Hacker News Reader

Comment by Georgelemental | Hacker News Reader

> Leading to suspicion that it is not "looting" but maybe the old colonial power using the local quasi-independent government to siphon money out of their former properties.

France has many other investment options with much better expected returns, especially once you account for the cost of maintaining a military presence. There is much to criticize about recent French policy in Africa, but charges that the French government is cynically enriching itself by exploiting these countries just don't match observable reality; talking with people who have spent time working there will quickly confirm. Additional evidence comes from China's attempts to enrich itself in Africa, which have mostly failed to produce the desired riches in the expected amounts.

View on HN

So it's just malicious incompetence, not even greed? There has to be a reason it seems former french colonies are never allowed to become stable. Just coup after coup, with French forces usually directly involved.

Some of it is that these countries are stuck with borders that don't make sense, some of it is cultures not suited to modernity.

And some former French colonies are relatively stable, for example Morocco and Vietnam.

France literally made Haiti pay them reparations for…revolting against their slave colony. There seems to be no low they won’t stoop to for extra bucks!

This is a disingenious comment, imo. The payment you are referring to payed in the early 1800:s.

>France demanded payment from Haiti for recognition of its independence in the early 19th century. The demand for reparations was made shortly after Haiti declared independence in 1804 following a successful revolt against French colonial rule. The negotiations and the subsequent agreement for reparations occurred between 1825 and 1838.

All water under the bridge now, right? I mean, France never gave that money back to Haiti, but let’s let bygones be bygones right?

France has given Haiti hundreds of millions of euros in aid.

Over the years, Haiti has paid France about forty billion dollars for this. So yeah, sure, near enough is good enough.

I thought Haiti was still paying until the 20th century? This is from Wikipedia:

> The first annual payment alone was six times Haiti's annual revenue.[1] The payment was later reduced to 90 million francs in 1838, equivalent to $32,535,940,803 in 2022, with Haiti paying about 112 million francs in total.[3] Over the 122 years between 1825 and 1947, the debt severely hampered Haitian economic development as payments of interest and downpayments totaled a significant share of Haitian GDP, constraining the use of domestic financial funds for infrastructure and public services.

The notion of dictators looting a significant sum of money then getting to keep and use it does not match the observable reality either, so we have to keep looking.

Uh, sure it does? The evidence is in the Swiss bank accounts, the opulent mansions, the huge monuments to Glorious Leader, etc

Swiss bank accounts are not designed to store billions of 1973 dollars. Grand mansions do not cost anything near billions of dollars. The huge monuments are embezzlement at best, bad invesment more likely.

Billions of dollars would allow them to own serious chunks of First World industry, have stuff such as investment funds or charity non-profits. That's a different kind of money.

Where's the money, Francois?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com