Showing posts with label Haiti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Haiti. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Financializing Haiti; or, Today in non sequiturs

I recently read a fascinating piece in Forbes about an NGO in Haiti. The author of the piece is Willy Foote, the founder of "an agricultural lender" called Root Capital.  The point of the piece is to celebrate the work of the expiring Clinton-Bush Fund by explaining some of the fine things that Root has done with Fund resources, and to explain the challenges that make the business environment in Haiti unlike any other environment in the world.

So on the way to doing this work Mr Foote writes the following:

We have worked in 30 African, Latin American and Caribbean countries since 2000 and we’re bringing all that learning and innovation to address the challenges of building agricultural businesses that generate long-term social, economic and environmental sustainability in rural Haiti.  It has been hard, truth to tell. The business challenges concentrated in that one small, impoverished nation are formidable—from weak government systems, to severe environmental degradation (less than 1.5 percent of land is forested in Haiti) to limited education and poor health status.
Consequently, most groups in Haiti, regardless of their business experience, need some form of financial management training intervention in order to grow and thrive.

This is important work, to be sure, and Mr. Foote points us to some important considerations. But that  'consequently' worries me. In order to accept financial management training as the solution to the problems that he mentions, one has to make at least one big assumption, and leave a lot of questions unasked. (OK, so this is less a non sequitur than an argument with suppressed premises. But it feels like a non sequitur.)

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Today's Best: The Philosopher's edition (11-15-12)


  1. Today's best way to celebrate World Philosophy Day: As reported by Inside Higher Ed: "I've gotten word from a philosophy major at Howard University that he and other students will be occupying Alain Locke Hall on Thursday, November 15, to protest tuition rates, administrative mistreatment of janitorial staff, and program cuts."
  2. Today's best diss from a philosopher : The mighty Jurgen Habermas writes that the German Constitutional Court is 'solipsistic and normatively depleted.' Wish I'd had that line handy in some arguments with former friends. ("You're not just inconsiderate. You're solipsistic and normatively depleted.")
  3. Today's best beneficiary of the view from nowhere (journalistic version): popular-musician-turned-politician Michel Martelly, known during his performing days as 'Sweet Micky,' has taken to the Haitian presidency with enthusiasm.