What about Haitian "economic development"?

"Genuine economic development is human. In others words, it is not the amount of trinkets and baubles that people produce or even the dollars that they earn that represents growth."

Dear friends,

I saw the article on the link below on a friend's Facebook post. The article was written by Nicholas Kristof, a veteran columnist of the New York Times. Kristof concentrates his work on non-Europeans; I guess because he thinks that he knows what's best for us.

Nevertheless, the aforementioned article is vintage Nicholas Kristof. His answer to Haitian economic development is to create a bunch of sweatshops. This, of course, came after he hinted at the historical exploitation of Haitians, beginning with the French.

Genuine economic development is human. In others words, it is not the amount of trinkets and baubles that people produce or even the dollars that they earn that represents growth. Rather, it is the ability for people to socially reproduce themselves, as a population group, through time, choosing their own direction in life, on their own terms.

Moreover, it’s people like Kristof who argue that slavery was actually good for Africans. Still, we have sweatshops right here in this country. What kind of future lies ahead for those caught up in that cycle of poverty and despair? After all, the people who own the sweatshops and so forth also own the politicians. Let’s keep it real.

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/opinion/21kristof.html