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In most contemporary societies, including the United States, there are really no provisions, practices, and doctrines to handle a large city's worth of people's
by temp-dude-87844 9y ago
In most contemporary societies, including the United States, there are really no provisions, practices, and doctrines to handle a large city's worth of people's disruption of daily routine. We've seen this with Katrina and Sandy, but more recently with Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
Puerto Rico's situation is worse because of several compounding factors that work against them: the scale of the disaster, communication and coordination issues, logistical challenges, and a belligerent rhetoric coming from the topmost levels of the US federal government despite lower-level federal employees being part of of a burgeoning, although so far inadequate recovery effort.
But in each of these disasters, the hard questions to which society offers zero answers begin long before the disaster actually strikes. Universities and research organizations have long studied reasons why people don't evacuate, and while discretionary answers exist, many people simply report being unable to afford the expenses of a temporary relocation away from one's regular job for a disaster that's forecasted to perhaps occur 3-5 days out.
You can invoke the argument that it's literally a matter of life and death and that ought to be worth any expense, but that's not helpful when people may not have cash on hand, or quick access to easy emergency credit that would be guaranteed by some higher party. It's truly unfortunate that situation is that disaster aid for forecastable disasters only kicks in once it has already struck, and not days before when its inevitability becomes clear.
In Puerto Rico's current case, the breakdown of societal structures due to lack of electricity, lack of electronic communication, lack of fuel, lack of distribution capability is unfortunate enough, but the degenerate functioning of life is just bizarre; people are now trying to get by in a worst-of-both-worlds hybrid of subsistence tribalism and wage-earning capitalism, where they both have to forage for food and water and barter for supplies, while at the same time giving the rest of their cash-on-hand to large corporations like CVS for stuff that's still on the shelves; and any changes to this status quo are reliant on random individuals' goodwill -- like a shopowner who decides to give away supplies -- instead of any organized directives from top-down.
- pjc50 9y ago> worst-of-both-worlds hybrid of subsistence tribalism and wage-earning capitalism The bottom end of capitalism often looks quite like subsistence tribalism. > many people simply report being unable to afford the expenses of a temporary relocation away from one's regular job for a disaster that's forecasted to perhaps occur 3-5 days out Well, yes. You can be sure that everyone outside the disaster zone will be along to restore capitalism before they restore electricity. The disaster is temporary but the economic structure remains. It's not even clear that being homeless in NYC on your own is better than being homeless in the ruins of your community. It may be better to turn up to your non-functional workplace and keep your job than evacuate and lose it. http://www.naplesnews.com/story/weather/hurricanes/2017/09/07/youre-fired-florida-evacuees-have-few-legal-protections-termination/642866001/ http://www.naplesnews.com/story/weather/hurricanes/2017/09/0... (I think well-off people underestimate how much ordinary capitalism looks like imminent disaster to people at the sharp end - it's no use if the stores are open and the hospitals working if you can't afford food or healthcare.)
- apsec112 9y agoPlease don't steer things into a generic political debate. From the HN guidelines: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
- evanlivingston 9y agoThe article we all came here to discuss is focused on the financial systems people rely upon for daily life and subsistence during disaster. Financial systems are inherently political, hard stop. Discussing the political systems that promote the reliance on the somewhat fragile systems of technology the article is discussing is not unrelated nor generic. If you feel that politics is a flamewar topic, please do civic engagement a favor and learn how to practice political discussion with less flammability.
- zzzeek 9y agoThen flag the post and let the moderators handle it. There is nothing more obnoxious than lecturing other people on how you think they should express themselves.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> You can be sure that everyone outside the disaster zone will be along to restore capitalism before they restore electricity What does this mean?
- mistermann 9y agoI'm wondering if anyone has ever done a disaster recovery analysis for PR before, is there anything down on paper regarding how supplies could be airlifted in to strategic locations, some subset of roads (starting aqt the port, working outward) improved to be "guaranteed" to be working for distribution in the event of a worst case scenario, etc? A strategy that maximizes possibility of success regardless of who is president rather than expecting whoever happens to be president at the time to figure it all out after the fact seems like it would be a better idea, yet from the little I've read on the matter it seems like the latter was the chosen approach.
- briandear 9y agoBelligerent rhetoric? You mean from that wacko mayor of San Juan? She’s a nutcase.
- factotum 9y agoI recommend you get your news from somewhere other than Breitbart and Fox News.