 |
| The Leaky Tyre effect |
I am increasingly concerned that the Caribbean is in danger of missing the surging tide of a second technology-driven long wave in question, which would continue to trap us in malthusian, leaky tyre stagnation instead of allowing ourselves to follow Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Israel and India a generation later (having broken the trend of our own initial J-curve advance across the 1970's to 90's).
I am particularly concerned that we are overly influenced by fashionable but outdated and fundamentally unsound neo-marxist thought, agendas and activism that promise liberation but have consistently failed to cultivate either a soundly balanced understanding of our difficult, painful, harm-riddled history, or the cultural, technology and strategic capability-building and sound development partnerships that would buttress our ability to time and surf Kondratiev, long-wave transformational, J-curve breakout trends.
Similarly, I am concerned that Christian leaders and influencers across our region are too often either caught up in the same fashionable but failed neo-marxism (often, dressed up in ethical or theological garb but lacking material aspects that would lead to a sounder, Acts 27 influenced balance).
On this front, I am especially concerned on the subtle relativism of reducing analysis to a matter of clashing opinions; with the -- all too predictable -- projection that those who fail to toe the neo-marxist, "critical theory" line are influenced by "propaganda," or are excusing "crimes against humanity," or are stooges of neo-colonialist neo-imperialism . . . language that is itself generations out of date; given what the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the turnaround of China's economy through opening up to market-led economics all too undeniably demonstrated from the 1980's on. Even Cuba's J-curve after a leaky tyre episode has a lesson or two for us.
I am particularly disturbed to see that we are largely ignorant of the 1970 on UNCTAD-OECD ODA widespread policy consensus that a well managed commitment by leading economies to 0.7% of Gross National Income [GNI] to development aid . . . about 2.8% of Government budget (assuming a typical Government scale as 25% of national income . . . for a full generation, would credibly be sufficient to catalyse breakout from extreme poverty and could help the South to break the malthusian cycle of near flat-line economies and/or leaky tyre, "pump up and leak back down to stagnation" (as we discussed here at KF, last time and over a decade ago), through J-curve advance. Taking a long term trend on GDP growth of 1.5% and using a long-horizon public capital discount rate as 3%, starting at current world product estimate 100.91 trillion, [GNI] that would have annuity present value US$26.9 trillion, and at the "typical/traditional" 7% rate US$13.1 trillion. (Not insignificant but feasible -- as this is far cheaper than war and chaos, and as not posing an impossible, partnership-breaking, credibility undermining trillion-dollar "bill" for a single small island state. [Later, below, we will need to briefly address "justice" claims and suggestions that this is just an opening gambit -- with what BATNA, pray, tell? -- for negotiation.] )
Currently, the 0.7% International policy commitment is stated in the globally agreed UN Sustainable Development Goals, Target 17.2:
17.2 Developed countries [= OECD] to implement fully their official development assistance commitments, including the commitment by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income for official development assistance (ODA/GNI) to developing countries and 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries [--> so, ~ 0.50 - 0.55% of GNI would be for the less impoverished but struggling or fragile economies of the S]; ODA providers are encouraged to consider setting a target to provide at least 0.20 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries
We cannot afford yet another bout of being caught on the wrong side of Schumpeter's creative destruction. Accordingly, I invite us to consider another TKI-ChatGPT 5.2 collaboration exercise:
Beyond Rage: A Civic Creed for Escaping StagnationTKI + ChatGPT 5.2, Dec 25, 2025
Every society eventually reaches a moment when shouting stops working.
The Caribbean is there now.
We face stagnation, rising insecurity, fragile institutions, and a global economy reshaped by artificial intelligence, energy transition, and geopolitical rivalry. Yet our public debates are increasingly driven by anger, accusation, and ideological reflex influenced by outdated and failed neo-marxist, critical theory activism. Too often, our painful history has been weaponised, not understood; assertions of "justice" have in fact targetted descendants of our fellow oppressed (who, largely through Christian, Biblical ethics such as Epistle to Philemon) took up abolition as the world's first civil rights movement; as a result, too often our politics and policy making have become a contest of denunciation rather than a discipline of prudent, warranted, sober judgment.
This is not sustainable. Economically, morally, socially or politically.
What is needed is not amnesia about past wrongs, nor indulgence of present injustices—but a recovery of civic wisdom: the kind that allows plural societies to govern themselves without tearing themselves apart, and to build partnerships for innovation, J-curve breakout and prosperity without abandoning conscience.
Strikingly, the resources for such wisdom are not new. They are ancient—and urgently relevant.
A forgotten truth: what is unjust never truly works
In his final years, as the Roman Republic collapsed into factional violence, Cicero wrote On Duties. He was not writing for philosophers. He was writing for citizens, officials, soldiers—for anyone whose actions shaped public life.
His core claim was simple and severe: What is right and what is useful never truly conflict.
Cicero is saying something profoundly modern:
-
Corruption undermines trust.
-
Lies distort information.
-
Tyranny destroys initiative.
-
Slander fractures cooperation.
In contemporary language: Unjust systems suffer from information failure, incentive failure, and legitimacy failure.
Two thousand years later, modern economics tells the same story in different language. Societies that normalise dishonesty, politicised abuse of justice, and moral intimidation suffer capital flight, brain drain, institutional decay, loss of the soft societal capital of mutual respect and trustworthiness, and eventually stagnation. No amount of redistribution can compensate for the collapse of trust that creates hard-to-fix leaky tyre, malthusian trap economies.
This is why the current rising tendency to excuse assassination, to justify mass killing of the despised “other,” or to treat slander as activism is not merely immoral—it is economically suicidal.
Conscience, law, and public reason
The biblical tradition reinforces this point in a way that is often misunderstood. In Romans 2, the Apostle Paul observes that even those without a formal law code explicitly tracing to the Mosaic tradition
-- where, our own Common Law begins with Alfred of the West Saxons in his Book of Dooms, "When God was speaking to Moses, this is what he said . . ."
-- often act rightly, guided by conscience. Paul's claim is not theological control, but moral anthropology:
Human beings are rational, responsible, and morally governed, conscience-guided creatures.
Conscience is not propaganda nor mere dubious social conditioning. It is a built-in witness to an intelligible moral order that makes civic life possible. Without it, law becomes mere force. With it, disagreement remains governable.
That is why the ancient law of Israel, in Leviticus 19:15 - 18, insisted—not sentimentally, but sternly—that justice be impartial, that slander be rejected, that vengeance be restrained, and that neighbours reason frankly with one another. These were not pious ideals. They were anti-civil-war rules. So, let's read the actual original context for the famous Golden Rule:
Lev. 19: 15 “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. 16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
17 “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
Ignore such rules, and societies radicalise, going into a self-destructive, delusional spiral of chaos and the fatal cry for a strong man to save us -- so, let us again hear Ps 146:3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. Observe them, even imperfectly, and the fabric of mutual respect, trustworthiness and neighbourliness generally survives.
A corrective political spectrum
One reason our debates are so distorted is that we have inherited a shallow political map: “left versus right,” a framework shaped by the seating in the early revolutionary French National Assembly, and made utterly outdated by collapse of the key old European monarchies after the First World War -- the historic anchor of "the right" i.e. the Russian, Austrian & German Empires, with the Ottoman Caliphate.
A more historically grounded spectrum is both older -- we can trace elements in the Exodus story and the debate between Aristotle and Plato alike, can see concerns in the history of Athens' failure through the Peloponnesian War -- and more realistic:
Autocracy → Oligarchy → Democracy (properly buttressed) → Anarchic chaos
Seen from this long- arc- of- history viewpoint, stable, lawful, rights-protecting, sustainable democracy is not . . . repeat, NOT . . . the default state of humanity. It is in manifest, sobering fact a rare achievement, made possible only when citizens are sufficiently educated, morally formed, civic-minded, and institutionally protected to participate without destroying the state itself.
Similarly, we must pause to speak to our pain, raising some balancing concerns:
Focally, the Caribbean is not uniquely wounded; it is uniquely early. It experienced globalisation, labour flows, and identity complexity centuries before the rest of the world. Our tragedy is not that we were mixed — but that we never built institutions strong enough to hold that mixture together. Hawaii did. Singapore did. Others are learning. We can too — if we stop mistaking grievance for strategy.
Elaborating, we need Moral clarity about our painful, as yet unfinished past of slavery, the triangular trade system, the plantation, and colonisation (by Spain, Holland, France, The UK, even Denmark and Sweden . . . with a touch of Polish involvement as subject troops from Napoleon's empire sent to Haiti) that
- arises from truthful, balanced, objectively warranted description of reality
- accepts complexity, tragedy, mixed motives, and unintended consequences
- binds truth, right reason, prudence, and conscience together
- aims at repair, restraint, and future-oriented justice and good order
- recognising, that it is not in the gift of mortal man to establish final justice
- is willing to say: this was wrong, this was mixed, this was constrained, this must not be repeated
Thus, we must correct simplistic moralism that instead
- weaponises pain rather than healing it
- steamrollers multidimensional, nuanced history into accusation and
- stigmatises the other with scarlet letter indelible guilt-branding
- selects a single moral axis and absolutises it
- thrives on outrage rather than responsibility
- seeks moral leverage, not moral truth
- locks people into grievance identities that disable future-building
Or, more starkly:
Moral clarity seeks to bind wounds; ill-advised moralism seeks to reopen them for power.
That is why such simplistic, one-dimensional, flattened moralism:
- resists the prudent restraints and limits of sound developmental policy,
- distrusts and slanders or even attacks competence that dares to be independent-minded,
- undermines investment climates (forgetting that "investment is a flighty bird"),
- and ultimately reproduces the Malthusian trap it claims to oppose.
Pain becomes currency. Rage becomes capital. But, with predictably damaging effect. For, when our pain is mobilised into steamroller, juggernaut, simplistic moral narratives:
- social cohesion fractures,
- policy horizons shrink,
- external partners disengage quietly
- and the poor pay the price again.
This is not mere theory. It is the damaging pattern of our past generation, reflected in aborted J-curve takeoffs that became immiserating malthusian trends. For specific further example, when descendants of the powerless lower classes under oligarchic overlords in the years 1626 - 1834/38 (now the UK's tax base) who through Awakening rose up in the first modern civil rights movement, against slavery and its kidnapping based trade, find themselves targetted with impossible trillion dollar bills, for cause they will silently disengage from us and our claims; including, quietly walking away from "negotiations" that start with irreconcilable polarisation and stigmatisation like that -- ever wondered why negotiations that play hardball opening gambit cards like that typically drag on and on then peter out fruitlessly? Likewise, with the grim record of the holocaust and the fate of those who failed to flee quickly on the table, when angry demagogues come to power, the proverbial brain drain and capital flight will predictably accelerate to catastrophic levels.
History shows that when these cultural-moral buttresses weaken, democracies do not smoothly “correct themselves.” They slide—often rapidly—into oligarchy, strongman rule, or violent fragmentation. That is why Herodotus and Thucydides wrote their living memory histories of Athens, and it is why in the Acts, Luke makes sure to emphasise again and again, just how dangerous and open to lawless impulses the mob is.
The Caribbean’s challenge, then, is not to chant democratic slogans, but to rebuild the conditions that make lawful, prudent, sustainable democracy viable.
A civic creed for policy and public life
From these traditions—classical, biblical, and historical—we can distil a simple civic creed, not as dogma, but as operating principles suitable for children in schools, journalists editing the news, and even policy-makers:
-
Truth before advantage Public life must be governed by accurate description of reality. Persistent falsehood is the seed of injustice, slander, marches of folly, disaster.
-
Right reason with adequate warrant Decisions must be justified by sound, balanced evidence and carefully worked through logic, not rage, slogans, or tribal loyalty.
-
Prudence over impulse What feels righteous in the moment may be ruinous in the long run. For, what sweet nanny goat mouth run 'im belly.
-
Conscience as guardian Not everything legal is legitimate; not everything popular is right.
-
Neighbour-regard Policy must be capable of coherence across the whole community, not tailored to humiliate, target or exclude the despised other.
-
Fairness and justice Partiality—to rich or poor, powerful or marginal—is equally corrosive.
-
Forbearance without appeasement of evil Patience is not surrender; reform is not revenge.
This creed is not “conservative” or “progressive.” It is civilisational.
A path to reform and takeoff
What does this mean in practice?
First, we must abandon the illusion that money alone delivers development. Capital without capacity leaks away. The real work is cumulative and patient:
-
Reliable energy to power industry and services. (And yes, in an AI-driven age where we will need to own our own AI utilities, that includes reconsidering the nuclear option, not just fashionable "renewables.")
-
Digital productivity—including AI—as tools for small business, agriculture, logistics, and education.
-
Human capital grounded in competence, not credential inflation.
-
Entrepreneurship ecosystems that reward problem-solving, not proximity to power.
-
Institutional integrity that makes long-term investment rational.
This is why countries like South Korea and Singapore escaped poverty while others with similar histories did not. Not because they were morally pure—but because they refused to let ideological theatrics override disciplined policy.
Second, we must reject polarising fantasies—whether trillion-dollar reparations claims for a few hundred thousand people detached from institutional reality, or cynical calls to paper over our deep wounds and “forget the past.” Neither builds the future. Genuine partnership anchored in warranted truth and reconciliation does.
Global frameworks already exist—such as the long-standing commitment by developed nations to devote a small but not insignificant share of national income to development. Properly focused over decades on capacity rather than consumption, such resources could be transformative. But, only if recipient societies cultivate the moral and institutional soil in which they can take root.
A curriculum unit we urgently need
Finally, this wisdom must be taught—not only to students, but to those who dominate public discourse.
A single secondary-school or early tertiary module could include:
-
The Ship of State Plato’s parable, paired with the real-world case study of Acts 27, showing how prudence is ignored before crises and rediscovered during them.
-
Cicero on duty and public service Exploring why injustice undermines utility, and why corruption is never merely “pragmatic.”
-
The moral foundations of law Conscience, renewal of sound natural law (including Ciceronian first duties), and the limits of power.
-
Democracy’s prerequisites Why literacy, free speech, restraint, and moral norms matter more than slogans.
-
Case studies of takeoff and stagnation Korea (S and N), Singapore, the Caribbean (esp. Ja, BB, Haiti, Cuba, the DR)—without romanticism or fatalism.
This would not indoctrinate. It would inoculate—against rage, simplification, and despair.
Where, as there are ever ready dismissive talking points that try to set aside examples of J-curve breakout, let us pause to note:
South Korea and Singapore did not grow because they were authoritarian; they grew because they restored order, protected investment, and built trust—and the bulk of their sustained take-off came after the most authoritarian phase had passed. Authority was used, sometimes harshly, to suppress predation and establish credibility in post-war chaos; steady, generation-length compounding growth did the rest. This is why the standard retort—“Lee Kuan Yew was a dictator”—misses the point: North Korea was more authoritarian and collapsed, while Japan, Israel, Taiwan, India, and later China show that growth follows confidence, not repression. Indeed, Japan's earlier rise was largely oligarchic, but it's post-war recovery and rise to the global top tier was democratic. Democracy is not a suicide pact, but neither is it a licence for polarisation, slander, or policy incoherence. Where moral and civic buttresses restrain faction and reward competence, democratic societies can sustain the long discipline required for J-curve take-off. Where they do not, stagnation follows—regardless of ideology.
The choice before us
The Caribbean stands at a moment of decision. Artificial intelligence, energy transition, and global realignment offer unprecedented opportunity—but also amplify the cost of error.
We can continue down a path of polarisation, slander, and moral exhibitionism, and watch stagnation harden into decline.
Or we can recover a public-spiritedness older than our ideologies, firmer than our resentments, and more demanding than our slogans.
History suggests that only the latter path leads out of the Malthusian trap.
The choice is ours—if we are still willing to reason together. END