My wife is Filipino and she explained the Crap Theory to me. Supposedly, if you put a bunch of live crabs into a pot, if one of them starts to climb out, the others will reach up and pull it back inside. She says Filipinos are notorious for this.

We were at a Filipino gathering last Sunday and the topic came up about why Filipino immigrants aren't as well off as other Asian immigrants like the Chinese or Koreans. We discussed how the Chinese and Koreans work together to build businesses but the Filipinos resent someone else's success. They expect Filipino business owner to give them a special break because they don't want anyone to profit at their expense, but that only serves to weaken the business.

My own theory as to why this happens is because the Philippines is a nation composed of over 7,000 islands. The people are very provincial (there are over 70 dialects) and often won't freely associate with people from other provinces. By contrast, Korea and China are continuous landmasses, so perhaps they aren't as provincial.

There's also the problems caused by hundreds of years of Spanish domination in the Philippines. The Spanish way of colonization was to strip the colony of everything valuable through systematic corruption and outright theft. My wife has noted that she doesn't know of a single former Spanish colony that ever amounted to anything. Off hand, I can't think of any, either.

The Crab Theory isn't limited to Filipinos. A neighbor of mine says it also exists in the black community. Apparently, it also thrives in socialist circles, too.