Yes O&C, I don't think you are alone in those sentiments. Even with a larger population, there is no good reason why the streets are so dirty and disorder is so rampant.
I know! I know! We need as Pichardo states authority. My posts like many of your posts state one definite commonality. If two of us like Pick and myself agree on this point it just shows you how destroyed the DR truly is today. We don't agree on anything and battle each other on every post in the RECESSION thread yet we agree on this. The OLD DR is something to be longed for yet the present DR is in a state of anarchy. Pick for purely Dominican reasons sees it as a personal affront when the DR is criticized. That is a Dominican trait. He is not alone in that.
I as yourself Frank see the need for a Trujillo minus the excesses. In some strange Frankenstein experiment I wish I could ressurect him with certain conditions. A Balaguer of whom Trujillo remnants was clearly evident was a DR in which street level crime was controlled much more than today. The DR in my view is lost. A collapse is coming not only to the DR but to the entire world. There is no turning back. Even if it is delayed by central bank intervention, it will come. The DR as seen is in a state of decay economically speaking with the currency marching towards its death as it moves to ZERO.
This is my beef with Pick and Nails. They see a brighter horizon with every high rise built and with each "jipeta" added onto the streets. Those items to me are ancillary. The foundation upon which all those visible signs of wealth are built is quicksand. I see the DR mired in debt which will destroy it. I see the DR's economy tenuous as it moves into collapse. I see the DR as cascading into a major depression because cyclically it must. There is no turning back. Crime is just one more nail in DR's coffin and this is why I long for the OLD DR 1890-1920 and the 40's and 50's. That is the golden era to me.