How to give the proper sort of nod towards the Japan earthquake? Not by saying that we are right in some opinion that we already hold that we can somehow hook onto it, that’s for sure. A disaster means uncontroversial urgency. To use it to pontificate about mere importance, and controversial importance at that, is to change the subject. Importance is important, but it can wait.
I went to Flickr, to see what “japan earthquake” yielded, and my favourite discovery so far, although I realise that is not quite the proper adjective, is this:
Which I found among these.
That is going to take a lot of sorting out, not least because cranes will be needed, and look what happened to the cranes that were there. Yes, every one of the thousands of deaths (did anyone die in those cranes?) is terrible for all of the dead and for all of their loved ones. But I’m guessing that the typical, as opposed to worst, stories will involve the immense labour of cleaning up all the mess, and the immense derangement done to various plans, business and otherwise.
Because of the shapes involved, and their repetitiousness, this picture reminded me – in a kind of compare-and-contrast way – of pictures like the one I put on my personal blog at the time of Hurricane Katrina, of semi-submerged school buses in New Orleans, when water made a rather more slow motion mess of that city, nearly five years ago. And I see that I had very similar thoughts then to now, although this disaster is far greater.
It’s good, I think, when disaster strikes anywhere on earth, that thanks to things like Flickr we can feast our eyes and minds on the wreckage and adopt the appropriate attitude, but without all of us getting in the way.
LATER: Uncontained chaos. I have to admit that when it comes to big time disasters like this one, which is getting bigger by the day, the old school media really do come into their own. I think that’s because there are so many facts, and those facts are so very, very photogenic. It also makes a big difference that this particular disaster is massively better to comprehend if a few people (it mustn’t be too many) take to the air to photo it, with really expensive cameras.
LATER: Richard Fernandez talks about urgency.
LATER: Maybe the old school media are not doing so well (thank you Michael J):
The whole sequence of events is a ringing endorsement for nuclear power safety. If this – basically nothing – is what happens when decades-old systems are pushed five times and then some beyond their design limits, new plants much safer yet would be able to resist an asteroid strike without problems.
But you wouldn’t know that from looking at the mainstream media. Ignorant fools are suggesting on every hand that Japan’s problems actually mean fresh obstacles in the way of new nuclear plants here in the UK, Europe and the US.
That can only be true if an unbelievable level of public ignorance of the real facts, born of truly dreadful news reporting over the weekend, is allowed to persist.
So, we’re back to contained chaos. And to talking about importance, but in reaction to other importance talk that is importantly wrong.
Says Michael: “The big deal is that Japan has lost as much of 25% of its electricity generation capacity.”
The government Bank of Japan has announced yet another bailout slush fund – this time of about 200 billion Dollars of credit money.
Hownever, the European Union has announced (yet another) slush fund of credit money of twice that amount – with E.U. institutions buying government bonds.
Japan has suffered the worst event since World War II – what is the excuse of the E.U.?
The danger to German banks if various nations (such as Greece and Portugal) default?
The whole thing is folly – as is the policy of Brtain and the United States.
Bailout after bailout, credit money bubble after credit money bubble.
And yet the establishment (you know who) called apon the German Chancellor to agree to all this – in defence of “economic liberalism”.
I used to carefully explain that in Europe “liberalism” did not mean “big government” or “socialism” as it does in the United States – but if this national and corporate bailoutism is “liberalism” it seems that the word means the same thing in Europe as it does in the United States.
Almost needless to say – such polices have failed in Japan for DECADES.
Broken windows – yay! Keynes begged to differ, it turns out – he seemed to have read his Bastiat.
A bit off topic Paul? How about discussing some aspect of the disaster in Japan rather than the EU’s bailout fund? Maybe in this case using CAPITALS would be justified 🙂
When these kind of events happen I feel that the nation state does come into its own. You could think of it as some sort of insurance by community.
But the libertarian in me says that people should simply have got proper levels of insurance, as surely many of them did, and if they didn’t, well then tough (although some of these events are considered uninsurable – Acts of God, which is something insurance companies sometimes use as an excuse not to pay, after the event). We also know that the same sense of community that is of benefit in these situations has also given us collectivism. This is particularly the case in Japan, a country for which communism would fit hand in glove.
I don’t know really. Discuss I suppose…
“Contained chaos” is an interesting phrase. I think the Japanese people are dealing with the disaster very well. Can you imagine the social breakdown/disorder if something like this happened in Britain?
Or anywhere else for that matter, Michael. The Japanese are different.
The Japanese did not deal well with their last major earthquake – the one that hit Kobe in 1995. Government was slow to respond, emergency services were not properly trained, offers of aid from foreign countries were initially refused, building codes turned out to be designed to aid the construction industry rather than to actually protect buildings against earthquakes. However, having learned that lesson, they were much, much better prepared this time. This disaster is an order of magnitude worse, alas.
I had dinner with a friend of mine who is head actuary at an insurance company. For those who are interested, apparently they reckon that 25% of households and pretty much all commercial buildings have earthquake insurance. This would include the effects of the tsunami but might not include any damage from the problems with the nuclear power stations. In some instances fires that result from earthquakes is excluded too. The good news for insurees is that the insurance market in the last few years has been pretty competitive, which usually means that policies cover more and more events for the same price. So all in all it looks like insurance companies will pick up the tab, a fair bit in Lloyds. However, the 75% of households that didn’t bother, or couldn’t afford, the insurance will have to rely on the government.
The majority of those containers in the photo are 40-footers, that is, 40 foot by 8 foot by 8 foot. This is likely a small part of the container terminal.
Container terminals are served by container ships, which are very fast vehicles, carrying up to 15,000 containers each, and arriving everywhere, Europe, USA, China, Japan, every day of the year. Now those vessels a lot of which have already have arrived, will have nowhere to discharge/load cargo, on the Japanese coast. Other ports, which can take them, are already scheduled for ships. So a huge logjam is in the making.
Incompetence, thy name is TEPCO.
What a bunch of useless clowns.
Yet again the parasitic corporate welfare spongers of the nuclear industry (so inept and untrustworthy that no insurer will touch them) are more concerned with covering their own asses than the safety of the public.
In the US, the nuclear clowns had the Price Anderson law bought in so they could dump their mistakes on the taxpayer, ain’t that special.
Frankly, I hope those in charge of TEPCO die of radiation poisoning. Parasites.
Bloody awful. No other way to put it. I see that the US has sent aircraft carriers, which, given their power generators and floating hospitals, are a useful thing to have parked offshore.
I have a Japanese sister-in-law whose business has been potentially devastated. However, my relations are all accounted for, thank goodness. For 24 hours I feared the very worst.
It is going to take years for the country to recover from this disaster. The stoicism and calm that seems to be the reaction of people there is inspirational, and a lesson.
Johnathan, that’s a good point about the Japanese “stoicism and calm.” I hope more is made of that in the days to come, and especially in comparison to the endless whining and bleating which followed Hurricane Katrina.
Glad to hear that your relatives are OK.