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The end of Haiti?

economist.com

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Re: The end of Haiti?

#81

Post by borism »

sukuriant wrote: post #78
1gor wrote: post #67

The concluding remark about 'climate refugees' is out of place in this otherwise very important discussion about failed states. Climate change and its perceived influence on the mankind is a very controversial subject, and today most of people's suffering from poverty and misgovernment has nothing to do with it. Advancing your own pet theories using a real-life tragedy as a prop is a bad taste.

Agreed, and I quarreled with that statement briefly. What I think the author is trying to say is that soon, there will be climate refugees, and when that happens, we'll need to know what to do with them, and we can use this event as an example on how the world should handle it. It wasn't necessary in the argument, and yes, he was pushing his theories, but it may not have been so completely insulting as: "climate chan…

Climate change and its perceived influence on the mankind is a very controversial subject, and today most of people's suffering from poverty and misgovernment has nothing to do with it.

The fact that a lot of people today suffer from poverty and misgovernment is indeed not entirely due to climate change (although there is dutch disease/resource curse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

However it is not hard to realize that those suffering right now will suffer even more were climate change effects as severe as some scientist predict, is it?

Re: The end of Haiti?

#82

Post by joubert »

mahmud wrote: post #10

I am from Somalia, and I have witnessed its decay right to its downfall, including the three days during which the government dispersed and the central bank threw out its stash of local currency in large garbage bins. Haiti will not die. For one, the suffering has been universally afflicted on all Haitians. This will strengthen their bond more than anything. Even if warlords and gangs form their own fiefdoms througho…

"An earthquake has no one to blame"

I agree. However, you can get spin doctors and loonies who manage to convince others that some group is to blame. Once they have done that they can manipulate the situation in a direction that pleases them. Witness for example demented Pat Robertson who makes the superstitious claim that the misery in Haiti is a direct result of a pact with the devil when Haiti's people (then slaves) overthrew their French masters two centuries ago.

Re: The end of Haiti?

#83

Post by ugh »

ars wrote: post #15

Historically disasters (and wars) have the opposite effect. In the short term it's terrible, but long term a disaster usually spurs rebuilding and economic activity that results in a better situation than what was there before.

In Europe, maybe. Where there was - even after the devastation of the second world war - still enough infrastructure left to rebuild. Where both the Soviet Union and the US wanted to win over allies becasue Europe hat just become a cold war front.

Re: The end of Haiti?

#84

Post by timwiseman »

chrischen wrote: post #35
timwiseman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's supposedly always better situation in the future, it is pretty dubious to claim that wars and cataclysms accelerate long term development. It depends on what you mean. Wars have historically accelerated technology development, at least in the short term. If you mean development more generally, then no probably not. The civilian technology would eventually get developped, if more slowly without the major push…

Perhaps it's like accelerating your car. You gain more speed faster at the expense of efficiency.

I think that's a pretty good analogy.

Re: The end of Haiti?

#85

Post by yread »

ars wrote: post #15

Historically disasters (and wars) have the opposite effect. In the short term it's terrible, but long term a disaster usually spurs rebuilding and economic activity that results in a better situation than what was there before.

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake suggests otherwise. If the disaster is big enough it can wipe out a country.

Re: The end of Haiti?

#86

Post by khafra »

sailormoon wrote: post #51
ghshephard wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be wrong, and would appreciate anybody from a third world country educating me, but I don't believe that building code standards are typically on top of the list of properties by which the citizens of those third world companies evaluate their government. Civil Order, Access to Water, Food, Jobs, lack of corruption are probably much, much higher on their minds than "Are proper seismic standards being enforced."…

I also lack this elusive "Third World Perspective" but considering the alarming regularity with which earthquakes shuffle several hundred thousands of their friends, family and neighbours off this mortal coil, perhaps those citizens should, in fact, start encouraging their governments to make building codes and disaster preparation more of a priority.

I'm not sure that you quite understand how poverty works. There are no resources in Haiti, not even arable land. No human capital, nothing to trade. Even if it were possible to build earthquake-resistant buildings, without engineers, out of mud, they couldn't--because the mud was literally all they had to eat:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/29/food.internation...

Re: The end of Haiti?

#87

Post by tptacek »

philwelch wrote: post #59
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a reasonable question. There are plenty of places without drinking water and sewage infrastructure of any real note. Why then does this earthquake mean that we should fix Haiti's water/sewage. Why not fix Somalia's instead? Given the comments about Haiti's resources it seems it should be quite rich monetarily, certainly enough to pay for the rapid construction of Hospitals and the like. Yes, we'd want t…

The quick answer to "why not fix Somalia" is "we tried, and they ended up shooting at us, so we left". Oddly enough, we tried fixing Haiti a few times, too. It's not very successful, but they don't seem to shoot at us quite so much.

Haiti is not yet Somalia. By the '90s, purely humanitarian intervention in Somalia was untenable.

Re: The end of Haiti?

#88

Post by theycallmemorty »

abalashov wrote: post #68
sailormoon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An earthquake has no one to blame. The event itself does not, it's true. But there certainly is someone to blame for the shoddy construction standards and grievous lack of preparation. The government is entirely accountable for these things.

Easy to say if you're coming from the vantage point of someone living in a rich country.

How many deaths have you heard about in the Dominican Republic?

Its not exactly Luxembourg over there but they survived.

Re: The end of Haiti?

#89

Post by sailormoon »

randallsquared wrote: post #75
sailormoon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So which way does the causality flow? Do those Japanese citizens have high expectations because they are from a G7 nation? Or did Japan get to be a G7 nation because of the fact its residents have high expectations? Anyway, Japan just sprang to mind as a country with lots of earthquakes, it was not central to my thesis. Feel free to substitute the name of any well-run country in an earthquake zone.

So which way does the causality flow? You seem to think that the answer is obvious. Everyone knows that Haiti has severe systemic problems, but it's just not clear what can be done about it in a self-sustaining way.

.. which is exactly my original point, restated. So the "severe systemic problems" are to blame, then. But there is blame, there is cause, it's not just some unavoidable random thing.

Look, one last time. Mahmud was saying that no-one's to blame, it was an act of god, can't be helped. I was trying to say that the systemic problems killed those people, poverty killed those people, bad government killed those people. That's what I think and that's all I was trying to say.

Re: The end of Haiti?

#90

Post by Cald »

theycallmemorty wrote: post #88
abalashov wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to say if you're coming from the vantage point of someone living in a rich country.

How many deaths have you heard about in the Dominican Republic? Its not exactly Luxembourg over there but they survived.

The earthquake epicenter was in Haiti. It wasn't felt as strongly in the Dom. Rep.

About 6 years ago, an earthquake centered in the northern part of the island destroyed the nearby towns.

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