Autonomous municipalities would be a step in the right direction. Perhaps investors would be more comfortable working in 'zones' of international law and order. - serious reform of the "État civil"; That is critical. But also there must be an understanding that investors and municipalities have the right to legitimate self defense against encroachment by politically connected con men. E.g. my property cannot be seized and or arbitrarily over taxed in order to pressure me to sell or to accept a deal with a politically connected local business person. Any act taken in defense of my legitimately acquired property is considered self defense. - the creation of a complete cadastre; - systematic encouragement to migration towards the cities; Some cities are overcrowded. Controlled movements of population toward targeted areas. We must think of carrying capacity. Also certain kinds of work does not need a 'city' - building roads More room for maneuver. Private road project or toll roads/tunnels. Deals can be made with interested parties. If someone build a road or a tunnel - considerably increasing the supply of electricity; An opt in and optout option for electricity consumption. operthaps some people would like to try alternatives to the national electrical grid. If some people can invest in a solar or other such as garbage burning electricity generating schemes that should be allowed. - creating a good telecommunications infrastructure; Let a thousand flowers bloom. Land lines can be upgraded cheaply and also wireless technology can allow from a quick transition. The old copper wired can be tweaked for digital signals. - allowing maximum autonomy to municipalities; YES!!!! YES!!!! YES!!!! private security forces that can function within that given jurisdiction and as long as it does not conflict with the national Haitian police force acting 'within the law' The police must obey all laws like everyone else. Haitian can self select as long as anti discrimination laws are followed. These municipalities can function almost like the semi autonomous campus es of Stanford U of Chicago and Princeton etc...with it's own private police. Environmental standards and labor standards and planning. Some cities can declare themselves 'low growth/slow' cities etc... - setting up a judiciary dedicated to the elimination of cheating and cheaters. EASIER said than done. Independent civil society monitoring of judiciary. Organizations such as amnesty international and transparency international should have a database of all judiciaries and their decisions and affilaitatiosn and a rating system should be implemented to monitor the judiciaries in order to avoid abuses under legal guise. Herve Michel On 12/20/05, Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu> wrote:
On Sunday, 18 December 2005 11:55, you wrote:From: OLOFFSONRAM I've been reading and re-reading Heinl's Written In Blood and it suddenly struck me that no one has ever had a plan for 2 to 3 hundred thousand jobs in Haiti. What hope is there for fundamental change in Haiti without work?Allow me to make an attempt at some answers. But, first, let me say that the focus should not be on jobs per se. Rather, it should be on creating an appropriate environment for investments that will generate jobs. I realize this may be nitpicking, but the distinction might be important. How you phrase a problem may lead to inappropriate answers. Starting from the obvious, that is, everything is still to be built in Haiti, we can reasonnably assume that we need to start with the basics. If the goal is a free and democratic society, then that society will be based on individual freedoms and property rights. In that case the first task of the state is to identify its citizens and what property they own. There are a lot of measures of economic development. International organizations keep coming up with more. But we only need one number to measure the process of development: the rate of change of productivity. The higher it is, the faster we will grow. Therefore we need to concentrate on the factors that make societies productive. There are several but one indisputable factor is urban density. Three other indicators are the speed at which people and materials move about; how fast information is transferred, from one point to another or from one person to another; and how much energy is made available. Two other factors, largely political, are also important. The first is how autonomous municipalities are or can be. In fact, in general, it seems that the more independant institutions a society has, the more developed it is. The last factor I'll mention, the most critical one, the sine qua non, is how a society fights cheating and cheaters. Given these premises, what we need is a programme whose main objective is to rapidly increase productivity. This programme would be based on: - serious reform of the "État civil"; - the creation of a complete cadastre; - systematic encouragement to migration towards the cities; - building roads - considerably increasing the supply of electricity; - creating a good telecommunications infrastructure; - allowing maximum autonomy to municipalities; - setting up a judiciary dedicated to the elimination of cheating and cheaters. I have hardly mentionned jobs. And yet, I believe that as outlined here, this programme would create an environment where investment in the future would be possible. In turn these investments would create hundreds of thousand of real, permanent, useful and productive jobs over a few short years. Philippe
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