1-2-3-4-R

Thanks to my atavistic streak, I still regard a manual transmission as a necessary part of any pickup truck. My truck’s shifter is labeled so: 1-2-3-4-R. And, funny thing about my recent travels: Much of the tropics seems to be labeled the same way. The “R” is for Saipan, but let’s run through the other gears first.

Here’s a dandy for the first gear of my recent travels: Puerto Rico. Like the CNMI, it’s a “U.S. Commonwealth.” My first trip to Puerto Rico was a long time ago, and I spent most of my time in San Juan, which, just my luck, was in the midst of a murder spree. But this time around, I wound up on a more peaceful stretch of island turf, which, in many ways, looked like Tinian. It was highly enjoyable work.

In Puerto Rico, many Puerto Ricans were employed in manufacturing. Hewlett-Packard has a large and visible presence there. Pfizer, the large pharmaceuticals firm, has plants there, too. I think there has been some contraction in Puerto Rico’s pharmaceutical sector in recent times, but, well, they’re still operating to some extent. Also, I saw lots of small-scale businesses, owned, operated, and staffed by locals.

A scion of a local family had heard I’m a coffee hound, so he gave me a cup of coffee and asked me what I thought of it. Great stuff, I said. He beamed with pride: He told me that the coffee came from his family’s plantation. They operated it themselves. Tended it themselves.

Then, second gear, I went to Taiwan. Technically, not all of Taiwan is a “tropical island,” given that the Tropic of Cancer cuts through it. But, that’s close enough: its feet are in the tropics. Anyway, Taiwan is an impressive island, a beehive of activity. I wrote about Taiwan earlier this year, so I won’t rehash old tales. Suffice it to say that the people are very hardworking, and there’s a strong and vibrant entrepreneurial sector.

Then, third gear, Macau. Wow, that Macau! Talk about a boom town, or, I guess, boom island. Construction cranes were in great evidence. Fancy, private jets zoomed in and out of the airport. Macau, as you know, is casino central. I guess they like having jobs, economic activity, financial growth, and all that stuff. Imagine that.

But I’m just now getting to the most impressive of them all, the turbo-overdrive, super-charged, incredibly fast-paced top gear: Hong Kong. Hardworking, risk-taking, entrepreneurial, no-nonsense, fast-living, efficient, confident, cultured, busy, Hong Kong.

And now we contemplate Saipan. Stuck in “R,” for “reverse.” It’s quite a contrast with the other places (though I’m sure that Uncle Sugar’s handouts to Puerto Rico have had the inevitable effects to some extent). While much of the tropics has embraced global commerce, and the economic self-empowerment it brings, the CNMI, with a patronage economy, has embraced, uh, talking (in either complaining, hectoring, demanding, or lecturing terms, depending on who is wagging their tongues) about how somebody ELSE ought to “do something.”

The situation has been neatly summarized thusly: An Asian business owner defined Saipan as “a place where people sit in the dark and lecture each other on how to generate electricity.” You have to admit (as you read these words by candle light) that’s pretty funny.

And the behavior won’t change. So the CNMI economy will continue to roll downhill. If you can predict behavior, you can predict economics. That’s what economics is: behavior, as manifested in, and measured by, markets. See? Easy.

Well, this ain’t my first rodeo. So I know this: As the slide continues, our massive inventory of talkers and gadflies will eventually polarize into different cliques that are mutually antagonistic. They’ll all be shouting louder and louder that the others haven’t “done enough” to “fix” everything. We’ll have a bumper crop of shrill and angry sanctimony. Such is the dead end of the entitlement road.

Indeed, the CNMI is stuck in “R” for reverse, while so much of the world is racing ahead, or at least trying to. No wonder why the outside world seems so distant: It’s going in the other direction.