic: https://xkcd.com/1051/ https://xkcd.com/1051/

tyingq 6y ago

Less serious, but a question I've had for a while, and I assume Albanians are in the thread. There's quite a lot of pizza and "Italian" joints in the US that use Italian jargon and decor, but when you ask, the ownership is strongly Albanian. Is there a backstory to this sort of "hidden" Albanian domination of US pizza and Italian restaurants? I do get the obvious "across the Adriatic" connection, but other countries border Italy as well, and don't have the same strong correlation in restaurant ownership.

fishtacos 6y ago
There are a few reasons I can think of: There has been a historical connection to Italy for centuries, with tens of thousands (estimates up to ~100,000) that settled there during the Middle Ages through roughly the 1800s, due to the Ottoman invasion (known as Arberesh). Related to this, there was a military alliance between more than one Italian monarch and Albania (technically not a cohesive Albania, but the de-facto leader of the time, and incidentally, national hero, Skanderbeg) due to the Ottoman threat in the 1400s. During the post-WWII communist regime, Italy was our closest neighbor from the west. Culturally closed off to the rest of the world, their TV and radio signals provided a glimpse of it in a country where there was 1 TV and 1 radio station, both regime-controlled. Conjecture, but it makes sense to me that there would be a gradual identification/comfort level with that culture. The actual reason though: simply immigration. After the regime fell, beginning with the exodus of 1991, by the mid 90s, there were about a half million Albanians living in Italy, and by the end of the 90s, close to a million. You bet the majority worked blue collar/black market jobs wherever they could find them. That experience translates into a similar field in the US (where they primarily immigrated to, although I'm sure equally applicable to other nations) I could've just written "immigration" but I thought you might appreciate a more thorough perspective. This topic has come up a ton with friends and colleagues before - you're not the first. EDIT: Also perhaps because... Italian food is cheap, easy to make and very popular, thus profitable ;)
- tyingq 6y ago
  Appreciate the detailed answer. I wasn't aware of the scale (1M) of the post 1990 immigration. That's pretty impressive given that Albania's current population is 2.8M.