For Pete’s sake!

In 1997 I went up to the CNMI legislature and had a talk with a congressman who happens to be a very close relative of mine.

“Why did you support the Foreign Investment Act of 1996?” I asked the congressman. “Don’t you know that this is bad for business, bad for our economy? Don’t you know that it will discourage foreign investment in our islands? That $100,000 security deposit alone is one stupid idea.”

“We need to have some controls,” the congressman objected. “We need to protect our local people.”

“Protect them from what?” I asked.

“From uncontrolled development,” he replied.

“But don’t you want our local people to have the opportunity to get richer,” I countered. “If there is more money flowing into our economy, there should obviously be much more opportunity–a bigger market, for everyone to benefit from.”

At this point, the congressman protested that economic growth was not all that important. He then relayed a rather curious analogy.

“Imagine an old Chamorro man,” he said. “Imagine that he has built this big house for himself and his family. In order to earn more money, this old man has decided to rent out various portions of his home–the second and third floors, for example–to outside tenants. So he is making much more money now.

“But at some point this old man is going to get tired of having too many guests, too many tenants, in his house. He is going to eventually, at some point, want more privacy, more intimacy with his family, more time for introspective reflection. He will want more peace and quiet around his home.

“So at some point he is going to stop renting out his home. He will lose income, he knows, but to him and his family it will be all right; it’s worth it.

“You see, that’s the reason I passed the Foreign Investment Act and called for that $100,000 security deposit: because we have to protect our home, our local people.”

Now I must admit, I thought that was a pretty interesting analogy. But I still felt it was pretty lame. In fact, I utterly resented it.

Here was this successful CNMI congressman, who benefited tremendously from the CNMI’s boom years. He has a heck of a lot more assets than I do–and here he is telling me that’s enough: No more goodies for your generation–no more opportunities for your generation to succeed. This is it. We are finished. We are reigning it in, closing the doors.

Naturally, you can imagine my moral outrage, which was also compounded by the faulty collectivist analogy: We are not all one house, one family, under one communal roof.
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Who is the congressman to decide that you or I have already made enough money? Who is he to arbitrarily–based on his prejudices alone–limit our economic growth and development? limit our individual prosperity?

I tell you: The congressman has no such right. That right simply does not exist.

The congressman, however, must have changed his mind. Yesterday I noted that he came out strongly against the $100,000 security deposit–a law he voted for in the first place!

For Pete’s sake, this is the same congressman who frequently criticized former Governor Froilan Tenorio for frequently changing his mind. Froilan, let it be noted, vetoed that $100,000 security deposit–and the legislature overrode it! And now they want to repeal it.