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Originally Posted by Redux
When a country is fubar to the extent of Haiti, the issue goes way beyond rebar.
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Obviously. I strongly disagree with Spexxvet about the proactive versus reactive stance when it comes to foreign aid of third world countries. First of all, realistically, the potential aid of rebar would have done very little to prevent deaths because normal concrete structures, with rebar, are not designed to withstand 7.0 earthquakes. As far as I know that technology does not even exist yet. We have methods to lower the amount of destruction, but not completely eliminate it. So, just looking at rebar, the cost factor would actually be lower with our current policy. If we include other proactive aid, the cost difference would be even larger. That also makes the assumption we only give that amount of aid to Haiti and not other third world countries that have a probability of being hit with natural disasters as well.
When it comes to foreign aid, I mostly agree with Lookout123 and TheMercenary. We have other bigger problems to focus on in my opinion. We are getting further and further in debt, we are in a bad recession, and our infrastructure isn't that great either (at least compared to first world countries). For now, philanthropy will have to do.