http://www.1worldarttravel.com/cuba-usa-timeline.html

If I were a young guy I’d watch where artsy-fartsy types and gays hang out. They are always ahead of big money. Phil Levine really likes Cuba.

In 1983, you could rent a room for $325/mos. on Ocean Drive in Art Deco Miami Beach. Christo made his Surrounded Islands in early Spring. This attracted a lot of rich backers who came to see it. Many rich Swedes. Plus, status-driving articles in art/style mags.

Cuba could be the next Miami Beach but as you say things need to change first. Phil, who I only know via an email exchange about Brittany, also likes San Miguel Allende, Mexico.

In the old West, there were many thousands of men who faces the massive danger of going into the wilderness and ended up being not only very rich, but who civilized the region. Most were unexpected successes, such as poor Irish immigrants, fugitives from the East, or rebels of some kind. I don’t see this happening in Africa, – not at all.

The Chinese/US corporations that work there don’t really compare to that kind of capitalistic opportunity.

The Chinese did, by importing labor.

The Security companies are, by creating and using means of pseudo-legal violence.

And they’re making a killing for it.

Sure, Africa sucks. Yes, it’s a hell hole with little elevated culture and Mad Max environments always going on somewhere. But that’s the nature of it. It automatically sets a very high barrier to entry, psychologically and economically, and this has kept the bulk of the resources untapped.

And for those who can find a way the profitability will be amazing.

Africa is not the ‘next’ business frontier. It is the everpresent one, the great crypt with treasures that no one really wants to venture into. And that’s what makes it so valuable.

With danger comes opportunity. Nobody ever said that danger was restricted to financial loss, and neither is the opportunity restricted to financial gain. That’s Africa, the continent where the law just isn’t that big a deal.

Local partners are always necessary, no matter where you are and no matter the business. To say otherwise is to play with fire.

At best the labor standards are so brutally low that any and all operations will be inefficient and require the presence of force, just in case.

The opportunity is so big that, I think, it justifies the expense of extra precautions that are inevitably required, like high security living and the like.

Every flaw is a chance to provide a solution.

For example, consider this: With enough money how hard do you think it would be to buy off a small African dictator and set up a special economic zone, to be governed as necessary? And where else could you be afforded that kind of opportunity?

Africa is the modern Wild West. Treat it like such. By definition it won’t be easy.

And yes, I’d love to invest in North Korea too. The trick is they’re real communists, and intelligent ones at that. Far more dangerous.