The real cause behind the pain in Haiti

It is a popular past time at the moment for people to talk about the situation in Haiti and about what must be done.

It’s pretty much universally accepted that 2 centuries of corrupt kleptocratic governments have pretty much kept this potentially rich country in the worst poverty in the western hemisphere.

It seems likely that Aristide will be joining Cedras here in Panama in the next week. The local press here have had some very telling editorial cartoons of Aristide joining the ex dictators pool table. Now as Aristide was supposedly the defender of the poor, how can he also have been a dictator?

I fear that in Haiti we see the most unfortunate outcome of Pelle’s 2nd. Law:

A philantropic act becomes an economic act for one or more parties in the philanthropic chain when said parties become (or appears to be) dependent on their role for survival Pelle’s 2nd Law

Haiti’s people are largely illiterate and very poor. Aristide himself came from a poor peasant background. He became an orphan early on and the church brought him up and educated him. That should allow him to be in touch with his people, shouldnt it?

Unfortunately in these cases, what happens more often than not is that the newly liberated intellectual, becomes hateful and spiteful of his origins. Whether they are his origins or not. This is the source of much Platonic thought, Lenin’s Dictatorship of the Proletariat and much communist bloodshed in the past.

So what initially drives the ideological poor third world intellectual is a wish to change the poor society to a better one, whether the people want it or not. This together with new found power (and lets be frank here money) if he reaches power as Aristide did, brings on a new sense of disrespect and hatred for the very same people he is trying to help. Aristide desperately wants to use European world welfare state methods (like many other Caribbean and Latin American leaders before him) that have never worked elsewhere and will never work in Haiti. If they dont work the fault has to be the people and not him. Which is why he started relying on the traditional Haitian death squad, to mow down his opponents.

History shows us in Haiti a similar group of idealists turned despots. The story of Papa Doc Duvalier is only one. He started out as a humanitarian doctor, who won an election and put all of Haiti’s problems on the Mulatto elite. It is fairly obvious that he started out an idealist, then took from the book of Hitler and Stalin in his purges. This was merely a repetition of a pattern that goes back to Toussant Loverture and Desalines, the two reveloutionary heroes, who liberated the slaves and then set about murdering them, while attempting to be European style emperors.

Aristide was talking about minimum wage, literacy programs etc. All very noble ideas, the only problem is that for minimum wage to work you need a strong economy in place to pay for it. Has Haiti got that? I dont think so.

Lets take a look at one of the few studies that has actually tried to analyse the true source of Haiti’s problems and thus the solution. Peru’s Instituto Libertad y Democracia have done a lot of ground breaking work including in Haiti. See Hernando de Soto ‘s excellent book: The Mystery of Capital for an indepth discussion. Handily most of the summary information about Haiti is available online: Dead Capital of the Poor in Haiti

De Soto’s theory is that the poor in 3rd world countries are kept poor mainly by structural and regulatory road blocks setup infront of them by the ruling classes. He says that Haiti actually has a fairly sizable amount (US$5.4B) of extra legal assets. By Extra legal he means non documentable titled assets, such as buildings, businesses etc.

In most very poor countries, one of the most stable jobs you can get is working in government. This is why 3rd world countries often have the most prohibitive burocracies. Aristide believing the mantra that the people of Haiti are stupid and that business is evil, more than likely enhanced the prior aparatnik of Duvalier.

Just about everywhere in the world, poor people know how to survive. If not forced into poverty by people who know better. Hernando De Soto shows that despite all the problems Haitians have actually done much for themselves. If only they were allowed to take it one step further and legitimize it.

Lets listen to the Haitian people for a change and stop blaming everything on foreign powers and “evil” business men. I wrote about that earlier in The Cannibal Army in Haiti . The problem has never been foreign powers, rather the hate towards its own people by its own leaders throughout history has been a culprit.