earthquake notes

Topics: Safety, Resources, Programs
20 Jan 1995

From: "DG Ervan Darnell"


As tragic as the Kobe earthquake was, I'm sure the Japanese will recover
from it (1% of the buildings in Kobe were rendered uninhabitable and 0.3% of
the Kobe population killed). Surviving the ghost of Keynes will be more
difficult. Today's Houston Post (an AP piece) analyzed the damage in an
article entitled "Recovery work could boost Japan's economy". Among other
things, Keynes advocated government spending to boost the economy (in some
instances) and not just to buy needed goods. Whether the earthquake is
worse than an average government program, I'll leave for to decide, but the
underlying economic idea is the same: force people to buy something they do
not want (in this case, new buildings) in the interest of making them better
off by virtue of spending more. Current estimates are that $60G of damage
was done. That's $60G of other goods that will not be produced because
resources have to be diverted to rebuilding what they already had.

By the logic of this article, the WWII bombing of Japan was the best thing
that ever happened to them. Just think of all the work generated by
rebuilding! Heck, we are wondering what do with the Ukrainian nukes, let's
just pay them to launch the missiles at Tokyo. There would be no shipping
costs. There would be no disposal costs. I'm sure they already have Japan
targetted so even the technical work would be slight. Maybe the Joint
Chiefs need some of the economists quoted in the article?

Well, I suppose they can reject such economic nonsense from the U.S.
Unfortunatley, I heard that as part of an 'aid' package, the U.S. is sending
them FEMA representatives. Now there is a ship that the original Ragnar(1)
should visit! FEMA is the organization that spent $20M (or so) studying how
to deliver income tax forms after a nuclear war (yes, I'm serious). On a
more current note, FEMA(2) 'cleaned up' after hurricane Andrew by forbidding
people to move back into their homes. After 30 years of productive farming
in the Mississippi bottom, last year's floods destroyed a year's harvest.
Now, FEMA is trying to prevent people from rebuilding there at all (even
grain storage sheds are problematic). This is of course to protect those
foolish farmers from making a profit (in the long run) by raising grain on
productive soil. They are hard at work on flatly prohibiting farming there
at all, buildings or no. What the river left, the government is trying to
destroy. I know one fellow (from indirect personal experience) who moved
his mobile home back after the floods. Once a month, he pulls the blocks
out from the wheels and tows it 6" forward. The sheriff measures it, finds
it has moved, declares it non-permanent, and therefore legal to live in.
Had he actually hooked up some fixed plumbing so it could not be so easily
moved, it would have been illegal for him to live on his own property.
There is just nothing to do but give a round of applause to such profound
idiocy and see if the bureaucrats are so stupid as to regard it as praise
instead of disgust.

Back to earthquakes, the real issue of course is that it just is not
economically rational to build completely earthquake resistant structures.
On Wednesday, MacNeil/Lehrer interviewed an engineer (I missed what his
discipline was) who was an expert on earthquake proofing and city building
codes.
The interview went something like this:
M/L : 'Kobe was not supposed to be a likely spot.'
E: 'Yes, that is rignt'
M/L : 'Are there places like that in the U.S.'
E: 'Yes, Memphis for instance. Though earthquakes are rare, in 1830 they
had an 8.3 and it will eventually happen again.'
M/L : 'Are they ready for that?'
E : ' Absolutely not, their building codes are not designed with earthquakes
in mind.'
M/L : 'Should something be done about that?'
E : 'Yes, the federal government should work with them to raise the standards'
[in other words, force them to meet a standard they don't find useful. ]
M/L : 'How long before we expect another big quake to hit Memphis?'
E: "5 to 10 thousand years."

10K years and he wants better building codes now? Hello! How can this guy
understand calculus and be totally opaque to interest calculations? Let's
see, even assuming uniform distribution, we can pay (oh say) 30% more for
every house in construction costs, paperwork hassles, lost opportunities for
housing never built, inspector bribes, etc., just to save one house in every
200 or so? Of course, the probability is not uniform. There just was a
biggie, the next time really is expected 5K years in the future and not
merely once every 5K years. You'll excuse me if I am just about as
interested in what happens 5K years from now as the last Mammoth hunter was
in how much I pay for next my next hard disk. But how could a bureaucrat
pass up such a fine regulatory opportunity?

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(1) For those of you who are not up on your scripture, Ragnar Danneskjold is
#3 of the main triumvirate in "Atlas Shrugged" that lead the strike against
exploitation. Ragnar's part in this was to be a pirate and sink every ship
which carried government "aid" since is was stolen to begin with and
additionally since the government was trying to destroy all productivity, a
little assistance was in order. Ships operating with a for-profit cargo
were allowed to pass. I chose it as a name for the mail reflector on the
theory that I'm trying to rhetorically sink the liberal ship.

(2) Did some misogynists choose this acronym/abbreviation because they
expected the agency to make men's lives miserable everywhere? ;-)


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