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Comment by pero | Hacker News Reader

Disasters like this are, in theory, actually beneficial to economies--especially stagnant ones like Japan's. The capacity for immediate bonafide economic growth has been diminished but that doesn't mean that economic production will decline. There is now ample room to deploy all that surplus capital (humans, machinery, money) that was previously unproductive. The upper echelones of the financial sector will make a killing shorting and re-buying.

Advanced reading on a parallel concept: http://www.irows.ucr.edu/conferences/globgis/papers/Arrighi.... The quoted and cited David Harvey piece (2007, albeit the condensed article veresion and not the full-length book) would have been a better reference however is apparently no longer online. This, though, is amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

I believe Naomi Klein made a good buck on dumbing down and re-orienting the above hypothesis.

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Only an economist can consider a theory like that for more than a few seconds and not laugh hysterically. As Tom Woods has said, following this logic, the best thing we could do for our economy is build a huge armada of amazing battle ships, have Japan do likewise, then float them to the middle of the pacific and, after evacuating them (surely, the loss of human life is not a necessary component in this economic model, is it?) blow them all up.

Rinse, wash, repeat. We're all rich!

Empiricism is not on your side. The richest country in the world spends more than its fair share on 'a huge armada of amazing battle ships', actually, as much as everyone else on the planet put together, and also actively seeks out remote spots of the planet to blow stuff up in.

Rinse, repeat, very rich.

When you talk about the richest country in the world, are you referring to Qatar or Luxembourg?

According to the IMF and CIA World Factbook, Qatar has the highest GDP (PPP) per capita. According to the World Bank, it's Luxembourg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...

Nah, neither, I was using raw GDP. Those countries don't have politico-economic systems which funnel large chunks of their populations into either incarceration or the military. Forbes list also seems appropriate for the discussion given the 'very rich' theme going on.

Care to dig up those rates/expenditures per capita?

Correlation != causation

Do tell what caused it then.

I actually believe this is a bit of an insult to economists. I don't believe most mainstream economists would consider anything involving loss of life on a large scale "a good thing", just those that dabble in economic theory.

Perhaps (definitely) I could have worded that better, but no one is considering it a good thing--just a method of 'accumulation'.

Disasters like this are, in theory, actually beneficial to economies

In very bad theories, yes.

Or very poorly architected economies?

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