I learned a couple of days ago that the Haitian island to which I made a mission trip a year and a half ago has been targeted for development by private investors. The extremely ambitious plan is to turn the island into a giant resort. Supposedly every person living on the island is to be guaranteed a job. It's by no means clear that this plan will ever come to fruition, but the investors are pushing for cooperation from the Haitian government.
My feelings about this are, at my most generous, highly ambivalent. Part of me feels that since I don't have to eke out a life for myself on this island, I'm not really entitled to have objections. People there need to decide whether they think this proposal will benefit them (assuming, though, that they'll have any kind of democratic voice in the process, which probably shouldn't be assumed). I'm sure lots of people living there will see the investment as a godsend.
On the other hand, it makes me furious that we live in a global system where this development is happening because some investors want to turn the island into a playground where rich people can be waited on by poor black people. This plan arises from a system of unequal wealth and privilege that is by definition evil, even if good can be made to come of it. My mind is drawn to D&C 49:20—"It is not given that one person should possess that which is above another; therefore the world lies in sin." Or D&C 104:16—"This is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints: that the poor shall be exalted in that the rich are made low." I believe that. The Lord didn't say he would provide for the poor by securing them jobs bringing cold drinks to the rich as they lounge on the beach. This is not the way the world is supposed to work, and I resent feeling like we have to settle for it.
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