I can't listen to this guy. 1.4x is about 1.4x too slow. Add a 1.96x button. Thx.

Simple question, incomprehensible answer. Collier should have saved everyone time by saying he doesn't know. That's fine, it's a tough question.

The USA could do Haitians a favor and take them to Senegal where they are welcome. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8463921.stm

Over population is a major problem in Haiti. The country desperately needs a national family planning policy.

Saying that population control is desperately needed seems to beyond the pale of intellectuals and politicians. Fools!

Does Haiti actually have a government? How many educated people are in it? Enough to administer a democracy? To run elections, utilities, roads, a judiciary, collect taxes, etc? If not, Haiti needs to be put under a United Nations protectorate for a full generation with a large infusion of human capital from abroad. Would that be politically unpalatable? To whom? The tiny elite that cannot run the country? I admit I know little about the place except what I read in the papers. It's just that there seems to be so much wishful thinking going on. Ordinary Haitians get lost in the shuffle. This is not about them?

I agree with Paul Collier on what to do about Haiti. Haitians need to emigrate on mass to the United States, Canada, France, French speaking Africa, and wherever they can go where they get employment. Haiti is too small and does not have the government and business interests to employ all of it's employable millions. There's 10 million people in Haiti and something like 66% of the economy is agrarian, and that's largely subsistence farming. There's no way that can sustain every Haitian, and is not a starting point for development of the country. Haiti needs t-shirt and underwear factories and the like started from outside business concerns. Others need to emigrate to find work elsewhere. Fewer people in Haiti will also mean more for the people who remain, they'll have less competition for resources, work, space, and whatever else.

Quoting michaelx: I can't listen to this guy. 1.4x is about 1.4x too slow. Add a 1.96x button. Thx.

I had never used that before. It was very useful. Thanks for inspiring me to try it out. I'm watching this right after picking up William Easterly's "The White Man's Burden". Easterly is the person most critical of Collier I'm aware of (I'll try to get Collier's books later to balance that out, but they're not yet available at the local libraries). Perhaps because I've been on an Easterly/Jane Jacobs/James Scott kick I'm disinclined toward Collier's push for "coordination". Can't these different groups all just independently try to find helpful things to do? As Mao once (albeit disingenuously) said "Let a thousand flowers bloom!". Is there any reason to suggest their performance would IMPROVE if some central authority "coordinated" them? He throws around the terms "zoo" versus "coherence" and "order", but doesn't explain how the latter is actually better other than that the words he chose have different connotations. He mentions that Haiti doesn't have a problem with violence. Perhaps not the serious identity-based cleavages of a Yugoslavia, but it wasn't that many years ago there was a