The Issue Isn’t the Elite — It’s the System That Produces Them

In Haitian public debate, the word “elites” acts as a national distraction, a convenient catharsis that avoids questioning the institutional framework itself. Families, clans, individuals are blamed, but we forget that it is neither their origin, nor their wealth, nor their personality that determines their behavior. It is the architecture of incentives that precedes them, shapes them, selects them, and above all rewards them. Haitian elites are not a moral anomaly. They are the optimal product of an institutional order that mech