Comment by sbierwagen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sbierwagen | Hacker News Reader

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Kushner describes it as a "city", but with no power, water grid, sewage system or stormwater management,[1] it's more of a squatter camp with roads than a city.

They want to build infrastructure, but since nobody owns the land they're squatting on, there's no way to raise money via land taxes. The technocrat answer to that would be individual septic tanks and solar panels, but because there's no land ownership and no law enforcement, you'd have to be nuts to invest any serious money in building a house, because a gang would just take it from you. Classic development trap.

Jonathan Katz talked about Corail/Cannan in The Big Truck That Went By, and he wasn't positive. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009OZN6GM/ Published in 2013, but it doesn't sound like much has changed.

1: Port-au-Prince gets about twice as much rain as Seattle per year, and is routinely hit by hurricanes. If you don't manage the stormwater, it washes your house downhill. Sewage systems have also become important, since UN peacekeepers brought cholera with them after the earthquake.

The government will have no realistic choice but to legalize them and give them ownership of the land. Maybe they'll sell it to them and reimburse the real owners. When everyone does it, it's no longer illegal. It has happened in a lot of countries.

Septic tanks will probably be holes in the ground--right next to their water well.

Looking at the concrete by enlarging photo...of boy does it look poor. https://www.usnews.com/dims4/USNEWS/8288114/2147483647/resiz... Not an engineer but having seen dozens of homes being built I doubt this can take a 7.0 earthquake.

'technocrat' means something other than the way you're using it here, FYI - it's evidence-based institutional governance, not lifehacking.

I was using "technocrat" in the pejorative sense-- suggesting technological fixes to political problems. The political problem here is weak rule of law, which results in various physical problems. (No clean water, no electricity, etc) NGO technocrats frequently suggest ineffective technical solutions (water filters, solar panels) that don't address the root problem, which is either intractable or politically sensitive.

Given Haiti's history over the last 50 years the chances of fixing Haitian politics are ~0. What can people do when government does not work and has not worked in the living memory of a majority of the population?

The best way to improve the lives of Haitians is obviously to help them emigrate but they're quite, quite motivated to do that already.

The best way to help a nation is not to help the population flee their otherwise workable location. As others have stated, it's not politically correct to state the obvious: local rule has utterly failed. British or American occupation has always been the best option based on factual national statistics.

Fuck the nation, if we want to help the people of Haiti we absolutely should help them flee their location. It may be a workable nation for the Dominican Republic but it clearly isn't for Haiti.

America is politically incapable of a long term occupation, look at Iraq or Afghanistan. Real nation building would require running a country in a profoundly undemocratic way for at the very least a decade, more likely two or three. The US isn't even capable of winning a war of occupation given the political constraints it operates under. If they had the support of 60% of the population for a thirty year and 0.1% protested against it they wouldn't do it. Russia or China might, at a push Singapore, but a Western country? Give me a break.

And don't be a coward with your throwaway. dang may have bowed to pressure with the shut up or be banned to yummyfajitas Chris Stucchio but nothing will ever change if we're all cowards.

If the best way to improve the lives of Haitians is to place them under the rule of (probably white) foreigners, why do it by emigration?

After all, it's not like it's the dirt that's causing their problems. We agree they need foreign rule, but instead of bringing them to foreign rule, we could bring foreign rule to them.

Rather than exporting the whole population, it seems like it'd be a lot easier to import a few tens of thousands of foreign bureaucrats, leaders, and functionaries to run the senior half of government. The U.S. could take over the country and turn it into a Puerto-Rico like protectorate.

This would be much faster and less disruptive to both the U.S. and Haiti.

This is politically impossible. Even if by some miracle the Haitian political class had a referendum with a question "Do you want to be governed for fifty years by a competent nation?" and that option got a 60% majority for yes the US wouldn't do it. Republican support would be at best lukewarm and the Democrats would have a substantial absolutely hell no brigade. The US is not politically capable of long term controversial projects like this.

Over the next twenty years the US culture wars are going to get worse and worse. While there is not currently a Democrat consensus on Open Borders there does seem to be one that enforcing immigration laws is immoral. Support for amnesty has gone up by a lot since Trump was elected and Open Borders is only going to become more mainstream. There is actually a plausible path to letting huge portions of the Haitian population immigrate to the USA. It only requires one administration to do something. There is none for anything that looks even remotely like colonialism, even with consent. That would be a twenty year project if you plan to do anything but help for four, eight years before the next President pulls out.

Paul Romer put a lot of time and effort into trying to get Charter Cities off the ground, one, anywhere. He failed. Exporting good governance by consent is not possible if you have to work with real polarised democracy because there's not going to be elite or popular consensus.

What makes you think our rule would be competent. I think everyone would end up poorer for it

More competent than the Haitian government is a bar so low the Venezuelan government flies over it. Without outside support Haiti would be a failed state within months. It's reasonably close already.

Well, actually if you are going for pedantic, I think you are wrong as well. A technocracy is system in which leaders are chosen based on technical skills in various disciplines, not exactly evidence-based institutional governance. In fact, I think the parent's meaning is a little closer to "correct" than you suggest. I think you charitably say "a technocrat would suggest institution of a solar panel program" or such like that.

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