When Capital Is Nowhere in View

A Travel Channel episode of No Reservations, [..], took viewers to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I had heard that the show offered unique insight into the country and its troubles. I couldn't imagine how. But it turns out to be true. Through the lens of food, we can gain an insight into culture, and from culture to economy, and from economy to politics and finally to what's wrong in this country and what can be done about it.

Through this micro lens, we gain more insight than we would have if the program were entirely focused on economic issues. Such an episode on economics would have featured dull interviews with treasury officials and IMF experts

In a scene early in the show set in this giant city after the earthquake, Bourdain and his crew stop to eat some local food from a vendor. He discusses its ingredients and samples some items. Crowds of hungry people begin to gather. They are doing more than gawking at the camera crews. They are waiting in the hope of getting something to eat.

Bourdain thinks of a way to do something nice for everyone. Realizing that in this one sitting, he is eating a quantity of food that would last most Haitians three days, he buys out the remaining food from the vendor and gives it away to locals.

Nice gesture! Except that something goes wrong. Once the word spreads about the free food — word-of-mouth in Haiti is faster than Facebook chat — people start pouring in. Lines form and get long. Disorder ensues. Some people step forward to keep order. They bring belts and start hitting. The entire scene becomes very unpleasant for everyone — and the viewer gets the sense that it is worse than we are shown.

This is the single best article on the beauty of Capitalism and the evils of Obammunism (crony socialism) that I have seen written in recent memory.

here is the money shot: "Now, to be sure, there are plenty of Americans who are firmly convinced that we would all be better off if we grew our own food, bought only locally, kept firms small, eschewed modern conveniences like home appliances, went back to using only natural products, expropriated wealthy savers, harassed the capitalistic class until it felt itself unwelcome and vanished. This paradise has a name, and it is Haiti."

GO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE - IT IS LONG BUT WORTH IT

Even on the best of days, there simply is not enough food to serve all the hungry in Haiti.

And for sure, there is not sufficient funding to do this on a continuing basis.

Haiti is just unable to grow food in self-sufficient quantities, first because they don’t know HOW, and secondly, because they end up eating all the seed corn before it even gets planted.

Even when some of the corn does get planted, it is taken up and eaten long before it is mature.

I agree this is an excellent exposition of a capitalist economy. However, there's another point buried in here. Economists object to counting both capital expenditures and consumption in calculating GDP. The claim it's double-counting, and they're right. But this means GDP ignores capital spending, and focuses only on final consumption. This leads politicians, and Keynesian economists, to think that spending on consumption is what drives the economy. See for instance, those congresscritters who say that unemployment compensation stimulates the economy, because it all gets spent. Failure to invest in "roundabout" production, that is making the tools to make the tools to make the tools, etc., means that final consumption is limited to what can be made directly. Haiti shows where that leads. Unless there is investment in mining iron ore and making steel, there won't be any automobiles to buy.

Open Society Soros organizations, the United States government and many other sources have

spent billions

in Haiti

over MANY years.

Population control, having women virtually married to the State instead of husbands, contraception, keeping globalist-friendly people in positions of influence in society, being able to sell billions in goods from U.S. big business financed by U.S. taxpayer dollars, limiting the spread of solid Biblical preaching and consequently, truth, limiting the ability of Haitians to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, making them reliant on aid, loans, etc.

That’s what it’s about.

Haitians stay dependent and deceived without building on the foundation of the Bible. For instance, the idea of people distrusting and actually hating wealth: this is classic covetousness.

They really need a mental “step back” and to start from square one to gain an understanding of how to work smart.

The Pilgrims arrived in America destitute, about 1/2 of them died the first winter for disease, exposure and lack of food. But they were able to build using what was in their hearts and minds. Without that “stuff”, there is no hope of getting anywhere. And the globalist and the do-gooder tax-credit-seeking rich folks don’t have that “stuff” to offer.

Remote villages are more stable in Haiti.
Major cities are beehives of activity.
Haitians are industrious.
Streets are lined with vendors.
Container ships clogged with anything discarded by the US glut tent cities. The cities run on guts and sweat.
Our own inner cities will more and more resemble Haiti as the full weight of liberal spending crashes the economy and the freebies dwindle. This is not a bad thing.
Before Clinton’s embargo Haiti had an improving economy. The little Marxist, Aristide, attempted to derail the light manufacturing economy funded through countless US small businesses that accounted for 90% of Haoiiti’s economy. He got his wish.
After the military threw him out of the country he convinced Hillary that Bill should restore him to power. The Clinton’s forced the issue with an embargo that literally terminated the economy in one night. Every single US business pulled out leaving Haiti destitute. They had little choice. The embargo ended trade with Haiti.
Today Bill Clinton is the most hated man in Haiti. He is personally responsible for destroying the nation’s growing economy he has now overseen the waste of billions in aid money following the earthquake.
Haiti has sufgfered immeasurable at the hands of political corruption in the Us centered in tyhe Democrat party. Obama contin ues this fine tradition by furthur enslaving a broken people and seeking to duplicate their plight among the poor blacks in our own country.

I had forgotten all about Aristide! that POS was how the world learned of a quaint Haiti custom called ‘necklacing”

Where you tie up your opponent and place a car tire filled with gasoline around their neck and set it on fire

Bill Clinton should be forece to kiss Newt Gingrich’s ass every single day in public for Congress saving his ass.

Gingrich was almost single-handedly responsible for balancing the federal budget by the end of Clintoon’s terms.

I had forgotten all about Aristide! that POS was how the world learned of a quaint Haiti custom called ‘necklacing”

Where you tie up your opponent and place a car tire filled with gasoline around their neck and set it on fire

Bill Clinton should be forece to kiss Newt Gingrich’s ass every single day in public for Congress saving his ass.

Gingrich was almost single-handedly responsible for balancing the federal budget by the end of Clintoon’s terms.

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