[star]The American Mind[star]

December 29, 2004

Dealing with Future Disasters

The best way to deal with natural disasters is to be rich enough to take precautions and have the resources available to handle the aftermath. Only when a nation like Sri Lanka is rich enough can she seriously contemplate a tsunami warning system. Madsen Pirie on the Adam Smith Institute weblog offers some ideas to help make poor countries richer:

Cancel their debts (which were run up by a previous generation of predatory despots) and open our markets to their goods. Help them fight AIDS/HIV and Malaria. Help everyone gain access to clean water. Help them tackle corruption and predatory government. Buy their stuff.

These are simple answers that go back to Adam Smith (go figure). The challenge is to build the political will to get them enacted. Hopefully this disaster will wake people up. Then something good will come from this.

"Ending World Poverty"

Posted by Sean Hackbarth in Economics at 11:30 PM | Comments (1)