@gungasnake,
Yes gunga--but as I pointed out in my little essay about the encouragement of the avidity of the desire for more goods and services with which to dress up a sense of self-esteem, what happened in NO is a mere effect as is what happened in Japan. In Japan, I gather, the sense of self-esteem is more collectivist whereas we are more individualistic. Both components operating in each place but with a different emphasis.
And also I pointed out that what we see is mediated anyway.
One way of expressing a collectivist need is the acceptance of having investments made with low overheads because they are in dangerous territory. My house might be knocked over by a tsunami but it wouldn't go floating down the road as a garden shed would. So wages are low. Housing is cheap. A bet. Now lost. I gather from a Nissan spokesman that a large number of components for the car assembly plants were made in the region of the disaster. So what have you got? Little in the way of a vociferous middle-class to protest a nuclear plant being located there.
Of the two the looters of NO look to be less dangerous. In fact they came in handy as they provided the opportunity for millions of people to declare what law abiding citizens they are by expressing their indignation and outrage.
But it is pointless discussing effects. It's like continually complaining about water dripping onto your keyboard and forgetting about the loose slate on the roof.
Bob was right about it but it made him gulp a little when he saw the implication of him being so. It surprised me when I discovered that crime might have positive functions.
TV items about how awful it is to steal cars and race them round the roads at 13, 14 and 15 always show them doing it to inflame the other kids watching. Once they had a kid demonstrating how easy it is to start a car without a key.
If they can encourage it, and the ads show how manly it is driving cars fast, then they get more dramatic stories and can wheel their "experts" on to the show (£100 plus hospitality) to say how really, really awful it is for ever and ever on a rising curve. And that is the real news.
Unless the cause is addressed you've got it forever. Some go so far as to accuse Media of goading the rebels in Libya to further their profits and some careers. Even Katie Couric had to get to Tahiri Square. Briefly. We think she did at least. Competitive 24 hour news wasn't under consideration when the Constitution was written. Speech is a strange word these days. It means a lot more than it did in those primitive days when the population was 1% of what it is now and equipt with not much besides gardening tools.
One might say that the Japanese have looted a number of markets around the world by lowering overheads by what is now shown to be unacceptable methods.
And most of what the NO looters looted was a goner anyway from a loss adjuster's point of view.
