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Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

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Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#11

Post by ww2buff »

Clewza313 wrote: post #6

This 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…

What exactly do you think is the significance of the “genetic similarity to sub-Saharan Africa”

Please be very, very specific

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#12

Post by kewrkewm53 »

simonh wrote: post #8
Clewza313 wrote: post #6

This 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'…

Yeah, history shows that revolutions which consist killing or expelling all the educated, well-off citizen typically end up having pretty bad results for everybody. Even if you successfully capture their wealth, the future will be poor when there's nobody competent enough left to manage administration, education, farms, industry, infrastructure and so on. And once things go downhill like that, it's not easy to turn things around.

I also think there's a cultural factor at play. In addition to wealth and education, more well-off families may also have cultural capital which encourages things like entrepreneurship, long-term thinking and higher self-esteem. Even if these are secondary to wealth, they may still have an impact. I think the impact of culture in general is underestimated as it very much influences human behaviour and outcomes, not just politics, geography etc.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#13

Post by seszett »

Clewza313 wrote: post #6

This 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…

There's another thing that is missing, the article says "Haiti and the D.R. share the same geography" but that is quite wrong, as Haiti was actually the undesirable part of the island, an unexploited part that was opportunistically colonised by France because Spain didn't use it.

They don't share the same geography or natural resources at all, most of the settled, economically important places both in Haiti and DR are in the plains but DR has more plains than the whole area of Haiti, while Haiti's few plains are mostly salt marshes with cities in the more hospitable areas.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#14

Post by lotsofpulp »

emilgouliev wrote: post #5
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #2

It'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?

The thoughts of someone who thinks "Western society" is where it is by being conscientious of how they consume and preserve resources for future generations, and is apparently unaware of "Western society" eating other societies' marshmallows.

Another option is they are intentionally ignoring "Western society" consuming other society's marshmallows to make them seem more deserving of their spoils, and others more deserving of their lack of spoils.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#15

Post by legulere »

I don't see how lack of infrastructure isn't caused by the debt they had to pay off. Infrastructure takes extremely long to build up and lasts usually pretty long.

Also I find it peculiar how the damage incurred by the Duvalier family was not mentioned directly in the article.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#16

Post by eivindga »

ww2buff wrote: post #11
Clewza313 wrote: post #6

This 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…

What exactly do you think is the significance of the “genetic similarity to sub-Saharan Africa” Please be very, very specific

For one, it might be harder to attract investments from Europe or the US?

People generally invest and hire people that looks similar to them. It shouldn't be like this, but that's a very common thing to see.

-- From Wikipedia: "Race is another defining factor of Dominican–Haitian relations. The ethnic composition of the Dominican population is 73% mixed race, 16% white, and 11% black; while 95% of the Haitian population is black."

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#17

Post by jhoechtl »

emilgouliev wrote: post #5
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #2

It'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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification#Stanford...

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#18

Post by smcl »

V-2 wrote: post #7
smcl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If Haiti had, say, vast oil wealth but wasted the proceeds and you compared it specifically to Norway (who have, all things considered, responsibly handled their oil wealth) then sure. But I cannot see what resources or wealth representing the "marshmallow" that they are supposed to have foolishly, greedily gobbled up.

It doesn't make sense, it's just someone painting the Haitians as a short-sighted and reckless people (which I believe is untrue) without giving any reasons why they believe this.

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#19

Post by ethbr0 »

dimitar wrote: post #9
Clewza313 wrote: post #6

This 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...

You'd expect per capita income to lag though, right? If a country is investing in modernization (especially, in it's people via education, etc), that's a 30+ year payoff from start.

Granted, 150 is a lot, but you'd expect some convergence before divergence.

I was looking at generation size and life expectancy per country to tease that out further, and there's a surprising gap between Haiti [0] and the DR [1], going back to 1950, that has persisted. Couldn't find earlier.

Both are increasing, but using life expectancy as a proxy for economic power (people spend on it as a priority, etc), Haiti appears to have started from a much lower base.

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/HTI/haiti/life-expecta...

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DOM/dominican-republic...

Re: Haiti vs. the Dominican Republic

#20

Post by odiroot »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #2

It'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…

> You can just nibble a little on the edge, and you get western society.

That would be Singapore.

Western societies are really great at consuming unconstrained amount of taxes without efficiently generating returns.

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