Steve Sailer’s latest over at Substack is a look at why Haiti is so stubbornly dysfunctional.
Steve mentions in passing a thing that is surely an important factor, rarely mentioned over here in discussions of U.S. immigration policy: when a place falls below comfortable levels of safety and prosperity, those who are able to — the best and brightest — emigrate to nicer places where their prospects are better, taking their virtues (and genomes) with them. This steady “boiling off” leaves behind an increasingly inspissated, incapable residue, further increasing the incentive to leave. We see this happening both in places like Haiti and in our own inner cities (which were far healthier places when social mobility was more difficult).
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I lived in Haiti for one year. There have always been this way. Read about their history and you’ll know.
In fact, they are now a bit more civilized than before. If your theory is true, it is compensated by other phenomena that go in the opposite direction
I’m not sure Haiti is looking particularly orderly just at the moment.
In riots, they used to take the skin of people alive in the street only some dècades ago. Now they kill them in a less wild way.
In the independence, they killed all white males. Now they don’t get that far. They kill white people but not all of them.
Please read their history. It is bad now, but this does not mean that it has been better.
I am about to sleep and drowsy but I can elaborate tomorrow
I am, as it happens, pretty familiar with Haiti’s history. I’ve taken an interest ever since the early 1980s, when I worked as a recording engineer on dozens of albums by Haitian bands (this, for example, was a fun one).
I get your point, but I think most people would say that the distinctions you’re making (e,g., flaying vs. merely murdering) are all just sort of “bumping along the bottom” as regards the range of civil dysfunction; there may simply be a floor to how abysmal a society can be.
If your point is that the effect I describe isn’t making things worse, well, perhaps — but then I’d say that’s only because the job is more or less complete anyhow, and so all it can do is to keep it that way.
I don’t remember to write you until I am about to sleep. Writing complex topics on a tablet is hard.
My point is that things are not going worse in Haiti. This is not a population that has been ruined. This does not necessarily mean that your effect is false. But, if it is true, there are other effects that compensate it.
In 2017, I was working in the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti and the mission was about to close. I told my family through WhatsApp: “I will tell you what will happen. The UN is going to leave Haiti. Haitians are going to kill each other and, when the world can’t take it anymore, they will send another UN mission”. The fact that Haiti was better than now (although I had to endure some wild riots) was due to the fact that a foreign force was in the country. Before that, the cruel dictatorships. Go back to the 19th century for more acts of savagery. They are built this way.
There’s certainly a good case to be made that particular countries – Haiti, Algeria, Congo, others – would be better off if they were still under colonial rule. While the words make me cringe, it’s hard not to find truth in de Gaulle’s pensees: “I know that decolonization is disastrous. That most of Africans are hardly at the state of our Middle Ages…. That they are again going to experience tribal wars, witchcraft, cannibalism….”
The situation is much the same everywhere Negros dominate, Haiti, Congo, Baltimore… It is a matter of genetics.
…there are other effects that compensate for it.
We have the phenomenon of technological progress disguising societal decline.
Over the last three centuries, we’ve gained better communications; travel; law enforcement capability; surveillance; goods and services; etc. You would think our crime rate is zero; we are all well fed and clothed, and down with social cooperation. But there is a thing I’ll call “conservation of social momentum”; we’re able to sabotage the road to a better life in service to a base level of existence.
So Haiti is better with cell phones to call for help; if not the central police, then a self organized group of friends. Access to better self defense is out there. But the bad guys get more active and keep things down in shithole status.
This is another example of jugaad ethics. Unfortunately the article (which was very enlightening) has been removed from the Internet but I have a copy.
These kinds of people are better under colonialism but this is unthinkable now. So there is an ersatz colonialism: UN, NGOS, loans from other countries with strings attached, etc., which works worse than the real colonialism but it is better than nothing.
I remember the riots in Haiti. We couldn’t get out of our apartment because of security reasons. I was an exception and I was not protected by the military (unless other people) so I had to inform my route so it was approved as safe before going to my workplace in the military base.
I had a friend from Spain, who is a policeman. He used to say: “If I see Haitians coming for me, I will take my gun and kill myself, before they flay me alive”.
Another police from Spain committed suicide. He couldn’t take it anymore. It was a hassle to send the corpse to Spain so their relatives could bury him. Haiti was such a depressing place (Full disclaimer: I have lived most of my life in Central America, where I live and write now, which is heaven compared to Haiti. I am used to the Third World).
I remember a Dominican friend. I have also lived in Dominican Republic and it is heaven compared to Haiti too. It is the the other part of the island.
Anyway, this Dominican friend worked as a cook in the UN military base. He was a really nice guy, a mulatto man that tried me to cheer me up when I was depressed. (Dominicans are mulatto while Haitians are pure blacks)
The company outsourced by the UN used to take all the kitchen staff in a minivan to take them to their apartments after the working hours. Under a riot, a group of Haitians stopped the minivan, throwing rocks at it so the minivan could not continue.
My friend and his coworkers got out of the minivan and one of the Haitian guys said in Haitian creole: “These are foreigners! They have no right to walk our streets!”
My friend and his coworkers started running for their life for two city blocks while the Haitian guys chased them while throwing rocks at them. At least, they didn’t try to flay them.
Ah, good times and good memories in Haiti! Such a lovely place!
So we are basically culling everyone with an IQ over 90 from Haiti.
What then?
From a previous comment of mine:
The first two parts of my prophecy have come true. The third part is about to come true:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/un-security-council-mulls-asking-un-plan-haiti-peacekeepers-2024-09-06/