The cyclone in Burma reminds us of the misery inflicted by human disasters as much as natural ones. The (all too common) human disaster of totalitarian governments leaves people trapped under regimes which think that they know best. They know best how to plan and run the economy, they know best where people should live and what they should do, they know best how people should conduct their personal, cultural and spiritual lives, and they know best how to meet what nature throws at them.
Except they don't. They don't have a thriving economy because, as Hayek showed us, information is over-concentrated at the centre, and decisions are out of date or just inappropriate by the time they get out to the sticks. And they are unable to deal with natural disasters for much the same reason: information is slow to get to the decision-making centre, slow to be processed by the bureaucracy, and slow to get acted on. Economic backwardness, and the fact that capitalism is seen as a threat means that there is less capital – trucks, helicopters, cranes, hospitals, utilities – that can be focused on dealing with natural disasters.
Richer countries, by contrast, can build more strongly, defend themselves from storms, floods and earthquakes more effectively, and repair the damage more quickly. There is more capital to throw at the problem, more decisions are made locally, and more people are willing to get stuck in without waiting for the government to tell them what to do. If you want an example, remember the Hurricane Jeanne in 2004 that killed over 3000 people in poor Haiti but only 5 in rich Florida.
And yet, some people seem determined to compound the misery by keeping poor countries poor – refusing their imports in order to protect our own manufacturers, or demanding that they rein back industrial development in case it pollutes the atmosphere. If you really want to help the planet and the lives and welfare of all who live in it, my prescription would be liberal democracy and free trade. That's the best form of aid we could give to anyone.
