I worked for the UN and other organizations in Haiti for many years and can
testify that Haiti is the "perfect wave" of a failed or collapsed state and
society. As indicated violence and chaos come in waves in such countries in
an emergent fashion; Haiti has been subject to such waves since the mid 1980's
and the situation seemingly gets worse and worse. Complexity tools such as
agent based models might help both the donor community and the governments
(sic!) of such countries make better decisions about policies and programs. The
failure of Haiti as a society and a state is the direct result of negative
intervention from other countries, a plutocracy and the negative lessons
learned by Haitians from there own chaotic and violent history.
On the other hand, Haitians are remarkably adaptive to impossible situations
and the scenarios suggested in the article will probably not happen; life
will probably return to sub-normal in a matter of weeks. So the OLPC project
will undoubtedly continue. One of my own projects for the UN in Haiti was the
establishment of networks and the HT domain, which after many setbacks
finally succeeded.
Paul Paryski
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