DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Michael Tee on February 12, 2010, 11:06:56 PM
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Not only is this army of mercenary thugs now accused of double-billing and over-billing the U.S. State Department to the tune of $55 million, but of charging them for a salaried prostitute under "recreation and morale."
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/11/lawsuit-blackwater-overbilled-state-dept-for-millions/ (http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/11/lawsuit-blackwater-overbilled-state-dept-for-millions/)
This is instructive not only because Blackwater's CEO is a major GOP donor and former intern in the Bush White House but also because of the lessons it holds for those who believe that private enterprise can do the job better. Yeah, it sure can, if "the job" is ripping off the consumer, in this case, the government.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22184921/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22184921/)
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lessons it holds for those who believe that private enterprise can do the job better.
Yeah, it sure can, if "the job" is ripping off the consumer, in this case, the government.
lets see did gvt or private enterprise....invent and produce
the washing machine?
the clothes dryer?
the automobile?
the plane?
the television?
the refrigerator?
the telephone?
who supplies the clothes we all wear?..the gvt or private enterprise?
who supplies the furniture you are sitting on right now?.....gvt or private enterprise?
who supplies the food you will stuff down your pie-hole today?....gvt or private enterprise?
who supplies the car you will drive this weekend?.....gvt or private enterprise?
who supplied the computer that enables you to access this message board?....gvt or free enterprise?
who built the roof over your head?....gvt or private enterprise?
who built the bed you will sleep in tonight?....gvt or private enterprise?
who built the shower you will take a nice warm shower in this winter weekend?...gvt or private enterprise?
who builds the airplanes that will fly people all over the United States today?...gvt or private enterprise?
need a tool this weekend?...where you going to get it?....the gvt? or Lowes or Home Depot?
need some fire wood this weekend? where ya going to get it?...private enterprise or the gvt?
sure the gvt is needed for emergencies, some safety netism, national defense, and some refereeing.
but who makes a basketball game...Kobe Byrant or the refs?
yeah the refs are needed....but the producer....the importance....is Kobe.
Look at countries where business hardly exists & you will see miserable results.
There's no business/corporations in North Korea...only gvt....look at it!
Compare North Korea and Japan...Japan where gvt encourages business.
Look at China....as soon as it allows business it flourishes...after decades of anti-business near starvation failure
Look at the map below....light is were business is....darkness where business is frowned upon
Sad...very sad...human achievement is stymied by anti-business fools!
(http://movingimages.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/earth-at-night-off-website.jpg)
did private enterprise or gvt
Massacre the American Indians?
Round up & imprison Japanese Americans?
Conduct secret nuclear tests where 60 years later residual radiation at the site still measured about ten times higher than normal?
Who is the single largest polluter in the United States? The US Government....yes exempt from the pollution laws they pass for others! SWINE!
Was it private enterprise or the gvt that conducted the disgraceful "Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment" using human beings as laboratory animals?
Was it private enterprise or gvt that kept sending young americans to Viet Nam after they privately admitted "this war is unwinnable"?
The gvt/politicians/Obama bitch about Wall Street/Business/Bankers..."wasting money"..hell looks who runs the biggest deficits in human history!
How dare Obama and his band of thieves talk about Wall Street/Business/Bankers....when they are the biggest thieves ever!
Gvt has been "wasting" more money...spending others money...on a drunken binge for decades....like no others!
Before they judge AIG...they need to look in the mirror...who's the bigger thief?
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So, according to your logic, Blackwater should be allowed to swindle the taxpayers at will.
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So, according to your logic, Blackwater should be allowed to swindle the taxpayers at will.
But, according to your logic, the government should be allowed to swindle the taxpayers at will.
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Being as I said nothing about the government, that is malarkey.
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It was inferred by your support of everything-government
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Look at countries where business hardly exists & you will see miserable results.
There's no business/corporations in North Korea...only gvt....look at it!
Compare North Korea and Japan...Japan where gvt encourages business.
Look at China....as soon as it allows business it flourishes...after decades of anti-business near starvation failure
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Some of the most impoverished areas of the world have never seen communism AND the World Bank/IMF seem bent on lending money to the elites for projects that the population will never see the benefit of. China was brought to the degree of influence it enjoys in the world through the benefits of communism, necessary to raise the workers and peasants of that great country from the virtual state of serfdom to which they had been reduced by local capitalism and foreign capitalist imperialism. China is still communist today, just with a little incentive given to entrepreneurs. Other communist governments have tried incentives before, and they are definitely useful, as long as the Party remains in firm control.
The article on insurance fraud was hilarious. Here in Ontario, we have private insurance in charge of rehab and medical treatment of the injured, so the same system of "off the charts" fraud occurs, patients walk into clinics, get whiplash collars and are prescribed for thousands of dollars of unnecessary clinical treatments etc., only here it seems it is the Vietnamese exile community rather than the Cubam exile community where the fraud is most prevalent.
This gives us two insights, (1) into the real nature of "freedom-seeking" self-exiled "refugees" from communism, who are basically greed-driven scum whose hatred for communism apparently stems from the lack of opportunities it provides to get-rich-quick artistes like themselves, and (2) that the frauds that BT is so horrified by will be perpetrated on whoever administers the system, whether that be the government or the private insurance industry. The fraud is going to follow the dollars - - if anything, the story favours government-run plans since the government is better able than private enterprise to prescribe the draconian punishments needed to put a stop to this kind of parasitism. Under communism, these guys would be pushing daisies by now.
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Being as I said nothing about the government, that is malarkey.
What was the third element?
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As a matter of fact, quite a few of the "benefits of capitalism" listed by CU4 were benefits of government. The food I eat is government inspected so that crooked businessmen can't sell bad stuff, the home I live in is built to code, GOVERNMENT code, the internet we use to communicate over was developed by government, etc. etc. etc.
CU4 correctly attributes such things as the Japanese internment to government. OK government isn't perfect either. But suppose the internment had been given to private enterprise, Blackwater, for example. How many Japanese-Canadian or Japanese-American internees would have survived their internment, given those murderous thugs as their "guardians?"
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As a matter of fact, quite a few of the "benefits of capitalism" listed by CU4 were benefits of government. The food eat is government inspected so that crooked businessmen can't sell bad stuff, the home I live in is built to code, GOVERNMENT code,
we did ok for hundreds of years without those crooked bureaucrats inspecting food and homes.....where I intend on building a lake house I checked with the county and there are "no building codes". Yep Michael and all them houses look ok and mighty comfortable to me...they aint all burning down....they aint all falling down....the free market is working without Barney Fife gvt code inspectors.....the point being....just like the analogy with Kobe Bryant and the refs....we could live without home codes....in fact we do in some areas even in 2010....but we cant live without homes...again the point being one is much more important than the other....you try to equate the trash man with the brain surgeon....sure picking up trash is important...yes it would be quite messy if no one picked up our trash....but to equate a trash man with the importance of a brain surgeon seems rather far fetched like your attempt to equate a home builder with the gvt bureaucrat code inspector. one is producing...providing jobs....providing a product....the other watches...produces nothing....creates zero taxpayers....it's the ref and kobe.....not even close.....in fact no pun intended it's a.....SLAM DUNK!
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<<we did ok for hundreds of years without those crooked bureaucrats inspecting food and homes.....>>
Well, obviously you did not. You probably never heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City or hundreds of other sweatshop, nightclub and hotel disasters which took the lives of hundreds of workers. Developers cut corners, bribe inspectors and generally try to evade the law for the sake of saving a few lousy bucks (or truckloads of lousy bucks.) You probably weren't aware of the fact that the World Trade Center Towers collapsed due to failure to follow codes which reguired the steel skeletons to be embedded in concrete rather than spray-on insulation.
<<where I intend on building a lake house I checked with the county and there are "no building codes". >>
Oh for christ sake. Why don't you go down to Florida after the next big storm and see how many of these DIY palaces survive the storm. Never happened yet that dozens of homes weren't blown away.
<<Yep Michael and all them houses look ok and mighty comfortable to me...they aint all burning down....they aint all falling down....>>
Some will, some won't. The regulations are made to insure that most will survive fire and storm, sort of getting beyond the "some sink, some swim" philosophy of the unregulated industry.
<<the free market is working without Barney Fife gvt code inspectors.....>>
Yeah, it worked just dandy for the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.
<<the point being....just like the analogy with Kobe Bryant and the refs....we could live without home codes...>>
Some would survive, some would not. Sorry, CU4, that is just not good enough.
<<.in fact we do in some areas even in 2010....but we cant live without homes...again the point being one is much more important than the other....you try to equate the trash man with the brain surgeon....sure picking up trash is important...yes it would be quite messy if no one picked up our trash....but to equate a trash man with the importance of a brain surgeon seems rather far fetched like your attempt to equate a home builder with the gvt bureaucrat code inspector. one is producing...providing jobs....providing a product....the other watches...produces nothing....creates zero taxpayers....it's the ref and kobe.....not even close.....in fact no pun intended it's a.....SLAM DUNK!>>
CU4, once I wade through all of that BS about who is producing and who is not, the end result is that some schlockmeister who wants to get rich quick building shit-houses is going to make a killing (no pun intended) in an unregulated market and because of his limited liability corporations is going to evade all responsibility to his victims when one of his masterpieces collapses or burns to the ground. Something which just will not happen in a well-regulated market.
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Developers cut corners, bribe inspectors and generally try to evade the law for the sake of saving a few lousy bucks (or truckloads of lousy bucks.)
I'm confused; are you arguing that regulation is needed or not? Because if there is no regulation, there is also no need to "bribe inspectors" or "evade the law" to save money.
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Oh for christ sake. Why don't you go down to Florida after the next big storm and see how many of these DIY palaces survive the storm. Never happened yet that dozens of homes weren't blown away.
You mean dozens of homes that passed inspections and meet the local zoning ordinances?
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<<I'm confused; are you arguing that regulation is needed or not? Because if there is no regulation, there is also no need to "bribe inspectors" or "evade the law" to save money.>>
Actually I was trying to anticipate and answer the argument that we still have building collapses even with government inspection and regulation.
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It is pretty obvious what happens when buildings can be built with no regulations at all. Just take a look at what happened in Haiti. Many buildings were made with salty beach sand and not enough cement and rebar, and the quake turned them into powder.
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<<You mean dozens of homes that passed inspections and meet the local zoning ordinances?>>
Depending on the laxity of the local codes, I would expect the casualties would include some built to code but mostly those not built to code. I would HOPE that the casualties were MOSTLY due to not following code, but I don't know that for a fact.
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<<It is pretty obvious what happens when buildings can be built with no regulations at all. Just take a look at what happened in Haiti. Many buildings were made with salty beach sand and not enough cement and rebar, and the quake turned them into powder.>>
Good point, XO. Haiti is an excellent example of unregulated building in all its glory. Freedom, it's wonderful!!
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Good point, XO. Haiti is an excellent example of unregulated building in all its glory. Freedom, it's wonderful!!
I'd also like to point out that even Haiti's government built buildings collapsed.
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Depending on the laxity of the local codes, I would expect the casualties would include some built to code but mostly those not built to code. I would HOPE that the casualties were MOSTLY due to not following code, but I don't know that for a fact.
Get back to us when you have some facts, instead of blue-sky wish thinking.
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If you go to Mexico City, you will see a large number of buildings that have been started and never completed. Most of these were the result of being approved by one inspector who was probably bribed, and then rejected after a quake or tremor cracked parts of the foundation and a second (or later) inspector refused to approve.The result was that either the owner of the project ran out of money and could nether tear the building down or complete it, so it just stood there for decades. I used to wait for the bus across from what was supposed to be the Hotel Essex in Colonia Roma Sur. The project was at least 10 years old then in 1967, and it was still there, in a much more deteriorated, mildewed and rusty state the last time I visited Mexico City, in 1980. I am guessing that the big quake in the mid-80's did it in, but it could still be there, bogged down in red tape.
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I'd also like to point out that even Haiti's government built buildings collapsed.
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I doubt that there was any government requirement for a building code enforced anywhere. The last Port au Prince earthquake was in the 1700's. The US and French Embassies seem to have been undamaged, and I imagine that they simply used their own codes, based on known fault lines and best practices.
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Depending on the laxity of the local codes, I would expect the casualties would include some built to code but mostly those not built to code. I would HOPE that the casualties were MOSTLY due to not following code, but I don't know that for a fact.
In Miami, officials at the National Hurricane Center said that Cuba could be hit especially hard by Hurricane Ivan. Meteorologists examined glowing orange and red blobs on satellite images showing that sea temperatures between the storm and Cuba were among the warmest in the Caribbean, well above 80 degrees. Those conditions would feed energy into the hurricane and could easily make it a Category 5 monster when it struck, they said.
"It's going to be a panorama of desolation," said Rafael Mojica, a hurricane expert at the center. He said that Guam was about the only place on earth with building codes sufficiently stringent to endure a worst-case hurricane.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/battered.htm (http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/battered.htm)
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The US and French Embassies seem to have been undamaged, and I imagine that they simply used their own codes, based on known fault lines and best practices.
What an outrageous assumption. Why, without government mandated building codes, strictly enforced by government inspectors, we know that the builders would just use the worst quality materials and build something that would fall down pretty much on it's own.
Isn't that the argument?
Or are you saying that buildings can be erected without government oversight that will survive storms and other natural disasters?
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Taiwan has pretty strict codes now, but I doubt that older buildings are all as well built as those on Guam.
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Taiwan has pretty strict codes now, but I doubt that older buildings are all as well built as those on Guam.
Typically, the government will design codes that will not save all structures, but just a certain percentage of them - so that the tax base survives in most cases. They play the probabilities, no different than a gambler.
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Isn't that the argument?
Or are you saying that buildings can be erected without government oversight that will survive storms and other natural disasters?
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The argument is that an building built according to known best practices, which could be mandated by a government or anyone else sufficiently knowledgeable about the risks of the location, stands a better chance of not being destroyed. Take Frank Lloyd Wright's hotel in Tokyo. It really does not matter WHO dictates the code, so long as it is sufficiently strict to withstand the dangers of the location. In the case of the embassies in Haiti, that would be whoever dictated the building of those structures, which I assume would be the US and French governments. Earthquakes and hurricanes do not actually care who dictated the codes, of course.
So, of course, a building could be built without any government regulation and withstand the dangers of the location. It is USUALLY the case that the code requirements are on file with a government, and of course, a building could be built to withstand greater damage than required by a code as well. It probably is not usual that this is the case in most places, though.
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and of course, a building could be built to withstand greater damage than required by a code as well. It probably is not usual that this is the case in most places, though.
Well, when you put the "government stamp of approval" on a particular code, why would anyone disagree? After all, the government has said it's safe, right?
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"You probably never heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City or
hundreds of other sweatshop, nightclub and hotel disasters which took the lives
of hundreds of workers"
You probably never heard of Bernie Madoff who got away with ridiculous things even
amidst the allegedly "vital government regulations" and gvt watch dog agencies designed
to "protect the public".
Were there more or less people injured by the Enrons and Madoffs 40 years ago
before all the watchdog agencies?
A fly by night securities firm can quickly meet all the S.E.C. requirements, gain a false sense of
espectability to the public and proceed to fleece the public. In an unregulated economy,
the operator would have had to earn a position of trust.
Oh for christ sake. Why don't you go down to Florida after the next big storm
and see how many of these DIY palaces survive the storm. Never happened yet
that dozens of homes weren't blown away.
Oh and I am sure Al Gore and his merry men of gvt will solve it!
just like the Corps of Engineers did such a swell job down there in New Orleans!
LOL
I'd trust a private enterprise builder any day over a gvt built building!
Government is often the enemy of consumers and in the pocket of big firms and unions.
In the private sector, when a company fails, it usually ceases operations.
The opposite happens in government....when gvt fails we call for more gvt?....lol
Michael who audits the gvt? The government? The watchmen are evaluating themselves?
Some would survive, some would not. Sorry, CU4, that is just not good enough.
But the gvt and society does that every day.
Things like toothpicks are allowed.
We could live without toothpicks pretty easily.
People choke to death every year on toothpicks.
But yet we do not outlaw toothpicks.
Thus "some survive, some don't survive".
We make those kind of choices every day as a society.
CU4, once I wade through all of that BS about who is producing and who is not,
the end result is that some schlockmeister who wants to get rich quick building shit-houses
is going to make a killing (no pun intended) in an unregulated market and because of his
limited liability corporations is going to evade all responsibility to his victims when one of
his masterpieces collapses or burns to the ground. Something which just will not happen
in a well-regulated market.
Government regulations waste taxpayer money and don't keep us safe. In fact they give a
false sense of security and crowd out private certification mechanisms because people assume
"the government is taking care of this." In general there are two choices....the way of the
market, or the way of the corrupt politicians/bureaucrats. Clearly, you prefer getting screwed
over by politicians and bureaucrats I prefer the market making most choices.
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I'd trust a private enterprise builder any day over a gvt built building! Government is often the enemy of consumers and in the pocket of big firms and unions. In the private sector, when a company fails, it usually ceases operations. The opposite happens in government....when gvt fails we call for more gvt?....Michael who audits the gvt? The government? The watchmen are evaluating themselves?
Well summized, Cu4
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The voters evaluate the government. That is how the FDA and OSHA came to exist. Since the Reaganite propagandaampaign to indoctrinate the citizens that the government is always the problem, good government programs to prevent abuse have become less frequent. The more people distrust the government, the less the government can do to serve the citizens.
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In Hati the better of people lived in better built houses , made of cinder block , concrete and heavy beams , with larger roofs.
The very poor lived in shacks which fell on them during the earthquake causeing little harm as they were small and made of lightweight materiel.
So in Hati the poorly housed were better off in the earthquake than the well off , accidentally.
What sort of regulation could a Hatian government enforce? A regulation that mandated more quality than the people could afford would simply contribute to homelessness.
By the time Hurricane season arrives the people will need some heavyly built buildings with heavy well attached roofs , but the best preparation for the next earthquake would be to live in tents.
How much do government regulations inhibit innovation?
An Arimid fiber bullet proof fabric inflated like a baloon could be as stiff as ships mast and a tent made of this sort of fabric could be built in a berm enclosure to hold down its edges with tonns of earth .With tent "poles" of inflated fabric a tent could be very large and very weathertight resisting debris impact and resisting also the tremors of an earth quake. But a giant tent might be hard to fit into existing regulations.
Very strong regulations cause a legacy problem.
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That is how the FDA and OSHA came to exist.
Hmm. The above agencies came into being under Republican Presidents . Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon.
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the best preparation for the next earthquake would be to live in tents.
Plane...that was the funniest/best line of the day! :D
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Yurts for Haiti?
Alanna Shaikh - February 16, 2010 - 2:41 pm
Wired magazine ran a piece today (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/hexayurt)about the Hexayurt (http://hexayurt.com/), a six-sided structure designed to be cheap, durable, and easily assembled. It?s not a new design; it was created years ago by Vinay Gupta and promoting it has been a longstanding project for him. However, the Wired article suggests a new and interesting use for the Hexayurt ? emergency housing in Haiti.
It?s an interesting idea. More than a million people are homeless in Haiti. Aid agencies have actually given up handing out tents (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-haitiquake_14int.ART.State.Edition1.4bde197.html)at this point. They are just focusing on building transitional structures, which cost about $3000 each. The Hexayurt, on the other hand, costs $100 to build and can be erected rapidly. They can last for years while permanent housing is rebuilt. Hexayurts are cheaper even than tents, and can be made of locally available plywood.
The idea is not without its flaws. So far, the Hexayurt has been field-tested in West Virginia and at Burning Man, neither of which actually compare to hurricane season in the Caribbean. However, the Hexayurt Project is currently fundraising to test the yurts for Haiti (http://www.scienceforhumanity.net/component/content/article/34/83), so there should be a Haiti-appropaite design soon.
Another issue is that protocols for appropriate shelter (http://www.aidworkers.net/?q=advice/shelter)are actually well-established, and organizations receiving funding from major government donors will be expected to follow existing guidelines. I think that a Hexayurt would meet SPHERE standards for appropriate emergency shelter (http://www.sphereproject.org/content/view/103/84/lang,english/), but would a conservative government bureaucrat think so?
I am really not sure if yurts are the solution to transitional housing in Haiti. But in an emergency of this magnitude, we may need to look outside the box ? or the tent ? in our response.
(http://files.howtolivewiki.com/600px-Hexayurt_sa.jpg)
Original Article (http://www.undispatch.com/node/9572)
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*snicker* Good article, Ami 8)
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Yurts for Haiti?
Alanna Shaikh - February 16, 2010 - 2:41 pm
Wired magazine ran a piece today (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/hexayurt)about the Hexayurt (http://hexayurt.com/), a six-sided structure designed to be cheap, durable, and easily assembled. It?s not a new design; it was created years ago by Vinay Gupta and promoting it has been a longstanding project for him. However, the Wired article suggests a new and interesting use for the Hexayurt ? emergency housing in Haiti.
It?s an interesting idea. More than a million people are homeless in Haiti. Aid agencies have actually given up handing out tents (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-haitiquake_14int.ART.State.Edition1.4bde197.html)at this point. They are just focusing on building transitional structures, which cost about $3000 each. The Hexayurt, on the other hand, costs $100 to build and can be erected rapidly. They can last for years while permanent housing is rebuilt. Hexayurts are cheaper even than tents, and can be made of locally available plywood.
The idea is not without its flaws. So far, the Hexayurt has been field-tested in West Virginia and at Burning Man, neither of which actually compare to hurricane season in the Caribbean. However, the Hexayurt Project is currently fundraising to test the yurts for Haiti (http://www.scienceforhumanity.net/component/content/article/34/83), so there should be a Haiti-appropaite design soon.
Another issue is that protocols for appropriate shelter (http://www.aidworkers.net/?q=advice/shelter)are actually well-established, and organizations receiving funding from major government donors will be expected to follow existing guidelines. I think that a Hexayurt would meet SPHERE standards for appropriate emergency shelter (http://www.sphereproject.org/content/view/103/84/lang,english/), but would a conservative government bureaucrat think so?
I am really not sure if yurts are the solution to transitional housing in Haiti. But in an emergency of this magnitude, we may need to look outside the box ? or the tent ? in our response.
(http://files.howtolivewiki.com/600px-Hexayurt_sa.jpg)
Original Article (http://www.undispatch.com/node/9572)
I like it , but how does it ride a tropical storm?
I think that steel shipping containers could be used as storm shelters , but there is nothing availible that will be adequate in quantity enough soon enough.
Hatians are going to be in serious trouble for months yet .