> It astounds me when I encounter Westerners decrying other cultures' values . . . Some cultures are different from Western cultures, that does not make them worse, or better. But different.

When I lived in the Middle East, I had a good Saudi couple as friends. The husband had an app so that when the wife wanted to leave the country on a trip, the border people could trigger a notification so he could approve her leaving. This was better than previously when she couldn't leave unaccompanied. Are you really trying to say that's not worse or better, just different?

I went to an Omani friend's wedding in his small village in Oman. The celebration was fascinating and fun. The men and women celebrated in two different groups. There was no alcohol. (But there was lots of dancing outside at night in the heat and spinning around with swords, which almost gave me a sort of drunken euphoria anyway!) The local mosque's call to prayer sounded and everyone in the party (except me and one other Western dude) left to the mosque and came back 15-20 minutes later. I actually admired the communal nature of it, as everyone seemed really close to each other, and could see the benefit of the requirement. On the flip side, if you didn't believe or something but were a local, you absolutely could not show it or skip.

Side note: the wife of the friend was not the secret girlfriend he loved for the years that I knew him, while constantly trying to improve his station in life to get her parents' approval. They said no when he finally did as much as he could and asked; so he ended up marrying the nice girl who his family arranged for him. They are quite happy today, though.

I taught computer science for a little while in China. They have a lot of different cultural expectations and values as well. I had some students come up after class to ask what it was like having two parties in our political system. And then living in Singapore was yet another story!

All this to say, I find your comment extremely simplistic and naive. I can't imagine living for a while in places with wildly different cultures and believing that deep cultural values don't manifest in meaningful ways.

At some level I agree that things are "just different", and that it takes a personal perspective to decry a cultural value or say something is better or worse. I think the Omani example is a good one; there's lots to like about that, and my Omani friend actually really does, even despite not marrying the woman he loved for so long. Whether something is "better" or "worse" depends on your values.

But all that said, I think you can acknowledge that and still stake a claim that, "no, what I believe is better!", and I think that is frowned upon these days and is a shame. While Oman is a lovely place in a lot of ways, I have a 1 year old daughter now, and I would not want her to grow up there. Then you have Saudi Arabia, with even less going for it... China has a much different culture, which we'll see how it works for them going forward. In the context of this article, can different cultures and cultural values really not contribute to the wealth of nations?

I think your example of "polygamy" is a good one. Is that better or worse or just different? I think it's puerile to reflexively say "it's just different". Maybe it is! But then, maybe it also contributes to cultural things; male competition, unwed males, family values, all kinds of things. Honestly, I don't know its effects, but I would be surprised if there were none. And then you could compare those effects against your values (things like "equality of men and women") and probably grade it as "worse", "just different", or "better" on the whole.

Then at a meta level, your "values" are again a cultural artifact. If someone doesn't value "equality of men and women", is that better or worse, or just different? It leads to different judgments of outcomes. How do you judge a policy like giving women the right to vote, if your values are divergent? And if large swaths of the population have one value or another, and one country ends up with women having the right to vote and others not; is that better or worse or just different? Could that have a meaningful impact on other aspects of the culture or nation, on how its politics proceed?