Dumbest thing I've read this week

[awesomelies]

(on Twitter, re Haiti): "Screw logistics. Get these people help NOW."

Screw petrol! Start this car now!

Comments

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

Well, the "screw logistics" approach worked out so very well for Katrina.

(The first thing you think about in this sort of situation is to ensure your rescue teams have a supply of food, water, sanitation and dry sleeping arrangements, because if you don't do this then every person you send in makes the situation worse).

[awesomelies.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I got this via a link off Making Light in which someone who knows what they're talking about (http://michaelkeizer.com/humourless/2010/logistics-questions-around-the-haiti-earthquake/) explains the logistics problems of something like the Haiti relief effort, which is interesting reading. (I didn't know that after the 2004 tsunami Indonesia had to spend a fortune disposing of unwanted aid goods due to, yep, logistics failures).

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

It's weird, though; it fits so neatly into the anti-technocratic git-'er-done school of thought that looms so large in American political discourse these days. Anything that involves skills that I do not possess or understand must, perforce, be a swindle of some kind.

[awesomelies.livejournal.com]

I was thinking something along those lines; not so much the "anti-technocratic git-'er-done" thing, which I didn't know was so prevalent (how depressing), but how the problem is that good behaviour in these circumstances so unfortunately matches the kind of boondoggling that charities are always being accused of. Employ serious professionals who know what they're doing (eg the above article's reference to people who can set up a backpack radio in ten minutes in an unsympathetic environment)? That's wasting cash on well-paid UK jobs. Make sure that, as you say, your field workers have decent food, water, sanitation and shelter? That's an arrogant disregard for the starving victims around you. And so on, and bloody so on.