Tim Worstall, the redoubtable debunker of flat-earth economic nonsense, comes across a particularly juicy specimen in relation to the recent terrible earthquake in Japan. It is worth quoting at some length, because this “localism” stuff needs to be endlessly trashed:
Take local food. So, if everyone in North-Eastern Japan were to be reliant upon local food supplies then everyone in North-Eastern Japan would now be condemned to starvation in the next month or so. Not just the ten or twenty thousand who have already died, but the hundreds of thousands, millions, that make up the entire population. For in the wake of an earthquake that destroyed much and a tsunami that swamped the rest, there is no food, no saved food storage and no damn chance of growing any for the forseeable future.
“Localism” would kill all of these people. And the same would be true of localism in Pakistan when it floods, Queensland when it floods, Cockermouth when it floods, any damn where when there’s a drought and, in fact, any part of the planet that could be hit by any of those natural disasters which a vengeful planet can plop upon us, from the flood and drought already mentioned through to hurricanes, cyclones, potato or banana blight and plagues of frogs
Ah, but Localism would make all those “natural” disasters (which are really man-made – and that includes earthquakes!) a thing of the past. Get on with the program.
This is why I keep saying that if you want to “end famine”, apart from the obvious – civil war – you need to end subsistence farming(*).
In doing so the infrastructure and efficiency grows. People move to towns, earn money.
I know, I know, those quaint effnik photo-ops will dry up, but is it worth keeping people down just for your dinner party chat?
* I do not consider those living and hunting in jungles as subsisting, so no programme to drag Amazon tribes from their logs, I mean land (see: snatch)
Agreed, Tim. Hobby farms are nice, but if they cannot sustain themselves (i.e., are not economically viable without government subsidies) they should go out of business. Large agribusinesses are significantly more efficient.
When natural disasters hit poor countries – Indonesia, Bangladesh, Haiti – the death tolls are orders of magnitudes worse than those when natural disasters hit rich countries. Even in cases where the rich country response is generally considered incompetent (Katrina, the Kobe earthquake of 1995) the death tolls are still relatively low compared to poor country disasters. The reasons are barely worth mentioning.
(In terms of the magnitude of the forces of nature involved, The current Japanese disaster is probably the worst in many of our lifetimes, but although consequences and loss of life are truly terrible, there have been far, far worse disasters terms of loss of life in poorer countries due to lesser earthquakes).
The post is good and the comments are good.
It would be stupid of me to try and add anything – I would just be saying what you have all already said.