I saw an article recently about the Jones Act (I think that was the name) that forces shipping headed to PR to go to a Continental US port first. I would agree with you that there are likely meddling regulations that ought to be repealed. I don't think that accounts for all their problems though.
I'll also agree that in PR, as in all of the US and its territories, there is onerous gov regulation that should be revised or eliminated. However, I also agree with Mech, based on the first hand accounts I hear myself, that the PR regional and local governments are simply whack, and there is something of a Central American / Third World culture in the population with a lot of "good enough*", "It's too much trouble", "Who needs to work when the gov pays me to do nothing?", and "As a gov bureaucrat, it's expected that I skim money and use it for stuff like t-shirts".
*I've seen that myself in Cozumel in Mexico, and even Belize, which is supposed to be one of the more "first world-ish" countries in Central America. In the multiple times I'd been to those places, even when at higher end resorts, there wasn't a day that electricity didn't go out somewhere, or that there wouldn't be a hotel room with no hot water. Stuff breaks and stays broke for who knows how long.
It's not all related to having money - it's also related to just not caring and the attitude that, "the hot water is out, but hey, there's still water." It's that attitude that helped degrade PR's infrastructure to a point where when the big hurricane came, it was like the piggy in the straw house. Refer to Texas for the piggy in the brick house.
