Ian Bethell-Bennett, lecturer at College of The Bahamas column in The Nassau Guardian is always worth a read. His latest, "Tourism and land," bemoans the large scale hotel developments throughout the country.

Of course it is not entirely the case that these developments have been destructive as The Bahamas has had a good run off tourism, and it's likely to continue for a while.

But his argument brings a couple things to mind. First is a lecture by Douglas French for The Nassau Institute back in March this year on Business Cycles and the State, and Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World, by Professor Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Where we do agree is in latter years in particular when the hotel development  "bubble" seems to have burst here on New Providence.

It's not as if we're the first country or region to experience this and Mr. French's lecture discusses the real estate boom created by central bank policies of the last decade as it happened in Las Vegas lays it out for us.

Obviously there are nuances with the Baha Mar fiasco, but his point is important for future development.

Watch his presentation below:

So what can we do?

Well, we need to find respect for business and entrepreneurs as a starting point. What Professor Dierdre McCloskey calls, "Bourgeois Dignity".

Of course she makes the point much better than I can in her speech, Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (pdf):

Here's a couple quotes:

"The modern world was made by a slow-motion revolution in ethical convictions about virtues and vices, in particular by a much higher level than in earlier times of toleration for trade-tested progress—letting people make mutually advantageous deals, and even admiring them for doing so, and especially admiring them when Steve-Jobs-like they imagine betterments."

Later she points out:

"The change, the Bourgeois Revaluation, was the coming of a business-respecting civilization, an acceptance of the Bourgeois Deal: “Let me make money in the first act, and by the third act I will make you all rich.” Much of the elite, and then also much of the non-elite of northwestern Europe and its offshoots, came to accept or even admire the values of trade and betterment. Or at the least the polity did not attempt to block such values, as it had done energetically in earlier times. Especially it did not do so in the new United States. Then likewise, the elites and then the common people in more of the world followed, including now, startlingly, China and India. They undertook to respect—or at least not to utterly despise and overtax and stupidly regulate—the bourgeoisie."

Read the entire presentation here… (pdf)

Of course after decades of many politicians demonizing business we might have a long way to go.

But we can get there if the political class will allow.

One way or the other, we need development. Foreign and local are important, and the sooner we find some Bourgeois Dignity the better.