Rasheed Griffith: Progress, Caribbean, Policy, Food, Music, Talent Assessment, Culture

Ben Yeoh Chats

Rasheed Griffith discusses the factors impeding progress in the Caribbean and shares his optimism for the region. He identifies the decline in public sector quality since the 1960s as a major obstacle. Transcript and links here.

Griffith suggests that reforming the public sector could significantly advance the Caribbean by attracting international talent and improving policy implementation. He also discusses the historical impact of British technocracy in the Caribbean, proposing that adopting a more internationalized public service could be beneficial. Griffith urges a shift towards leveraging global trade for growth.

The discussion also touches on the potential of dollarization, the limited utility of charter cities in the Caribbean, and the importance of understanding regional culture through food and history.

“every Caribbean country should be dollarized. No exceptions. Caribbean countries, any small country, there is very little utility of having your own currency except for having the ability of the government to mismanage it at some point in time. And that has historically been the case in the Caribbean, been the case in Latin America, been the case in Europe, Asia, it goes down the line.

There is no real extra benefit you have from having your own currency, as a very small country, dependent on a global currency anyway. This manifests even stranger things. So for example, Caribbean still has very harsh capital controls, not all Caribbean, but the ones that have their own currency do, and that limits people's freedom to consume as much as what they want.

It also has again, the ever present risk and reality of the government abusing the exchange Abusing money creation tool obviously hurts the exchange rate hurts inflation all those kind of things So when you really look into it, there's no proper counter argument to dollarization to me when someone says What's the counter argument to me?

That's like saying what is the argument in favor of having an unsound currency? It's a non starter in that sense.”

We talk about culture including reggae, VS Naipaul and Rastafarians. And on food:

“when you understand why you, in Barbados, eat curry goat and roti, of course that has a very big impact on how you think about your own history. Jerk chicken, is very famous in Jamaica. I think it's very difficult to get good jerk chicken outside of Jamaica. There are some spots in London that have some good jerk chicken, but usually, if you go to a place that has jerk chicken, it's likely not actually jerk chicken.

Any case, even jerk chicken, for example, if you understand how it works is very deeply into how Jamaican history operates. So it came from Mexico after the slaves, this plantation has this thing called Maroon, like free slave holdings in the mountains in Jamaica. And jerk chicken is one of the food products they actually created.

It's very, goes really far back. And one of the current ingredients of jerk chicken that we usually use in sauce is soy sauce. Now soy sauce, of course, it's not from Jamaica, it's from China primarily speaking. So you see how the Chinese influence in Jamaica, for example, goes back to the food, like the core Jamaican food has this Chinese influence as well.”

We discuss how to assess talent, what questions to ask in an interview and how to be better for interviews.

We play underrated/overrated on: GDP, Universal Basic Income and carbon tax.

Griffith shares insights into his creative process and the importance of public intellectual engagement.

Finally we end on some advice thoughts. Advice:

"I think people should try to be a lot more public in their thoughts. Writing things online for the public is a nice constrained device."