Haiti

[Jazzmoose]

Um. Not to be snide, but better "trapped on asphalt" with the knowledge that one is only visiting the disaster than trapped under a building knowing this is your life. Maybe people have more important things to do than to get relatively well off Americans back to their television sets...

Edited January 15, 2010 by Jazzmoose

[medjuck]

I'm curious as to what people think of David Brooks' column on Haiti:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html?ref=opinion

He blames their problems on their culture.

But it does seem they can't get a break. They share an Island wit the Dominican Republic which is much better off but the hurricane hit Haiti and not as far as I know The D.R.

[Big Wheel]

I'm curious as to what people think of David Brooks' column on Haiti:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html?ref=opinion

He blames their problems on their culture.

But it does seem they can't get a break. They share an Island wit the Dominican Republic which is much better off but the hurricane hit Haiti and not as far as I know The D.R.

I don't have as strong a feeling about it as some people (one of my most knowledgeable friends said that it shows Brooks has "zero understanding of Haiti's history" and called him a straight-up racist for writing it). But I think Brooks is at a minimum being way too glib. There are a bunch of things I can think of off the top of my head to explain the differing fortunes of the two:

• Haiti has significantly less land than the DR, despite having the same population.
  
• The DR probably benefits from sitting on the windward side of the island (more rain=more stable agriculture, although I've heard that Haiti's soil is exceptionally rich.)
  
• Nicaragua isn't a whole lot better off than Haiti...but nobody's blaming Nicaraguan culture for their woes.
  
• Trujillo was probably a much better dictator for the DR (economically) than the Duvaliers were for Haiti. Though both governed in the model of sultanistic dictators, it sounds like at least Trujillo built some infrastructure that the country could continue to build on in later years.
  

[medjuck]

Sounds like Brooks got it wrong about Haiti but I am sympathetic to his thesis about culture. It's hard for me to be sympathetic to societies that don't value education and put superstition/religion ahead of science. They are eventually doomed to fail-- unless perhaps they have an unending supply of oil.

[Guy Berger]

I don't know if I'd call it racist... but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth. It's a shame, because the beginning of the piece was Brooks at his best.

Maybe it's my failing as an economist, but I tend to be skeptical of "culture" explanations. Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's also an explanation that's often used to mask racist/quasi-racist arguments. And most importantly, it's been used as an explanation for differential economic performances in so many situations that were ex-post falsified by experience that its track record is quite poor.

My knowledge of both countries' history is pretty meager, but scanning through Wikipedia it seems they had a very different history since the 1820s. Haiti has experienced a much larger number of coups than the Dominican Republic. Both countries had their share of nasty dictators, but in the Dominican Republic these kleptocrats realized they could squeeze more $$ out of an economic success and in Haiti (for whatever reason) they didn't. In general Wheel's arguments seem right to me.

Back to culture - I certainly don't object to any investment in a program that teaches kids to value education, other people, their families, the value of hard work, etc. But I find it hard to believe that THIS policy would be any more effective than macro-aid or micro-aid. The country's problems are massive. You can teach people the value of hard work or education, but if there's none to be had it won't matter at all. I think medjuck is being overly harsh.

Edited January 16, 2010 by Guy

[medjuck]

Well I was thinking of Sarah Palin and her ilk as much as Saudi Arabia. (I obviously don't know much about Haiti). I think those cultures already value families and hard work but I still think if you sneer at education, believe that religion trumps science and that people should be discriminated against because of their sex or sexual orientation then you're eventually doomed. But that may be my optimistic nature-- actually such cultures often prosper for years but that doesn't mean I have to approve of them to prove I believe in multi culturalism. I didn't like the Taliban as soon as they destroyed those amazing Buddahs-- and I think they were still Allies of the US at the time. And I doubt if the Taliban even care about their economy.