He calls the Dos Piños co-operative a “cartel”, as if the small farmer-members are some kind of Latino robber barons.

Let’s deregulate everything and let the invisible hand of the free market solve all our problems by magic. Oh yeah, all that does is empower Wall St and global corporate conglomerates to move in and monopolize what’s left of Costa Rica’s small business sector. Nothing like a few $megabillion corporations roaming buying up the country to encourage “competition” with Juanita and Jose. Who wins those contests?

This guy is preaching neoliberal religion that has succeeded in destroying small free enterprise and creating global cartels who own and operate the world. And he wants CR to abandon our currency and adopt the US dollar, because Greece and Spain and all those other European countries have done so well abandoning their monetary sovereignty to the bankers who control the stateless euro.

So don’t believe the evidence of reality that uniformly behaves exactly the opposite of this guy’s prophecies. Your faith in neoliberalism will set the global plutocrats free to come and pillage your country; Oops, I misspoke. I meant to say set “you free to “develop” your country.

To me, the gist of the critique is that policy continues to coddle a few large industries in the name of the public good, but the results of this coddling are actually to stifle opportunities for others, including the poor, in all kinds of indirect ways. I suspect that this critique is largely accurate.

However, my fear is that the leaders of the coddled industries are buddies with the political leaders (and in at least one case I believe a recent president was a major shareholder in one of the coddled industries), which makes policy change very difficult.

A not unrelated fear is that some of these coddled industries enjoy a good bit of popular support, part of it based upon romantic notions of things like farming, but some of it rooted in national pride. I’ve been astonished by the affection Ticos show toward some of their national monopolies–almost as much as they have for their national soccer team–despite the harm these monopolies do to them.

So this looks like an uphill battle politically. However, the more clear-headed analyses like these there are, the better. Even if Mr. Hidalgo may not have every detail or recommendation exactly right, he levels a big picture critique that deserves serious consideration.