Potemkin Village, Hawaiian Style? (Asia-Pacific Economic Conference)

[KoKo]

Potemkin Village, Hawaiian Style?

Robert Thomas

The big news in Hawaii this week is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation international summit, currently underway in Honolulu. Waikiki is on lockdown as leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, including U.S. President Obama and a lower level functionary from "Chinese Taipei," come to town for a confab on free trade and economic cooperation in the region.

In the run-up to the conference, they really spiffed up the town: various semi-permanent and highly visible homeless encampments were picked up and moved somewhere, new palm trees were planted on the main route from the airport to Waikiki so that the motorcades could see a tropical scene whiz by on an otherwise ghastly industrial stretch of the Nimitz Highway, and it seems like Fortress Honolulu at times since security is tight to insure the situation doesn't devolve into anarchist-fueled riots like other high-level confabs. Traffic is a mess, and evenDiamond Head is closed.

But are these efforts to portray Hawaii as a "good place to do business," like the apocryphal Potemkin Villages in czarist Russia, mere window dressing on an otherwise bleak economic climate, the latest incarnation of the tired cliché of Hawaii as "the of the Pacific" (fill in the blank with crossroads, Geneva, tech hub, health care center, and so forth)? Consider this: (more at the link)

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It appears that with APEC, the U.S. wants to hitch its economic wagon toAsian growth. The question for Hawaii is if this strategy is successful, whether our local economy will also benefit. Contrast those points withthis story, about how a small business in Montana is leveraging the free trade agreements coming out of APEC to grow a business in the 900-resident town of Harlowton:

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This doesn't mean that you need to pave paradise and put up a parking lot, either. Nor do you need to do away with land use and environmental laws, or the tax system. But in order to build the economy, it seems like changing the regulatory climate to allow people to make reasonable use of their property, harness their entrepreneurial spirit, and not feel like they are being taxed out of their homes would be much better steps than planting palm trees, and hoping for the latest white (or green) knight to ride in and save us.

More at:
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/potemkin-village-hawaiian-style/123?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HawaiiReporterNews+%28Hawaii+Reporter%29

[msongs]

1. you give up your rights to go local and choose your own environmental and competition laws.....as in

u set up your system and some international corporation doesn't like it, so they complain to some international tribunal who rules against you and allows you to be sued out of existence, even though this is not in the US constitution and violates all your american rights, but APEC is wonderful so you can't say "made in hawaii" is preferred or even better cause China will not like it. there!

[KoKo]

2. that's the worry with this whole trip. What bargains will be made and

what groups will suffer and what groups will gain. It's very secretive. We won't know until the Grand PooBah's tell us later.