The Global Challenge of the Caribbean

I haven't been writing about the Caribbean that much lately. There's a reason, and the reason is that the Caribbean really needs to sort itself out - which myself and others already knew, but now I can write about it a bit more.

The Litmus Phonebook

When Olivier, Diane and Max visited from Martinique, we talked about Martinique and Guadeloupe not being viewed as parts of the Caribbean because they are département d'outre-mer of France - which means that they are integral parts of the Republic of France. So, maybe because of that, they aren't seen as parts of the Caribbean. And yet that doesn't explain why we couldn't find the dialing codes of either in the Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago phone book. That's just wrong.

Internet Governance and MIDS

At the Caribbean Internet Governance Forum in Guyana last year, everyone was talking about Internet Governance buy there were less than 10 laptops in the room. These are the people working on Internet Governance policy in the Caribbean? Seems to me like a symptom of MIDS (Courtesy Thomas Friedman):

MIDS (Microprocessor Immune Deficiency Syndrome): A disease that can afflict any bloated, overweight, sclerotic system in the post-Cold War era. MIDS is usually contracted by countries and companies that fail to innoculate themselves against changes brought about by the microchip, and the democratizations of technology, finance and information - which created a much faster, more open and more complex marketplace, with a whole new set of efficiencies. The symptoms of MIDS appear when a country or company exhibits a consistent inability to increase productivity, wages, living standards, knowledge use and competitiveness, and becomes too slow to respond to the challenges of the Fast World. Countries and companies with MIDS tend to be those run on Cold War corporate models - where one or few people at the top hold all the information and make all the decisions, and all the people in the middle and the bottom simply carry out those decisions, using only the information they need to know to do their jobs. The only known cure for countries and companies with MIDS is 'the fourth democratization.' This is the democratization of decision-making and information flows, and the deconcentration of power, in ways that allow more people in a country or company to share knowledge, experiment and innovate faster. This enables them to keep up with a marketplace in which consumers are constantly demanding cheaper products and services tailored specifically for them. MIDS can be fatal to those companies and countries that do not get appropriate treatment in time.

The Caribbean has a problem with the concentration of power. And some of the island governments need to stop reading their own tourist brochures as well and really work on other aspects of the lives of their citizens.

Linking, Social Networking, and "But I Can't Get Funding For That"

But then, on the NGO side, there's the same problem by the people who are claiming to be trying to improve the system. I sent LinkedIn invitations to people I met at the second CARDICIS meeting, since one of the things that kept being talked about was networking professionals in the region. OK - there's things like LinkedIn around already - use them! So I sent out some invitations to test the waters.

One NGO person joined, but told me that they didn't think it would be useful (thus, this person will claim that it's a success or failure based on who joins without them being involved). Three others emailed me that Guyana, Suriname and Haiti weren't possible countries in the list and therefore they would not join. My response was that they should email and tell them to add them to the list - duh. The woman from Suriname did. One fellow from Guyana is still sulking somewhere, the other joined. The fellow from Haiti sent me a 4-5 paragraph response that started off with an argument against joining, which I didn't bother to read, but he joined - and failed to connect to me, or anyone else... a social orphan.

Then let's talk about the Wikipedia. I mentioned at CARDICIS II that volunteers were doing the work that the NGOs were trying to get funding to do - at no cost, in their spare time. Sort of like the social networking aspect that some NGOs really seem to think is an 'original thought'. The proper definition of vacuum comes to mind. Why? Apparently because people are trying to get funding for Caribbean-specific initiatives, which would be good except for one thing: The world is in a period of accelerating globalization, but you wouldn't know it where I was sitting last year. It's like being in an elevator, hitting the button to the top floor and everyone hitting the button to the lobby. And there's no power to the elevator, because the power to the elevator is really the grassroots that are being ignored/held in disregard by governments and NGOs. But that's OK.

My thought on this is that if you're looking for funding for something that can't later on fund itself, you're just in it for the money. And that, too, is fine - but that's business, not 'Civil Society'. Quit faking the funk.

I think the real future of the Caribbean lies in the private sector, if the banking and telecommunications sectors ever sort themselves out. eCommerce is a bad joke, at least within CARICOM members, and telecommunications is something which has to become more than an abstract concept. Still, people in the region are learning to work around the archaic, colonial bureaucracies and aristocracies of the region - for internet access, for VoIP, and for eCommerce. Who loses? The bureaucracies and aristocracies that neglect them. Do we care?

Should we care? I don't really think so.

Beyond Tourism, Oil and Bananas

I'm in Trinidad and Tobago, which would probably have a distinctly different economic prioritization without oil and natural gas. Other islands depend on tourism, others bananas and other agricultural produce. Niche markets, maybe, but the islands producing agriculturally are in direct competition with countries of South America (thus the picture on the right). These are the large industries. These are the industries that rule policy in the region... and when they are threatened, the specific countries find themselves deeper in the globalization hole.

Populations increase, the size of islands diminish (at different rates). You can only pump so much oil out of the ground. You can only raise so many bananas or cane stalks. And you can only house so many tourists. The global market demands lower oil prices, despite increasing costs of finding and drilling for oil. The global market demands more agriculture, yet there are only so many acres in an island. To remain competitive, tourism has to maintain low prices.

Low prices. But how do we expect that more people can earn more money per individual? An economist could probably provide an interesting response, talking about earning power and so forth - so let's modify the question: How do more people get more earning power in a market of increased competition? One answer is to lobby and so forth, which worked last year for bananas - this time. Another answer is to diversify. But that requires exercising and strengthening alternative issues affecting policy. Strengthening strong muscles while ignoring the weak leads to funny looking bodybuilders.

It leads to more crime and worse - poorly designed bumper stickers. In Trinidad, the answer that the government came up with was Christmas Shopping in Israel for another blimp, or 'airship' as they choose to call it, when the police response on the ground is the real problem. Trinidad is only approximately 60 miles by 40 miles. 2 blimps. Helicopters. And more murders and ransom kidnappings than you can shake an Israeli made Uzi at. The crime is supposedly the product of 'gang warfare', and a nefarious 'Mr. Big' who the Prime Minister names and yet cannot seem to build a case against.

But as my brother told me, it's the same thing everywhere. The U.S. has very similar problems. France had riots last year from a bunch of people who were tired of being tired. The difference, perhaps, is the speed with which things change for the best.

As I write this, I hear an ambulance siren. Medical facilities. Odd that the most noted medical facilities are in Cuba, one of the countries with the history of the most trade handicaps in the region. When you take stock of who was on which side during the Cold War and where they are now, there are some interesting distinctions in the region. But then, as Raul Valdes Vivo, the rector of the Cuban Communist Party's Nico Lopez school for advanced studies outside of Havana, is quoted as saying by Thomas Friedman:

"Cuba is no longer an island," he mused. "There are no islands anymore. There is only one world."

Looks like the communist country in the region has figured out what the 'democracies' in the region haven't.

Ending Notes

The Caribbean is a wonderful place - forget the marketing brochures with umbrellas in the drinks - it's a wonderful place because there are good and intelligent people here. Sturdy, too - all descended from people who survived long sea voyages, and the gross majority having done some backbreaking physical labour. Nobel Laureates arose despite the odds per unit population being against them. Some, like V.S. Naipaul, deny being a part of the Caribbean perhaps because of their era, and what could and should have been.

Meanwhile, in Trinidad we have this thing called 'CEPEP' which seems to allow only menial labor, and no training for the global economy (and sounds like an anti-acid). Unless, of course, you want your streets cleaned, grass removed by cutlass... then I look at initiatives around the world like Digital Divide Data, which seems like such an intuitive move that I can't help but wonder why even the richest country in the Caribbean doesn't have something substantial like it. We have plans for a technology park here. Someday. Right.

I sit here with a foot in the reality of the Caribbean, and my eyes and mind stuck in a global reality which seems to contrast heavily. When I normally write, I do not write about the Caribbean and probably won't as much because there simply isn't as much happening. If I had a blog entry for every reported murder in Trinidad and Tobago in 2005, I would have had more than one entry a year... and each individual who died deserves something, I suppose, but I am desensitized - even when it happens to people I know.

Diane Moreau told me that I could make a difference if I chose to. Well, I chose to 5 years ago, and while it has been personally enriching, there's no progress on the things I believe need to progress. I handed her a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged '' before she left. Because I believe that for the Caribbean to progress, Atlas and all those that make up Atlas need to shrug. I, for one, am beginning to shrug more vigorously.

Any social or governmental agency that isn't making progress is irrelevant. Actively and aggresively moving towards results is all that matters - in the Caribbean, and around the entire planet. If you cannot affect a process or policy that affects you, what else is there to do? Shrug.