Every country develops their own industries and moves into separate niches depending on the age old concept written by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations, and that is to only export items you can produce at the lowest cost to yourself, and everything that might be too expensive to create yourself, should be imported.
This age old concept has inspired everything from the micro-economics of trading with nearby villages to macro-economic trade policies.
It is also necessary for countries to shift their speciality as they develop and conditions change. The Caribbean is a prime example of this;
The Sugarcane Trade
Prior to the development of cheaper long haul flights, the primary export of the Caribbean was sugarcane and natural minerals, which are not products synonymous with a high return on investment. So the country was quite poor, dependent on self sufficient farming and fishing for survival.
Then the cost of long haul travel came plummeting down, and people could find they were ablto get a holiday to the islands in the Caribbean for a reasonable price and a lot quicker than it took to get there by boat. The tourism industry was born.
Sugarcane farming in Barbados
Tourism as a Primary Export
Tourism has become the most important export of the Caribbean islands, which is not a surprise, considering how stunning the countries, the crystal clear waters and pure white sand of Antigua is enough to understand how the countries had diverted their attention from the fields to the beaches.
Tourism became a fruitful opportunity for the countries, and as they developed more and more luxury hotels they received foreign investment for land and the value of the countries within the Caribbean sky rocketed.
As more and more money came into the countries, the countries’ leaders and economic figureheads had enough foresight to plan how to reinvest the money by developing an information infrastructure in line with some of the super powers of the world.
Development of Infrastructure
It was this forward thinking that meant the reinvestment of the money attained through tourism was invested in systems that could allow the country to get better and develop as a whole rather than ‘resort by resort’ that has been the case for many other tourist locations across the globe.
Instead they chose to reinvest in telecommunication systems that have again resulted in a slight shift in priority from the tourism industry to the technology industry within the countries. St Lucia for example, can easily be mistaken with Silicon Valley, with a growing number of tech agencies and development teams coming out of the Caribbean.
Countries like St Lucia are already outdoing the UK and the USA for saturation and computer ownership. And with this continued development, you can see this being a hotbed for the tech industry in no time, and with the sun, sea and sand, it’s is only going to get more popular of a destination.
All around the world, the forward thinking plans of the early noughties have been stopped in their tracks by the recession. A walk in downtown Presque Isle tells the same story as towns throughout Europe: brownfield sites that haven’t been repurposed, hoardings telling of upcoming homes and offices that never arrived, their land turning into unkempt patches of wild grass. It’s urban decay, and rather demoralising to look at, wherever you find it. It’s a reminder that whilst we’re now looking at High Yield Savings, with our only contact with our only contact to our old bosses through our 
High street stores are closing, more and more people are opening up e-commerce stores and a tonne of webmasters are making pricing mistakes. It’s that simple. The rapid increase in both niche e-stores and huge online retailers stocking more and more products mean that mispricing errors are as high as ever, with both genuine human errors and database issues causing products to be incorrectly listed. It doesn’t matter whether you are a bedroom business in downtown Presque Isle, USA or a corporate website run from London, UK, the same problems are occurring for individuals and huge corporations.