Earthquake Deaths Linked To Corruption

Countries that are very corrupt allow for the most construction fraud, which is difficult to see when the buildings are being built but becomes obvious when the Earth shakes.

The authors determined that there is roughly a one-to-one relationship between a nations' wealth and its perceived level of corruption. "Less wealthy nations are the most corrupt," said Bilham, also a fellow in the CU-Boulder based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "We found that fully 83 percent of all deaths from earthquakes in the last 30 years have occurred in nations where corruption is both widespread and worse than expected."

Relative wealth is the most obvious parameter that influences a country's corruption, according to the authors. Bilham and Ambraseys chose the gross national income per capita to compare the relative wealth of the countries. High wealth is strongly linked to countries with a stable government conducive to the rule of law, they said.

Emphasis me.

Wow.
WOW.
These scientists, I tells ya. What will they discover next?

Being poor kind of sucks, doesn't it? Huh. Go figure.

I pose to you that makes people (in the aggregate) more slithery than they ordinarily would be if they were more comfortable and didn't have to cut corners. And being poor makes you less able to protect yourself when things go awry, as they always occasionally must.

Not exactly a chicken-or-the-egg type puzzle, is it?

Where the rule of law protects citizens and allows us to become wealthy, and to therefore increase the wealth of the nation, we are better able to not only withstand adversity personally and as a group, but to prevent it in the first place.

And are more likely to demand that our builders (and most others we do business with) do the right thing. Because we are willing and able to pay for it (in the aggregate).

Lots of rich people propagating wealth = we are all better off

Holy Fucking Shit. Science.

This isn't just true about earthquake fatalities of course. There's a larger political point about econ policies which actively thwart wealth creation in the name of 'economic justice.'

Somebody is going to pay for those retarded policies in a million other little surprising and painful ways- I guess we already are, actually- and it won't be the Rockefellers.

posted by Laura. at 04:20 PM

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