Giving Away Civilization

Last week a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck 6 miles from Anchorage. I happened to see the tsunami alert and texted my cousin who lives there - not really imagining I was telling her something she hadn't heard, but you never know. There were damages but no deaths, and a heavily damaged major highway has already been repaired. No tsunami occurred, but alerts were sent wide and far.

A couple months ago a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck 48 miles from the city of Palu, Indonesia. Over 2000 died from the earthquake and resulting tsunami. An alert was issued but, by many reports, was ended before the tsunami had even arrived. A 7.5 is several times stronger than a 7.0, but it also struck several times farther from a major population center. In one scenario there are many deaths, but not the other. What's the difference?

Consider this: after the devastating tsunami of 2004, which killed around a quarter million people, the governments of the United States, Germany, and Malaysia donated a tsunami detection system consisting of 22 buoys, at a cost I haven't been able to determine. By 2016, all the buoys - every single one - was inoperable. The Indonesian government has other tools at its disposal, such as 170 earthquake sensors, but only a budget to maintain 70 of them. (No word on how many of the sensors were actually functioning.) Despite all this, an alert was issued, and yet there were no sirens or other notifications at the shoreline of a city at the end of a long bay. There was a crowd gathered at the beach for a festival, and reportedly the scene was gruesome.

I don't know the cost of the tsunami system we donated to Indonesia, but it was likely in the tens of millions. Why are western countries willing to donate the buoys but not maintain them? A couple reasons. For one, there is no glory in system maintenance, and the news cycles are short. After a disastrous tsunami politicians and NGOs can pledge infrastructure improvements to great fanfare from the public. Engaging in mundane maintenance many years later...not so much. (Although there will be renewed vigor in response to the latest tragedy, for a while.) The second reason is enough people will question if we should be operating another country's critical infrastructure. If the US needs to take over operation of their tsunami alerting system to save lives, we should probably take over their sewer systems, power grid, healthcare....Perhaps the most humanitarian thing would be to invade and install a benevolent dictator for their own good. (Which wouldn't really be fair to Iraq, who only got a liberal democracy out of the deal.)

A general rule holds: civilization can't be given; it can only be earned. Grandiose gestures, like tsunami buoys, don't help the Indonesians. Their system is improving at the rate feasible for them to do so, and to the extent that their society can manage. The modern western mindset of "we'll make the world better by making it more like us" is rife with hubris, to say the least. It's not clear to me what the difference is between US foreign policy and Evangelicalism, except they've stripped out the good parts and added lots of bombs.

Here's another story that hits closer to home. In Brooklyn 80% of bus riders don't pay fares. Drivers stopped trying after one was murdered demanding the fare, which followed a case where a driver defended himself using the assailant's own knife. (All involved were black.) In DC, there is a movement to stop charging fares entirely, since 90% of those arrested for dodging fares are black, so the system must be racist. “No one should be in jail because they can’t afford to access public transit,” say activists. No one should be in jail for stealing, it seems.

Heavily black neighborhoods are a bit like nonwestern enclaves in our major cities. Civilization is hoisted upon them, but they can't maintain it. Without funding from the higher strata, even the buses won't stay running. Still, the left can't seem to import enough people from the kinds of places that can barely keep the lights on. They insist on giving away civilization, and they won't stop until there's none left.