Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
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Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
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Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#2It's a marshmallow test on a national scale.
You're a public institution and the taxpayer gives you a marshmallow with the expectation of using it to create some public good. You can eat the whole marshmallow yourself and feel pretty good for a while, but after that you'll have nothing but a heap of dirt (and soon that heap will be washed into the sea).
You can take a bite for yourself and get a dysfunctional society, but at least you and your countrymen get some kind of half decent jobs, food on the table, education and healthcare.
You can just nibble a little on the edge, and you get western society.
What happens if you save the whole marshmallow? Who knows.
Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#3I think many people would take issue with the first two points raised:
1. External debt
Sure Haiti finished paying France a decade before its economy began to diverge with the Dominican Republic. But what could it have been spending this on for the over a hundred years it was repaying this sum? If the Dominican Republic didn't have such a (frankly ridiculously unfair) debt, is it possible it was able to make some investments in infrastructure, for example, that Haiti wouldn't have been?
2. Land mismanagement
The idea that Haitians deforested their part of the island, causing themselves environmental (and therefore economic) problems is is a fairly common myth. It seems that overall the forests are relatively sustainably managed and Haiti has a level of forestation you'd expect: https://www.vice.com/en/article/43qy9n/one-of-the-most-repea...
Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#4It's a marshmallow test on a national scale. You're a public institution and the taxpayer gives you a marshmallow with the expectation of using it to create some public good. You can eat the whole marshmallow yourself and feel pretty good for a while, but after that you'll have nothing but a heap of dirt (and soon that heap will be washed into the sea). You can take a bite for yourself and get a dysfunctional society…
Wait, who is eating the marshmallow ... and what is the marshmallow in this analogy?
Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#5It's a marshmallow test on a national scale. You're a public institution and the taxpayer gives you a marshmallow with the expectation of using it to create some public good. You can eat the whole marshmallow yourself and feel pretty good for a while, but after that you'll have nothing but a heap of dirt (and soon that heap will be washed into the sea). You can take a bite for yourself and get a dysfunctional society…
What the f*** did I just read?
Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#6This is kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that Haiti was born from a successful slave revolt and and one of the first things it did as an independent country was to expel or kill virtually all the whites, expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them. Both culturally and genetically (95.5% per Wikipedia), Haiti thus has a lot in common with sub-Saharan Africa, another notably poor part of the world, while the DR largely inherited the culture of their Spanish conquerors and rulers and genetics of both the Spanish and the indigenous inhabitants (well over half the country are mixed native/white, only 15%-ish black).
Connecting the dots from this to their present sad state of affairs is obviously pretty controversial, but I need to note that aside from the obvious racist inferences, there are also many indirect paths. For example, Haiti being both linguistically and culturally "the odd one out" in the neighborhood, they lack an obvious pool of culturally related investors to tap into, face racism from non-Haitians (relations between Haiti and DR in particular are very bad) and struggle to attract investment from the outside.
Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#7It's a marshmallow test on a national scale. You're a public institution and the taxpayer gives you a marshmallow with the expectation of using it to create some public good. You can eat the whole marshmallow yourself and feel pretty good for a while, but after that you'll have nothing but a heap of dirt (and soon that heap will be washed into the sea). You can take a bite for yourself and get a dysfunctional society…
Wait, who is eating the marshmallow ... and what is the marshmallow in this analogy?
> what is the marshmallow in this analogy?
The surplus of resources, I guess. The disposable income of a nation.
Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#8This is kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that Haiti was born from a successful slave revolt and and one of the first things it did as an independent country was to expel or kill virtually all the whites, expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them. Both culturally and genetically (95.5% per Wikipedia), Haiti thus has a lot in common with sub-Saharan Africa, anot…
>...expel or kill virtually all the whites, expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them.
You could have written that about Zimbabwe and it would be just as relevant. There are also a lot of people in SA who are trying to go the same route as fast as they can. I fully understand the anger and resentment these people feel towards ethnic Europeans, but revenge never comes without it's own price.
Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#9This is kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that Haiti was born from a successful slave revolt and and one of the first things it did as an independent country was to expel or kill virtually all the whites, expropriate their property and destroy all the institutions associated with them. Both culturally and genetically (95.5% per Wikipedia), Haiti thus has a lot in common with sub-Saharan Africa, anot…
Well, for 150 years they were similar in per capita income (and everything else really) and they started diverging in the 60s and 70s. And you also have another non-Hispanic country in Jamaica that has taken a different path compared to Haiti in the same period: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/haiti/jamaica?s...
Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic
#10It's a marshmallow test on a national scale. You're a public institution and the taxpayer gives you a marshmallow with the expectation of using it to create some public good. You can eat the whole marshmallow yourself and feel pretty good for a while, but after that you'll have nothing but a heap of dirt (and soon that heap will be washed into the sea). You can take a bite for yourself and get a dysfunctional society…
>What happens if you save the whole marshmallow?
Given the heat over there, I'm guessing a puddle of sticky goo.