The bulk of the development staff at my office is from India, and although I'm not sure how many of them are from the Southern coastal areas, I know at least one is from the area around Pondicherry. These are people whose parents are farmers or laborers. In a single generation, their families have made the move from agricultural to technological careers. At 43 rupees to the dollar, they can make more than 200 times the average yearly income of their countrymen in India. This is the sort of thing that is ignored by people who point to the supposed paucity of American foreign aid to developing nations--no other country provides more money to developing nations in the form of wages wired back home than we do.*
As Mr. Reynolds noted (getting it to pixels while I was still thinking about writing much the same thing, the bastard):
... economic growth, and the freedom that produces it, may be the best guarantor of safety for us all. A rich society can afford to worry about things that a poorer one wouldn't have the resources to think about. A rich society can take steps to prevent disasters before they happen. And a rich society is better positioned to survive disasters once they occur, even if they are completely unforeseen, or unforeseeable.Where survival is concerned, rich is better. That's something to keep in mind when people describe economic growth as "anti-human."
That's also something to think about when considering the whole "outsourcing" question: which scenario would eventually enable the country in question to achieve the kind of prosperity that would enable it to build and maintain a technological infrastructure that could save thousands of lives? Foreign workers in America, wiring money home to their families? Or native industries doing business with America at favorable market rates that will inevitably rise over time as the industries establish themselves, generating taxable income?
The latter, it seems to me, is kin to the old "Teach a man to fish" adage, and I instinctively favor the idea of native industries with vast growth potential over income that is highly dependent on the state of the American technology industry. Either way, the developing global economy results in some jobs that might be filled by Americans being filled by non-citizens, either here or abroad. But foreign competition (as the auto industry knows) tends to either sharpen you up or kill you. The technology industry is well on its way to maturity and a certain amount of middle-age spread, and I tend to think that competition will eventually be healthy for the industry on a global level.
But that's just the opinion of someone whose knowledge of economic techne is just adequate enough to tell him that most of the rest of the world doesn't get to spend 14 hours on the couch the day after Christmas in a well-heated house watching all three extended DVD editions of the Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back on a nice flat-screen television, mainly because they're too busy scrounging enough food for the day or avoiding getting shot or trying to locate their relatives in an open-air beach morgue.
In between the time I started this post this morning and right now, about dinnertime, the death toll rose from 19,000 to 22,000. Last night before I went to bed, it was 9,000. It'll keep going up as they make contact with islands that have been cut off, and as compromised water supplies lead to disease outbreaks.
All in all, a sad day for the species (as if this isn't true somewhere in the world on any given day). Hopefully, this will result in the creation of a technological safety net that will give the inhabitants of Southeast Asia a bit more warning in the future.
*As it turns out, I was technically correct about this: in 2001, the US topped the list of wage remittance payments at $28.4 billion, followed by Saudi Arabia at $15.1 billion with Germany a distant third at $8.2 billion. However, the total amount of EU-member remittance payments in the top 20 sources was $31.6 billion [Source: World Bank Global Development Finance 2003, Chapter 7].
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Make that 24,000.
There is already a blog containing volunteer and donation information, aid resources, and more: The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami.
This reminds me of how ham radio used to be in the days before the internet, with all the hams in a disaster area hooking their radios up to car batteries and relaying messages from concerned friends and relatives and communicating vital information for the relief efforts.
See, also (via Mr. Drezner):
American Red Cross (Their International Response Fund online donation form is here)
