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00:00:31.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:00:32.640 | Today I want to tell you about the worst international trip that I myself have ever taken, which
00:00:38.400 | just so happens to have been my honeymoon, which just so happens to have been to the
00:00:43.200 | nation of Haiti.
00:00:44.600 | And I want to draw from this trip for you some important lessons related to societies
00:00:49.740 | in general, economics broadly, and personal finance.
00:00:54.580 | Haiti has been in the news over the last, well, really months, but it really came to
00:00:58.820 | a boiling point over this past weekend as the nation's capital and indeed the country
00:01:04.680 | broadly has been wracked by violence, extreme violence for months now.
00:01:10.200 | And it has boiled over to the point where over the weekend, the United States of America
00:01:14.480 | performed an emergency airlift to withdraw all non-essential personnel from the US embassy.
00:01:19.960 | The European Union has withdrawn all of its diplomats.
00:01:23.040 | And it's so bad that the leader of the country can't even get back into his own country
00:01:28.180 | because of the violence that ultimately shut down the airport.
00:01:31.760 | Now all of this is ineffably sad, but none of this is surprising.
00:01:37.920 | My first experience with Haiti came on my honeymoon.
00:01:41.960 | Now before you think I'm the worst president in the world, remember that other great people
00:01:45.800 | have also taken their wives to Haiti for honeymoon.
00:01:49.560 | After all, former President Bill Clinton took Hillary Clinton to Haiti on their honeymoon.
00:01:54.440 | But my story is not quite so interesting as that.
00:01:57.400 | When my wife and I were newly married, I was looking around trying to figure out where
00:02:00.920 | would be an interesting place to go for a honeymoon.
00:02:04.080 | And I was able to get a great deal on an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic, which is,
00:02:08.480 | of course, part of the island of Hispaniola.
00:02:11.200 | And there are two nations that share that island.
00:02:13.960 | You have the Dominican Republic and also the nation of Haiti.
00:02:17.280 | And since my wife and I both enjoy Spanish and French, I thought it would be a fun travel
00:02:22.300 | experience for us to spend a week in the Dominican Republic and then to go to Haiti.
00:02:26.720 | So we flew into the DR, and then after a week at an all-inclusive resort, we got on a bus
00:02:32.000 | and went from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
00:02:37.360 | And on that bus ride, I began to understand that perhaps I had gotten myself in a little
00:02:41.920 | bit over my head.
00:02:42.920 | I didn't do a lot of research on Haiti.
00:02:45.240 | I just knew that, "Hey, it's a French-speaking place."
00:02:48.000 | I knew it was fairly poor at the time.
00:02:50.320 | I wasn't too worried about violence.
00:02:52.000 | I've traveled in a lot of difficult places, and I thought, "It'll be fine.
00:02:55.320 | We'll figure it out."
00:02:56.740 | But on the bus itself, I wound up meeting some people on the bus who were quite concerned
00:03:01.680 | about the decision that I had made.
00:03:03.240 | And in fact, there was one lady who was on the bus who had a private driver who was meeting
00:03:08.560 | her, and she insisted that her private driver would be the one to drive us from the bus
00:03:13.960 | station to our hotel.
00:03:16.360 | So we went to – I think it was called the Caribe Hotel in downtown Port-au-Prince for
00:03:20.320 | our first night.
00:03:21.640 | Remarkable experience.
00:03:22.640 | We were there a year after the big earthquake, and actually I wound up meeting Anderson Cooper,
00:03:27.880 | the CNN host, who was in Haiti for basically a review of the earthquake, what was happening
00:03:36.440 | to Haiti a year or so after the earthquake.
00:03:39.040 | And we started in Port-au-Prince, and then from Port-au-Prince, we took a bus across
00:03:43.200 | the mountains to a city called Jacmel.
00:03:46.760 | I wanted to visit the Bassin Bleu there in Jacmel, so we took a little minibus across
00:03:51.480 | the mountains.
00:03:52.880 | And that was where everything started to go awry because we did not have an enjoyable
00:03:59.060 | travel experience.
00:04:00.680 | And in fact, after getting to Jacmel and spending two days in Jacmel, I experienced the desire
00:04:07.880 | – and in fact, I actually chose to do something I had never done before and have not done
00:04:13.000 | since, which was just to leave somewhere as quickly as possible.
00:04:17.680 | When we were in Jacmel, our experience was so bad that my wife and I took the first bus
00:04:22.520 | back to Port-au-Prince that we could get, and we went directly to the airport.
00:04:27.120 | And I was determined to buy the first flight out that I could get.
00:04:30.240 | Unfortunately, when we got to the airport, all of the international flights had gone
00:04:33.680 | for the day.
00:04:35.200 | And so instead of taking a flight out of the country, I wound up taking an early morning
00:04:39.700 | flight the next day and flying to Cape Haitian, where we spent one more day visiting something
00:04:48.120 | called the Palace of Saint-Suzy and the Citadel, which is truly remarkable, an amazing place
00:04:53.320 | to visit.
00:04:54.320 | We really enjoyed our time in Cape Haitian and then later wound up taking the bus early
00:04:58.560 | back to the Dominican Republic.
00:05:01.180 | But why was Haiti so bad?
00:05:03.360 | Well, I'll tell you, quite simply, I felt like every single person with whom I interacted
00:05:10.860 | in our trip in Haiti was out to cheat me in some way, shape or form.
00:05:18.020 | I'm not an inexperienced traveler, but I found it quite challenging to hang on to my money,
00:05:24.180 | to hang on to my luggage, when every single person at every single level of society, including
00:05:30.660 | all of the people who are serving tourists in the tourist industry, is trying to cheat
00:05:35.700 | me out of my money.
00:05:38.340 | And I reflected quite a lot, I spoke to a lot of Haitians trying to understand why that
00:05:44.140 | might be.
00:05:45.140 | I developed a theory.
00:05:46.460 | This is purely my theory, my experience from spending what wound up being three or four
00:05:51.560 | days in Haiti.
00:05:53.440 | But my theory as to why my experience in Haiti was so unpleasant is this.
00:05:58.540 | Haitians refuse to cooperate with one another in any meaningful way.
00:06:03.580 | The experience that I had being in Haiti was that every single Haitian is out to fight
00:06:10.980 | against every other single Haitian on a daily basis.
00:06:16.140 | I don't know why that is.
00:06:17.860 | My opinion or my theory is that it has something to do with the history of Haiti.
00:06:22.260 | One thing that's very important to understand about the Haitian nation and culture is that
00:06:29.100 | Haitians are extremely proud of their heritage as being the only successful black slave revolt
00:06:37.260 | in world history.
00:06:38.900 | So as many black Africans were enslaved all around the world, in Haiti, the slaves were
00:06:43.100 | able to rise up and defeat their masters in battle and create the only independent formerly
00:06:49.580 | slave nation, which is the nation of Haiti.
00:06:52.740 | But as I reflected on it and thought about my own experience there, I thought this must
00:06:56.160 | explain at least some of the horrifically unfriendly culture.
00:07:02.140 | Haitians argue with one another constantly.
00:07:05.420 | It seems like they don't ever want to take the lower place, the place of a servant.
00:07:10.900 | Now I believe that the basic foundation of a functional society is the willingness that
00:07:18.260 | neighbors, friends, co-workers, that we all have to serve one another.
00:07:23.180 | I take that primarily from Christian theology.
00:07:25.500 | Jesus taught that the greatest among you must be the servant of all.
00:07:29.260 | And I see that throughout society, especially in a free capitalist society, the man who
00:07:34.300 | can serve the most people in the most effective way is ultimately the man who winds up becoming
00:07:40.060 | the greatest.
00:07:41.220 | All of the greatest entrepreneurs of our culture, the people that we lionize, became well appreciated
00:07:46.700 | by the public because they served the public effectively.
00:07:49.900 | They served their customers.
00:07:51.180 | And in a country where we love one another and we serve one another, we can have lots
00:07:56.180 | of nice things.
00:07:57.580 | But if we aren't willing to humble ourselves and genuinely serve one another, all of our
00:08:03.060 | nice things will disappear.
00:08:05.780 | That's what I observed in Haiti.
00:08:07.500 | That's what I observe happening.
00:08:09.180 | Now it should be no surprise to you where Haiti is today because the situation that
00:08:14.340 | you see today, the horrific, awful situation that you see today is the natural outgrowth
00:08:20.340 | of this philosophy, this philosophy of battling with one another.
00:08:24.820 | And when you bring all of the other human failings and sins into it, of corruption and
00:08:29.480 | all the stuff, it just exacerbates it.
00:08:32.420 | But that was my experience in Haiti.
00:08:34.980 | The other thing I want to point out to you is that you don't need a newspaper to tell
00:08:38.540 | you these things.
00:08:39.800 | You can sense the truth for yourself.
00:08:42.500 | Yes, I speak a little bit of French and so I was able to have access to the Haitian culture.
00:08:47.180 | But I didn't even need French to access that feeling.
00:08:51.780 | I knew very, very quickly that something was dreadfully wrong in the society.
00:08:56.340 | And I got out as quickly of the country as I was able to.
00:08:59.740 | Today, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are fleeing Haiti
00:09:04.660 | trying to escape to the Dominican Republic or elsewhere, trying to escape to South America,
00:09:08.860 | trying to get into the United States, across the border.
00:09:11.180 | There are many, many people who are fleeing, but it's not easy to flee today.
00:09:15.140 | It's not nearly as easy as it was many years ago.
00:09:17.700 | So remember this other truth, that if you see a society heading in the wrong direction,
00:09:22.660 | if you see people arguing with one another, unwilling to submit to one another, unwilling
00:09:26.580 | to serve one another with a free and glad heart, make a plan.
00:09:31.700 | This is one of the reasons why I built International Escape Plan, www.internationalescapeplan.com,
00:09:36.860 | the course that I taught on getting out.
00:09:39.580 | Any Haitian who got out of Haiti years ago is extremely satisfied with his choice today.
00:09:46.180 | You do not want to be among those who are heading last minute to the airport or heading
00:09:49.940 | last minute to the border, trying to bribe someone to get your way out so you and your
00:09:54.380 | family can make it.
00:09:56.020 | Let Haiti be a lesson to you.
00:09:57.620 | Number one, serve your neighbor.
00:10:00.220 | There's a reason why when I do Q&A calls, I always say, "How can I serve you today?"
00:10:06.780 | I want to serve you every single day, and I want to spread the attitude of service in
00:10:13.820 | every cultural corner of the world that I can myself impact with my example, with my
00:10:20.340 | leadership.
00:10:21.620 | Service is the foundation of a healthy society.
00:10:24.060 | And when that service is missing due to arrogant pride, ridiculous pride of your unwillingness
00:10:30.500 | to humble yourself and serve another human being because of the cultural baggage of what
00:10:34.980 | happened to your ancestors, you are never going to wind up in a good situation.
00:10:39.920 | Study Haiti.
00:10:40.920 | If you see problems happening in your country, if you see a breakdown of society, make a
00:10:45.020 | plan to get out if you ever need to.
00:10:48.740 | InternationalSkatePlan.com if you're interested in my course.
00:10:50.660 | I'll be back with you very soon.
00:11:15.460 | Thank you.