Two more on Haiti

Andy Kershaw and Nicholas Kristof

Two on Haiti

When the media is the disaster - Rebecca Solnit

Suffering - George Packer. Acts of God and Man

Dismal, utterly dismal or moderately cheerful

As the extent of the devastation in Haiti was becoming clearer, I happened to be listening to Al Bartlett talking to Tim Harford and giving his own gloss on three theorems of Kenneth Boulding:

"The Dismal Theorem"- If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth.

"The Utterly Dismal Theorem" - This theorem states that any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as misery is the only check on population, the [technical] improvement will enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The final result of [technical] improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the total sum of human misery.

"The moderately cheerful form of the Dismal Theorem" - Fortunately, it is not too difficult to restate the Dismal Theorem in a moderately cheerful form, which states that if something else, other than misery and starvation, can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous.

Haiti, of course, is relatively self-contained and the situation may be salvageable through the efforts and wisdom of its own people, together with concerted external support. A nightmare is that Haiti's cycles of vulnerability, misery and destruction are a small prefiguring the global future for a civilisation that does not evolve to realise the moderately cheerful theorem.

Already catastrophic

Pete Postelthwaite as the last man on earth may make a useful dramatic framing device in The Age of Stupid, but it is hardly realistic. More likely, perhaps, is more of the world looking like this (also reported here).

[P.S. 3 April: Often one to surprise, Paul Collier is optimistic about Haiti.]