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How hard would it be for a billionaire to take over a country like Haiti?
For those out of the loop, Haiti has slowly failed as a nation state and is currently controlled almost entirely by gangs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/03/haiti-cholera-gang-violence-water/
As of today, Haiti still had no president (due to the last one being assassinated), no parliamentary quorum, and a dysfunctional high court due to a lack of judges. (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/haiti/)
From a "going down in history" view, you'd think quite a few of the ultra-wealthy would love the chance to become an actual dictator of an internationally recognized sovereign nation. You'd have the added benefit of being able to set your own laws, have a seat at exclusive international clubs (UN etc), and having other countries have to deal with you and your existing private businesses be protected by the right of sovereignty (assuming you relocate them to the country). I wonder what's stopping ultra-wealthy from doing this. Haiti's not even the only nation, there surely some in Africa as well that could be taken over if enough money was thrown at the problem. Mexico is basically a case study of how running such a country through money and force can even work.
Obviously there would be logistical problems with actually buying and transporting the weaponry and private mercenaries you'd have to hire to do this, but it seems like a solvable problem. From a PR perspective, you don't even need to be facetious about going in for the benefit of the native people. You could, in all seriousness, be going in to improve the lives of the Haitians who are currently dying due to their dysfunctional country.
If you want to rule Haiti, the straightforward approach is going to involve people with guns to remove the gangs and re-establish a monopoly on force. Organizing that level of force would be quite expensive, but routing the locals would probably not be prohibitive... but the most likely outcome is that the US and its allies then accuse you of numerous human rights violations, and you spend the rest of your life in jail.
There's a phrase from the old country: "Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics". The US runs on a very corrupt and self-serving variant of the CIE. Leaving Haiti to devolve into a hellhole of misery and despair is totally acceptable. Any action taken to impose the order that the Haitains so obviously need will not be judged against the existing misery, but against the platonic ideal of a perfect, utopian outcome, and so will be judged to be irredeemably evil.
So if a billionaire did this, they'd go straight to jail with a high degree of certainty. And on the vanishingly slim chance they were not prosecuted, what would they gain? Haiti has been a dysfunctional hellhole for hundreds of years. Even if outside force smothers the violence and imposes order, it's still going to be dirt-poor with a horrible reputation, and every likelihood of sliding right back into the muck as soon as the external influence steps back or is removed. What's the upside for the billionaire?
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