The Anchoress has some useful links.
The devastation in that benighted country (our own little bit of Africa in the western hemisphere) demonstrates how deadly it can be to be poor, and why attempts to hold back economic growth in the third world with things like Kyoto and cap’n’tax are almost genocidal.
[Update a while later]
“You hear yells everywhere from underneath the rubble.”
Horrible.
[Update on Thursday morning]
Why is Haiti so poor? Some hypotheses from Tyler Cowen.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
History’s most deadly quakes. I expect Haiti will be added to this list, though it’s unlikely to set a new record.
[Update late morning]
Remembering the “good times” in Haiti:
On an official visit to the island in the 1980s, as head of the Latin America/Caribbean Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), I witnessed a grown man, my 28-year-old executive assistant, a lawyer who had not traveled extensively outside the U.S., cry inconsolably after touring an orphanage and hospital run by Belgian nuns and supported by USAID food and medical aid. The rest of my team consisted of experienced (read: hardened) professionals who had seen famine and desolation in other countries many times. The assistant had been shocked at the sight of the “triage” set up by the nuns, whereby they calmly and tenderly separated emaciated Haitian newborns into those who would not survive the night and those who might. Both groups received the same loving care from the nuns, but the ones born with no chance of survival did not receive precious resources that could be used to save the lives of other, slightly stronger infants with a chance of living another day and perhaps even surviving.
That hospital, run by angelic Belgians and their Haitian collaborators, was a metaphor for the entire country. The U.S. chose to deliver its significant assistance (more than that of any other nation) only through private organizations, because the government of Haiti was deemed either too incompetent or corrupt to deliver it safely.
It hasn’t improved in the interim, and this disaster is unlikely to improve it.
Living in Boca Raton, almost all of the blacks that I encountered were Haitian (many of them checkout and stocking personnel at the local supermarket). They were good people, and obviously very happy to be here.
Way to spin a tragedy into a dig at Kyoto and Cap and Trade! Class, 100%.
Way to spin a tragedy into a dig at Kyoto and Cap and Trade! Class, 100%.
Speaking of double standards, this does illustrate some of them. It’s a “tragedy” when earthquakes kill perhaps 100,000 people, but “saving the planet” when carbon emission regulations do so. Did I just spin a tragedy into a dig at carbon emission regulations? Well, how about that. Class, 100%.
Guess the truth hurts.
Globally, poverty is the leading cause of death. Millions of people die each year due to diseases that could be prevented by inexpensive vaccines and preventive measures, but they can’t afford them.
Anything that fosters poverty promotes higher death rates. Haiti, already one of the world’s poorest nations, can’t afford any more poverty causing measures.
Whether you’re right or wrong about that, it seems crass and out of place in the context of a horrible natural disaster.
Akin to blasting welfare in an article about Hurricane Katrina. It’s a political point, is debatable at best, and takes focus away from where it should be: on the victims, and the effort to save as many people as possible.
Do you really imagine that fewer people will be saved because of my (or anyone’s) blog post?
I think it’s perfectly reasonable at such a time to contrast a natural disaster to the poor to a (in Secretary Incompetano’s timeless phrase) a “man-caused disaster” to the poor (not to mention the rest of us).
It isn’t that I think fewer people will be saved, that would be silly. It’s that I think your inner tin-man is showing.
At least throw in a link to a site where people can donate money to the Haitians or something. “Poor Haiti, let’s hope Cap and Trade doesn’t make it worse for them if this happens again!” sounds just a li’l cynical.
Ah shit, nevermind. Your first link looked on first glance like strictly a news site.
I apologize.
Although I still think that Kyoto and Cap and Trade connection is tenuous, and it was cynical as hell to post it here.
I don’t think it cynical at all to use the tragedy (and unlike terrorist attacks, this really is a tragedy) as a (in the president’s parlance) “teachable moment.”
You’d have to do a much better job explaining the connection between Kyoto, Cap and Trade, and Haiti’s poverty, then. This felt like a political cheap shot, not an education.
Since Kyoto and Cap’n’Tax haven’t (thankfully) happened yet, they obviously have no connection to Haiti’s poverty. But if they do happen, they will make more Haitis.
Well, Kyoto is old news anyway…we didn’t sign it, it wasn’t enforced by the countries that did sign it, and all eyes are on Mexico City for a real, workable solution that doesn’t screw the third world.
As for Cap and Trade, that’s working alright in the EU. The complaint with it isn’t that it’s hurting industry, it’s that it isn’t doing enough to curb emissions.
Um, and that in order for it to “do enough to curb emissions” it would have to … hurt industry.
The point is that poverty is the problem. A quake like this is substantial, but would have been a little bit of property damage and minimal loss of life in Southern California. Rand would prefer that people weren’t poor and didn’t die in natural disasters I’m sure. Environmental regulations will be the biggest villain in continuing poverty. One only needs to look at the impact of ethanol subsidies in the US and their impact on the price of basic food stuff to see the point.
I agree with Rand. The comments on environmental policies comes from out of the blue here. Let the third world benefit from economic growth.
Prove it, mang. A sarcastic Um does not an argument make.
There is nothing I’ve read that even remotely backs that statement up. The big complaints in the EU (besides the fact that emissions aren’t being curbed) are that the companies who participate in the program are gaming the system, screwing their own customers. This leads me to believe that cap and trade is not the solution for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, but does not convince me it’ll lead to further impoverishment of the third world.
attempts to hold back economic growth in the third world with things like Kyoto and cap’n’tax are almost genocidal
Haiti is an interesting case where environmental regulations are concerned. It shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, which is in much better shape in most every way, including forest cover. In “Collapse” Jared Diamond describes how easily you can see the Haiti-Dominican Republic border from the air: it’s where the trees stop. Haiti, which had 60% of its pre-modern forest cover as recently as 1925, is down to 2% of that coverage. The resulting erosion has destroyed the soil, and is a major cause of Haitian poverty.
Diamond also explains how this came to be: General Trujillo, the tyrant who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961, banned logging in most of his country (excepting lands owned by his family and supporters). On Haiti’s side of the island there were no such restrictions.
The contrast between Haiti and the Dominican Republic illustrates that there is no simple relationship between environmental regulation and third-world poverty. Sometimes it is the absence of such regulation that leaves people poor, even when the regulation eliminates economic opportunities, and even when the regulation is enacted for tyrannical reasons.
A sarcastic Um does not an argument make.
I think given that a reasonable person would understand that…
(1) The overwhelming cause of premature and unnecessary death and misery in the world is poverty (Rand’s point), and
(2) A social and economic stucture that is as wealth-producing as ours is right now is extraordinarily complex, a giant delicate machine (obvious to anyone not a nitwit), and
(3) The single largest driving force of industrial output is combustion to produce energy (ditto), and
(4) You want to massively reduce combustion, which (McG’s point) any idiot can see will throw a huge monkey wrench in to the machinery that keeps us wealthy enough to afford to contemplate the advisability of subtle changes to the climate 100 years from now, so
… the burden is clearly on you and your fellow travelers to prove, beyond any possible doubt, that the changes you propose are benign, or at worst neutral.
Otherwise, you’re pretty much in the position of a bomb-thrower, someone who comes into a functioning organizations and say hey I have a theory that this could all work so much better if we just totally re-organized thusly — oh, you don’t like it? Well prove me wrong, then!
To which an entirely reasonable response is ha ha screw you..
but does not convince me it’ll lead to further impoverishment of the third world.
Fortunately, your conviction is unimportant. No one needs to spend any time convincing you, because reasonable people will not alter what works, and has worked for millenia, because of ignorant Chicken Littleism. Even in Europe, as you admit, the response of the folks running things to the hysteria has been a dog ‘n’ pony show, designed to mollify the short-attention-span millenarianists while not actually changing anything important. That would tell you something, if you were reflecting carefully.
Haiti’s deforestation is a symptom, not a cause, of its poverty. It’s a result of a lack of property rights and clear rule of law, and a tribal kleptocratic culture. As I said, Haiti is a little bit of Africa sitting in the Caribbean. It’s the only island (or nation) there that was decolonialized violently, with no smooth transition to self rule. It’s a culture derived from indifferent French rule, and slavery, and it produces similar governments to former French African colonies. Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier would have been quite at home with Idi Amin and Bokassa the baby eater. It will be as hard to fix as any of the hard cases in Africa.
Jim, you are making the classic Tragedy of the Commons argument, which Diamond of course mines extensively in that book. And without doubt, it’s a subtle and interesting problem, long discussed in its various incarnations (“collective action problems,” “free rider problems,” “Prisoner’s Dilemma” et cetera). There’s not even a “scientific consensus” on their method of solution; some favor top-down rational (e.g. “regulation”) approaches, while others point out that such problems are hardly unique to advanced human societies; they exist throughout preindustrial human society as well, and even in animal societies, and are solved without the use of force majeure by a minority on the majority. Still, the debate continues, and reasonable men can disagree.
I would point out to you a key fact about your observation, which is that in order to preserve its forests, it was necessary for the Dominican Republic to submit to a dictator. That’s a pretty high cost, you know. Most people don’t like living under a dictator, and for excellent reasons. Furthermore, sometimes the dictatorship makes dreadful mistakes, and since it’s a dictatorship, it’s very hard to stop them. The destruction of the Aral Sea and ruining of the farmland for thousands of miles around it by the Soviet dictatorship comes to mind. As does the impoverishment of Zimbabwe and the destruction of its agriculture by Robert Mugabe.
You’re pointing at one decision by a dictator that worked out well. But that’s no answer to the general problem, any more than you can argue the Germans were wise to elect the Nazis, because the Nazis built the Autobahn and created the Volkswagen, a cheap efficient “green” (ha ha) car for the masses.
It’s a result of a lack of property rights and clear rule of law
I think this is a very important point. The history of, say, public housing in the United States (the “Cabrini Green problem”), the problems of deforestation by slash ‘n’ burn in the Amazon basin, or even the history in England of the commons, demonstrates that one of the few clearly effective and powerful means to address many (if perhaps not all) “Tragedy of the Commons” problems is through strong private property rights.
The plain fact about human nature is that we care very much about what we own — on what our future prosperity depends — and far less about what we merely rent, or borrow. All homeowners who reluctantly rent their property out know this, as do all parents when they contemplate the difference between how their teenage son takes care of the parents’ car be borrows versus the one he owns himself.
Let people — force people — to own the resources on which their prosperity depends, and they suddenly smarten up, become wiser and better caretakers, become eager to get the advice of experts, and sift it carefully using their own knowledge of facts on the ground. It may not solve all collective action problems, but it’s the one general-purpose attack on them that we know works.
It’s a result of a lack of property rights and clear rule of law
And yet the DR forests survived despite that country’s lack of property rights and clear rule of law.
in order to preserve its forests, it was necessary for the Dominican Republic to submit to a dictator. That’s a pretty high cost
Yes. Haiti’s misfortune is to have paid that cost (with Duvalier) and to have lost its forests anyway.
You’re pointing at one decision by a dictator that worked out well. But that’s no answer to the general problem
Agreed. Nor, I would say, is refraining from environmental regulation an answer to the general problem of third-world poverty. The equation of the Kyoto accords to genocide is, to put it mildly, simplistic.
Let people — force people — to own the resources on which their prosperity depends, and they suddenly smarten up, become wiser and better caretakers, become eager to get the advice of experts, and sift it carefully using their own knowledge of facts on the ground.
I was under the impression that the forests of Haiti were cut down by the very people who rely on them for their subsistence (much less their prosperity) — is that not the case?
And yet the DR forests survived despite that country’s lack of property rights and clear rule of law.
Well, yes. Of course.
If your highest value is the survival of trees, I guess that you’d have no problem with a dictator like Trujillo.
If you care about people, you might like some other ideal Platonic dictator…
I guess we know what kind of dictator Jim likes. Some of us like no dictators at all. We prefer the rule of law…
If your highest value is the survival of trees
Don’t knock trees — people need trees.
I guess we know what kind of dictator Jim likes.
I don’t like any kind of dictator.
I don’t like any kind of dictator.
One wouldn’t know it by any of your posts. You are perfectly satisfied with unelected bureaucrats at the EPA telling us how much we should breathe…
The big complaints in the EU (besides the fact that emissions aren’t being curbed)
This is due to a combination of stupid expectations and poor market design. There no reason to expect high carbon credit prices when carbon emissions fall well below the cap. In other words, it’s idiotic to expect emissions to be curbed when there isn’t a reason to do so. The tree huggers should just be happy that carbon emissions are below quota and shut up. The second problem is that we ignore what happens when the cap is reached. The market transitions from a cheap, highly elastic market to an inelastic market with an asymptote at the cap. Europe gains nothing by generating market gyrations.
Haiti would not be harmed by Kyoto, or Hopenhagen, or any subsequent son of Kyoto that may come down the statist-collectivist pike.
Haiti has ceased to exist as a country, so therefore would not fall under any such treaty agreements.
Pray the Haitian people do not follow suit.
Haiti would not be harmed by Kyoto, or Hopenhagen, or any subsequent son of Kyoto that may come down the statist-collectivist pike.
Sure, it would. Even Somalia, the epitome of failed states still trades with the outside world. The problem is that with cap and trade in place, they would trade less simply because the rest of the world is poorer.
“Never Allow a Crisis to Go to Waste.” — Rahm Emanuel.
Do you really imagine that fewer people will be saved because of my (or anyone’s) blog post?
Yes I do. After following the link you provided and then following the link provided there to an aid organization I donated some money. I also sent out the aid organization’s link to everyone in my address book.I know for a fact that 10 people, who may or may not have contributed without the link, also gave money.
This is the power of the internet and blogs. Which also brings up the old saying “with great power….”
…or the unelected bureaucrats at HHS telling us what kind of health insurance to buy, etc…
Yes it’s the case, but the salient point is they lack property rights, so they have no individual investment. They’ve had no individual motivation to manage the resource responsibly. Your obtuseness is breathtaking.
You are perfectly satisfied with unelected bureaucrats at the EPA telling us how much we should breathe…
I am satisfied with unelected bureacrats at the EPA enforcing laws passed by democratically elected legislators, and signed by a semi-democratically elected president. To date those laws do not include any that regulate how much we should breathe.
I fail to see what this has to do with dictatorship.
Jim, those unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at the EPA have the authority to write and enforce thousands of regulations without any citizen input or recourse. That’s very little different from a dictatorship.
Yeah, like the little dictators of Homeland Security have the power to tell us to take off our shoes in airports, or the little dictators at the Department of Agriculture have the power to set limits on what we can and can’t ingest.
Jim, those unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at the EPA have the authority to write and enforce thousands of regulations without any citizen input or recourse.
They were given that authority by people we elected, who can also intervene on our behalf, or take the authority away. That isn’t how it works in dictatorships.
They were given that authority by people we elected, who can also intervene on our behalf, or take the authority away. That isn’t how it works in dictatorships.
The people we elected didn’t have that authority to give. That’s my view on this situation.
Are you aware how the executive branch of government works, Karl? Them’s the rules, like it or don’t.
That’s the rule of law which keeps our country functioning, to be more specific. To what degree it functions is up for debate, however. 🙂
Jim,
Actually the points you make are utterly incorrect. Congress can lay down general guidelines as to what they want accomplished (take a look at the original Clean Air Act, for instance), but the real rules are written by….you guessed it!….unelected ‘crats who often alter the meaning even the impact of a given law without anyone’s knowlege. This isn’t limited to conservatives bitching, the left complained bitterly about exactly this sort of thing in environmental law in the Bush administration. Since most of the rule-making is done by career ‘crats, not appointees, there is no real input from elected officials onces this sort of thing gets started, and agencies (Agriculture is famous for this sort of thing) often generate their own rules without being asked.
Ethan,
You point to the USDA and DHS as (I presume) positive examples of ‘crats in action. This is hardly self-evident (the recent fiasco in Detroit suggests that the DHS is at best incompetent, and at worst counterproductive, while the USDA is often criticized by the left as a tool of big agribusinesses), and even if it were the case, it is not difficult to find other examples of agencies whose rulemaking is highly dysfunctional, even perverse. I put up DOE, NASA (though NASA does comparatively little, if any, regulation), and Commerce as excellent examples of bad rulemaking and worse enforcement, but choose your own examples.
My point is that some regulation is useful, not all of it is (even that which is comes at a price, and we might not always wish to pay that price), and to pretend that because SOME regulation isn’t immediately awful that all of it is vital or even desirable, is a serious case of attempting to ‘steal a base’…an old and discredited debating trick. The real difference here is should the ‘default’ be regulation or no regulation? While there is certainly room for debate, clearly it is false to pretend that there are no tradeoffs involved.
I wasn’t pointing to them as positive examples of Democrats in action, I was pointing to them as examples of the typical powers wielded by departments of the Executive branch.
Now Danny Glover ties Haiti earthquake to Global Warming.
The movie star? o.O
He’s a believer.
He clearly doesn’t understand much about climate change, OR plate tectonics.
Ethan, you are correct, I presumed you were making a value judgement, when in fact you were simply illustrating how something works….point taken.
As for Mr. Glover, he knows very little about just about everything outside of acting…perfect Democratic spokesperson… No better in many ways that that embarassment to all carbon based lifeforms Pat Robertson
Comparing a Hollywood actor mistakenly blaming climate change for an earthquake is a faaaarrr cry from Pat Robertson telling people the Haitians made a deal with Satan and are going to be punished by God.
There are people out there who actually give a shit what Pat Robertson says, which makes his comments dangerous. Danny Glover’s just gonna come out of this looking like a dumbass, no big whoop there.