Looking into the stats, Haiti had 60% of forest cover in 1923 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Haiti. If the debt made deforestation inevitable, why did Haiti have so many forests far into the servicing of the debt? I feel there MUST be something which happened in the 20th century which really accelerated deforestation aside from the debt.
I just don't buy the "debt destroyed all future economic/agricultural output" angle at all. If you just showed people a bunch of chart of different countries economic information and agricultural output devoid of broader context, nobody would probably EVER come to the conclusion that the debt led to the stagnation in agricultural output in Haiti from the numbers alone. If you compared the debt vs deforestation, again, nobody would conclude the debt caused the deforestation from the actual data. People would only ever conclude that if they're being shown unblinded data.
Let me stress here - I'm not even saying this must all be Haiti's fault, or that debt didn't have a profound impact which have shrunk Haiti's economy many times over. I'm saying the debt doesn't explain what happened. I feel like I'm getting a fraction of the picture here. All sorts of wild shit happened in Haiti in the 20th century, the United States occupied the country for instance and the deforestation correlates MUCH more strongly with this occupation than it does the debt.
I just don't buy the "debt destroyed all future economic/agricultural output" angle at all. If you just showed people a bunch of chart of different countries economic information and agricultural output devoid of broader context, nobody would probably EVER come to the conclusion that the debt led to the stagnation in agricultural output in Haiti from the numbers alone. If you compared the debt vs deforestation, again, nobody would conclude the debt caused the deforestation from the actual data. People would only ever conclude that if they're being shown unblinded data.
Let me stress here - I'm not even saying this must all be Haiti's fault, or that debt didn't have a profound impact which have shrunk Haiti's economy many times over. I'm saying the debt doesn't explain what happened. I feel like I'm getting a fraction of the picture here. All sorts of wild shit happened in Haiti in the 20th century, the United States occupied the country for instance and the deforestation correlates MUCH more strongly with this occupation than it does the debt.