More disasters in Asia

An earthquake in China may have killed 3,000 to 5,000. Meanwhile, in Burma the estimates on the high end are that one million may die from post-disaster epidemics.

There's an unreality to the horrific numbers that emerge from developing country disasters--Americans could be told that 500,000 had died in a Bangladeshi apartment building fire, and we'd just sort of nod and say how awful it all is. But Jesus, we are lucky. Economic development does a lot of things, but one of the best things it does is give us the means to cope with adversity. It's tempting to think that subsistence farming is less fragile than complex economies--after all, you can rebuild everything yourself. But development gives us surplus food. Roads for evacuees to get out and relief workers to get in. Doctors and drugs. Mosquito nets. Earthquake proof houses. Advanced storm warnings, and communications systems to distribute them. Construction equipment. Trucks, boats and cars. Emergency generators. Spare people to flood the disaster area with help. And lots of spare room for people whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed.

It also--arguably--gives us democratic governments that have to worry about public opinion. There was a lot of noise after Katrina about how America didn't care about the poor people who were affected. I won't argue that we couldn't have done better before and after the storm; we could have, and should have. But the picture of America as oblivious to its people's pain looks pretty fatuous in comparison to a Burmese government that seems ready to let hundreds of thousands die rather than allow relief workers to infect its people with news of the outside world.

Meanwhile, since a lot of Americans care about people even outside the American bordes, seems like a good idea to up those disaster relief donations. I tossed my contribution to the Salvation Army, because when I worked at Ground Zero they were regarded as the most effective of the relief agencies.

Comments

You "tossed your contribution to the salvation army?" I'm sure the intent was sincere, but what a phrase! It sounds so casual and whimsical. Almost like you were expiating guilt and congratulating yourself simultaneously. Now that you've done your duty, all is well in the world and you can well enough forget about those "500,000" poor souls wiped out in that figurative building.

Posted by Tom | May 12, 2008 10:55 AM

What would you like me to do, Tom?

Posted by Megan McArdle | May 12, 2008 11:01 AM

Hey, you never ask ME that.

Probably wise.

Posted by Jens Fiederer | May 12, 2008 11:53 AM

Megan does a nice thing and you don't like her attitude? Who says that you can't enjoy your charity?

Posted by OneEyedMan | May 12, 2008 12:28 PM

But the picture of America as oblivious to its people's pain looks pretty fatuous in comparison to a Burmese government

Yeah, true. But it really depends who we're trying to compare ourselves to. It seems more logical to me to say "the picture of advanced democratic countries as oblivious to their people's pain looks pretty fatuous" compared to Burma. Within the scale of advanced democratic countries, the US's response to Katrina looks "oblivious to (certain of) its people's pain" in comparison to, say, the Dutch response to the floods of 1953, which was to build the largest water engineering feat in the history of mankind to basically put an on-off switch on the Rhine and ensure that nothing of the kind would ever happen again.

Except then global warming came along, of course. Oh well.

Posted by brooksfoe | May 12, 2008 12:44 PM

Megan does a nice thing and you don't like her attitude? Who says that you can't enjoy your charity?

This is one of the big personal divides between liberals and libertarians. Sometimes called liberal guilt, previously mocked as "the Care Bear Stare". Given the choice between:

A. donating $200 to the cause, making a glib remark, and moving on with the rest of your life.

B. donating $100 to the cause, weeping genuine tears of empathy towards those less fortunate who are suffering, and spending the next week locked in your apartment depressed.

there are many who believe B to be the righteous choice, and are offended by those who chose A, as they are obviously cold and unfeeling money-obsessed automatons. Of course, the disaster victims of the world better hope the A's outnumber the B's.

Posted by Geoff | May 12, 2008 12:55 PM

Does anyone remember reading The Good Earth by Pearl Buck? What seemed strangest to me about that story (yes, I know it's fiction, but Buck grew up in China, and this parts seems based in fact) was that there could be people dying of famine, and meanwhile there was a large city less than a day away by train which had plenty of food. Why didn't someone bring food in to the people that were willing to pay very high prices for it?

Markets really do allocate well most of the time, at least in cases like this, if they're allowed to work. People desperate enough to pay almost anything for food will get it if there are functioning markets and adequate infrastructure. [The US after Katrina tried to stop these markets - I remember reading about someone who bought a bunch of generators and drove down in a truck to try to resell them, and got arrested for trying to profit from the disaster!}

Of course this doesn't work as well if people are so incredibly poor that they have nothing to pay, but even that, at the country or regional level, is largely due to government and the lack of well-regulated, functioning markets.

Brooksfoe - The Dutch response that you're referring to sounds like a long-term response, not immediate disaster relief. It's interesting but doesn't sound directly comparable.

Posted by Ann | May 12, 2008 1:08 PM

Yeah, I don't know why anyone would be offended my Megan's glib remarks either. I mean, if you've been reading her for any length of time, you've got to know by now that that's all she has to offer, right?

Posted by spencer | May 12, 2008 1:08 PM

Well, you are still reading her. So by your own argument, you must like meaningless glib remarks.

Or you just like insulting Megan.

Posted by ad | May 12, 2008 1:14 PM

You "tossed your contribution to the salvation army?" I'm sure the intent was sincere, but what a phrase! It sounds so casual and whimsical. Almost like you were expiating guilt and congratulating yourself simultaneously. Now that you've done your duty, all is well in the world and you can well enough forget about those "500,000" poor souls wiped out in that figurative building.

Oh, goodie...yet another exciting episode in the epic series of, "I Read It Through The Lens of My Prejudices, And Was Offended By The Tint."

Posted by aMouseforallSeasons | May 12, 2008 1:17 PM

Yeah, I don't know why anyone would be offended my Megan's glib remarks either. I mean, if you've been reading her for any length of time, you've got to know by now that that's all she has to offer, right?

And before my post even registers, #2 clocks in! Amazing stuff.

Posted by aMouseforallSeasons | May 12, 2008 1:23 PM

brooksfoe,

Besides the immediate response vs longer term response issue, are you really comparing the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico? And I don't believe the Netherlands have ever been hit with something force of a Hurricane.

Why don't you just compare it the Thames blockade, at least that is affected by Hurricanes and depressions, while still being totally useless as a comparison.

Longterm, unless we want to devote unimaginable sums of money to prevent any water on any side from flooding, there is going to be significant risks to locating houses and businesses in the NO flood zones. It would probably be cheaper to raise the who area a hundred feet with soil dredged from the delta, or brought in from NOLA, then to try and control the Atlantic and Mississippi like that.

Long term outlook for NO: Nice life, economically mixed, Mardi Gras and flooding.

Posted by Skullberg | May 12, 2008 1:39 PM

"There was a lot of noise after Katrina about how America didn't care about the poor people who were affected. I won't argue that we couldn't have done better before and after the storm; we could have, and should have. But the picture of America as oblivious to its people's pain looks pretty fatuous in comparison to a Burmese government that seems ready to let hundreds of thousands die rather than allow relief workers to infect its people with news of the outside world."

The observation that the United States is not as bad as a tin-pot military dictatorship makes my bosom swell with patriotic pride.

Posted by Richard Hershberger | May 12, 2008 2:18 PM

Comparing what the response to flood prone areas should be in a country with the population density of The Netherlands, to what the response should be in a country with the population density of the U.S., is not a good use of time.

Posted by Will Allen | May 12, 2008 3:00 PM

Let me try to rephrase that for you:

After Katrina, the usual suspects attacked the administration for not ignoring State and local responsibilities and taking over the relief efforts. Any attempt to figure out where the money that should have been spent on strengthening the levees went was denounced as attacking the victims. News media reports of cannibalism and other atrocities were lies, and whitewashed or ignored.

New Orleans residents must be satisfied with the local efforts, they reelected their mayor.

What are the odds they get hit with a Cat 5 Hurricane before the levees are built up to withstand one? I'm sure that will be Bush's fault, even though we now have Democrats in control of Congress.

I'll just go on living above sea level, thank you.

Posted by MarkD | May 12, 2008 3:22 PM

Actually, the thing I found most creepy about Katrina was that the disaster here looked so damned much like natural disasters in the third world. Contrast this with 9/11, which looked radically different--a really awful thing happened, and then a whole lot of people did mostly sensible things, resources poured in, order was maintained, and things got better. That looked like what I expect seeing TV coverage of, say, a big disaster in Japan or France. Katrina looked a lot more like what I'd expect to see from some middle-income country like Mexico or Thailand--something really awful happened, and the initial response was a horrible mess due to widespread corruption, incompetence and ignorance, widespread mistrust of the authorities, and a huge pool of poverty in the affected area. The result was a huge number of people being killed, far more in horrible conditions, some scary level of civil disorder, and the collapse the local authorities' ability to help.

I'm not disagreeing that it's better to be a very poor person in a criminally misgoverned place in the US than in Burma, both day-to-day and during a crisis. But as one of the other commenters pointed out, that's not the highest bar we could set for ourselves.

Posted by albatross | May 12, 2008 3:40 PM

Comparing Katrina to the watersnoodramp of 1953 puts some perspective on the scale of destruction. While the flood in the Netherlands cost the lives of almost 2,000 people, only another 70,000 had to be evacuated and several thousand houses and farms were destroyed.

Posted by heartofEurope | May 12, 2008 3:48 PM

Well, if 9/11 had taken out all the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan, and all the bridges on the Hudson for a hundred miles, and shoved a huge chunk of the population out of their homes, then I suspect the response would have looked a teensy bit different.

Logistics: it's what's for dinner.

Posted by Rob Lyman | May 12, 2008 3:56 PM

Much of our "surplus food" is due to subsidies to agribusiness. The "roads for evacuees to get out" are paid for by gas taxes and tolls. Our "doctors" attend universities supported by public funds (and private donations) and do residency in hospitals (similarly funded). The "earthquake proof houses" in which we live are that way because of zoning codes. And much of the advanced technology we take for granted in consumer use today (doppler radar for weather reports, anyone?) were developed by DoD, then put to civilian use.

Then there are the courts that defend our property and protect us from unreasonable search and seizure. Or the police and fire fighters who need regular training and equipment, as do our kids' school teachers. And both deserve a decent pension when all is said and done.

I suppose there is something for everyone (left- or right-wing) to complain about in the list above. Who likes taxes, or having to wait for a permit or inspection on a house or addition? There are probably better ways to develop new technology than going to war, and our schools could certainly use some work to better serve all of our kids.

The point is, as Cass Sunstein pointed out some time ago, taxes are a condition of the liberty we enjoy as Americans. All those services cost some serious money. We don't have to like the fact we pay taxes, but we should respect what those collective investments buy for our communities and the nation as a whole.

Posted by aaron | May 12, 2008 7:20 PM

All those services cost some serious money

All of those services excepting defense cost a tiny fraction of the taxes we pay. Defense bumps it up a fair ways, but "all those services" plus defense still costs less than entitlements, at least at the federal level. Entitlements, mind you, which many argue contributed, rather than alleviated, the pathologies of places like NO.

There's room for taxes to be cut at least in half without threatening either liberty or the interstate highway system.

Posted by Rob Lyman | May 12, 2008 7:29 PM

Of course this doesn't work as well if people are so incredibly poor that they have nothing to pay, but even that, at the country or regional level, is largely due to government and the lack of well-regulated, functioning markets. - Ann

Literally no one, not even Martin Friedman, believes that markets adequately address disaster relief. How much would the US Navy have charged to deliver food and drinking water to the victims of the tsunami in Banda Aceh? Perhaps they might have competed against the French Navy for the fees, and the victims could have gone to their friendly neighborhood bank for a bridge loan to pay for it. This is gibberish, as is the notion that people in Banda Aceh are poor because their creative energies have been improperly restricted by interventionist government.

While the flood in the Netherlands cost the lives of almost 2,000 people, only another 70,000 had to be evacuated and several thousand houses and farms were destroyed. - heartofEurope

Not sure what you're saying here, but thanks for the details. I'd say it would be helpful to do two things: first, look at the intensity of the Dutch national commitment to immediate disaster relief i '53; then, look at the national decision about how to address the issue of further water emergencies in the future.

The Dutch decided that bringing the national commitment to water control, which obviously for them is a basic element of what holds the polity together, into the 20th century meant a whole new order of engineering project. In the Dutch case maintaining world supremacy in water engineering is in some ways comparable to the US's desire for aerospace engineering supremacy, so it's not surprising that a political consensus was forthcoming for a project like that.

It is of course important that half of the Netherlands lies below sea level, so national level decisions about water management enlist national political will. In the US the national level polity is less interested in shelling out effort to protect that small minority of the country that lives below sea level. However, given that ports tend to be at sea level, ultimately if you don't shell out money to protect cities threatened by storm surges you wind up with a country without any ports.

Anyway, I think it's more appropriate to compare Burmese disaster response to Chinese disaster response, and American disaster response to Dutch or Japanese disaster response.

Posted by brooksfoe | May 13, 2008 4:17 AM

Much of our "surplus food" is due to subsidies to agribusiness.

Aren't agricultural subsidies in this country generally used for price support? If so, then they would have the effect of reducing the food supply, not increasing it, as potential producers are paid not to produce.

Posted by rpl | May 13, 2008 11:34 AM

Nice point, Rob, but you forgot one thing: you also have to cut the power to all those people. For a hundred miles along the coast, and for 200 miles inland.

And block all the roads with downed trees.

The immediate response to Katrina in Mississippi was to use the National Guard to clear one - ONE - lane on major highways for use by rescue traffic to the coast.

Posted by Devilbunny | May 13, 2008 12:10 PM

"This is gibberish, as is the notion that people in Banda Aceh are poor because their creative energies have been improperly restricted by interventionist government." - Brooksfoe

I was discussing famines in China due to a bad harvest, not tsunamis or other sudden, acute disasters. If one area gradually becomes very short of food, but a neighboring area has more than enough, then markets can in fact help to work out this problem, if allowed to function.

But if we're going to turn the focus to Banda Aceh, I have a cousin who lived there for several years and who told me about a mostly-foreign-funded aid project to build a highway to link up Banda Aceh with other parts of Sumatra, so that the area could develop economically. This was a decade or more before the tsunami.

But the Indonesian government was supposed to put up some small fraction of the funding as matching funds, and instead delayed and ultimately blocked the project. If that road had been built, years before the tsunami hit, the people would have had more resources already and the response effort could probably have gotten in more quickly. As Megan pointed out in the original post, more developed areas are generally more prepared to deal with natural disasters.

The people of Aceh province are also restricted by geography, etc. My cousin taught people to grow and cook vegetables and gave out barbed wire (to stop the pigs from destroying the garden), and this dramatically reduced the rate of childhood death and blindness, so the people had a long way to go in terms of development. But aid agencies and others could have helped the people of Aceh much more, and the local economy could have made at least a bit more progress, if their own government hadn't been actively blocking much of their development.

Posted by Ann | May 14, 2008 12:51 AM

This is one of the big personal divides between liberals and libertarians. Sometimes called liberal guilt, previously mocked as "the Care Bear Stare". Given the choice between:

A. donating $200 to the cause, making a glib remark, and moving on with the rest of your life.

B. donating $100 to the cause, weeping genuine tears of empathy towards those less fortunate who are suffering, and spending the next week locked in your apartment depressed.

there are many who believe B to be the righteous choice, and are offended by those who chose A, as they are obviously cold and unfeeling money-obsessed automatons. Of course, the disaster victims of the world better hope the A's outnumber the B's.

OR HOW ABOUT C. (entitled "You Can't Handle The Truth")

C. Sin came into the world about 6,000 years ago in the Garden of Eden. It permeates it's ugly head into every aspect of life: natural disasters, wars, our country's decay due to divorce, Godlessness, narsisicm, video games, absentee parents trying so hard to compete with the jones's while simultaneously denying to themselves the aforementioned and an ever-increasing vicious cycle of downward decay. The truth of the matter is also this: There is a story in the Bible (OOPS! I KNOW, I SAID THE "B" WORD!) where a prophet of God warns the citizens of a city to repent (turn 180 degress), and ask God to help them. They did. God reversed his prior-to-that-time-decision to destroy Ninivah. Everyone was saved. :)
:( Ya know what the terrible thing about this realization is? Doesn't look like we as a human race are as smart as Ninivah. We're too afraid to confront the truth. We are afraid that others (I am sure not unlike some of you) that find it much easier to shrug this off as ridiculous and fanatical. After all, "I want to be the God of my own life". Right? And if that means coming up with secular ways of looking at world events and denying that it is a result of sin, then "I'm fine with that". Sin, which we have all inherited from the bloodline of Adam and Eve (that we all have - except for one Man that lived whose father's blood was not tainted with Sin - Jesus Christ) is the thing that makes all we do unnaturally natural. The truth is that both the liberal, libertarian and conservative are all sinners. They can try to do all they want and talk all they want, but all is sin. That is not a bad thing to say that. It is a free-ing thing. It is to recognize that all we can do is to say "Thank you God. Thank you for sending your son to take my place. I couldn't pay the fine for the sin I committed, but you loved me so much that you took my place so that all I have to do is HUMBILY believe in your unmerited grace and I am saved." Then, no disaster - manmade or natural - can ever have it's final demise with you - because DEATH IS DEAD FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE. Eternity is a long time. Fact is that Noah's Ark sits on the top of Mount Ararat (Google that!), and that archeologists have found the burnt city of Sodom and Gomorah. (google that). Stop playing semantics as it will only amuse you. It won't save you. It will never take the place of Jesus's death on the cross. Finally, an apostle asked Jesus, 'why do you always talk in parables and not plainly tell us?' Jesus/God replied 'To you it has been given to know the mysteries of God. To others it has not, so that seeing, they do not see, and so that hearing, they do not hear.
Can you now see and hear. Or is it easier to be a blind mute?

Posted by Adster | May 16, 2008 10:12 AM