Bad Roads, Bad Economies and Winners

More lessons from Haiti for the American economy.

by Jerry Agar

It is less than 90 miles from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, north on Highway 3 to Pignon.  It takes about three and a half hours if you have a brave driver and you don’t dawdle – and that is only because the first 20 miles is actually paved.

America has roads like the main highways in Haiti, but they are in the Rocky Mountains and they are used only by thrill-seeking four-wheelers and dirt bike riders.  The track looks like the remains of an old but aggressive mountain stream, dried up and waiting to drink the oil right out of the bottom of your vehicle.  Highway 3 is a very bad road.

Yet all along that dusty carnival ride commerce takes place.  People line the sides – and spill into the margins – of the road with tables offering candy, fruits, cooked foods and – it turns out – services an American could easily not realize are there.

Not too surprisingly we had a tire going flat, so our host, Pastor Jepthe, pulled the SUV over to the side of the road as we entered a small town.  Some young men were lounging around in the ditch, looking to me like the guys we see spending their days hanging out on the street corner in bad neighborhoods in America.

One of the guys came up out of the ditch and spoke to Jepthe.  He then brought some tools out of the ditch, repaired the hole, started up a compressor with an old pull-rope and filled it back up to normal.  We were on our way.

I asked Jepthe how he knew that the guy would fix the tire.  Jepther replied that he is often in that town and knew that there was a shop.  A shop!  The tire held for several more trips and was still fine when I left a few days later.

The average Haitian makes less than two American dollars a day.  Jepther paid the “shop” guy six dollars.  I don’t know how often he does business – perhaps some days he does none, as a lot of the traffic is on foot or donkey – but he made a few days worth of wages that afternoon.  I am not sure there are taxes on that exchange.

Roads are necessary for economic development.  Good roads make it possible to move goods and deliver services.  Haiti is not providing many of the people and communities those necessary roads.

We take good roads for granted and we complain loudly when a few potholes go unfilled.  We pay a lot of taxes on cars, gasoline, repairs and everything associated with the automobile.  We pay tolls.  Trucking companies pay taxes and we pay sales taxes on everything we buy – all of which was in a truck and on the road at some time.  The roads make commerce possible and the taxes circle back to pay for the roads.

With a good road system, would the Haitian economy improve?  Would more vehicles travel between Port-au-Price and Pignon?  Would there actually one day be a shop you and I could recognize?  You know, one with a sign out front, a parking area and a roof.

The tire guy worked hard.  He stood out there in the heat waiting for whatever business he could gather.  He wants to succeed.  He is a winner.  His government is a loser.

Haitians may have been terrorized in the past by Papa Doc, but today they seem to be ignored.  For days after the earthquake, they did not hear from their government, and when they finally did it was when President Preval came forth to complain that his palace had been damaged.  My impression was of a people left on their own, before and after the earthquake.  

The tire guy’s government ignores him.  So he ignores them, I am sure, and they are no use to one another.

Too much government is destructive and too little is not much better.  

It is an ancient and on-going problem.  How much is just enough?