I found this documentary to be really eye opening. I would have never expected to hear from a developing country that foreign aid is harming their economy. The biggest aspect of entrepreneurship I took away from this were the harmful side effects of government intervention.
To begin, these side effects were being experienced in the markets of Haiti following some tough economic times. For a while now, developed countries around the world have been supplying aid to poor countries like Haiti. In fact, this has become so common that there is a huge industry created by these generous intentions. Unfortunately, the supply of free products and services to Haiti have been harmful to the country's growth. This is because entrepreneurs in Haiti face the risk of losing their business to foreign aid that has DONATED the same thing they were selling. As a result, there were many stories in the documentary where small business owners lost everything because they couldn't compete with free. This leaves the community dependent on foreign aid and discourages entrepreneurs from seeking to create value. There was one story where a couple of domestic businesses were inquired for a large job in Haiti but lost the opportunity because a foreign company offered to do it for free. The Haiti government shared with the local business owners that they just couldn't refuse the free money. The foreign company got the job and the local businesses had to take the position as subcontractors for a small cut of the percentage.
This aspect was the most interesting because before the documentary I just thought that our current donations were insufficient. I learned that if any, government intervention was overwhelming in developing countries and that the side effects were killing domestic growth. Moreover, this aspect was entrepreneurial because it proved that a heavily regulated market could not flourish. In Haiti, relief has been rolling in for decades now and the poverty has not gotten better. There are fewer Haiti owned businesses and the worst part is they are practically disconnected from the global market.
As a result, this aspect of entrepreneurship affects society in a negative way. Society is left without entrepreneurs, so they must depend on the government and foreign aid to provide. This leaves society with extraordinarily little optionality because they must take what they are given. In addition, society supports this aspect because it sounds like a better idea to be given free resources than to have to buy them. Also, once this has been going on for long enough, it becomes natural for later generations. They just assume that they are unfit to provide for themselves so they should just live off of whatever foreign aid they receive. This interaction between entrepreneurs and society is a terrible situation that harms everyone involved. Haiti will never be able to develop if the government cannot step away from the market. They need to quit being bought out by foreign aid and let the entrepreneurs of the country start creating value. In any country, if entrepreneurs are having to compete with free foreign products and goods then we can't expect that country to have much. It will become a continuous cycle of beggars and philanthropists where no value is created. That is the sad reality of government intervention in Haiti.
