When a disaster such as Haiti is experiencing during and in the aftermath of a terrible earthquake, it makes me wonder why we allow nations and their peoples to remain in the state they are in. This fiasco started with the European quest to discover new worlds. Other than the taking of wealth for the home country, it was not recognized anything was being discovered. Those daring sea captains of old were finding places that only few dreamt they existed.

Once discovered, new findings were exploited as quickly as possible. Natural balances that had been in place as long as the people were living there were ignored, and the european life style was instituted as being superior.

From first discovery of new lands to the present, we have totally destroyed the ecology of these lands and their peoples, that they can not maintain a sustainable life style where they live. Yet they are viewed as if they were physically a part of Europe or the Americas.

In lands that could support a healthy population much smaller than what is there, Haiti is terribly overpopulated, and almost totally dependent on the generosity of prosperous nations to supplement agricultural production.

Haiti and many other places around the globe have been artificially turned into lands that have something more common with Las Vegas, Nevada than their neighbors. Las Vegas can not on its own sustain the population that lives there. Nor can Las Vegas on its own sustain the transient population of visitors that descend upon the city to forget about real life for a few days.

Las Vegas, like Haiti can not survive without a steady flow of food, clothing and materials from outside its boundaries. While this is fine for Las Vegas as the economy is built this way, it is not good for poor countries such as Haiti, which is generally seen as the poorest country in the Americas.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, Haitians are not only hurt, sick, and hungry, there is no infrastructure to improve their lot. They are dependent on the stodgy good will and charity of wealthier nations to provide for their needs.

Aid to Haiti is of course terminally slow, as is the case with a major catastrophe anywhere in the world. Wealthy countries for different reason have supply chains to provide Haiti and countries like her with enough food and material to sustain a population many times larger than the natural ecosystem could sustain. These supply lines have been in place for many years and they work exceedingly well. Until a disaster such as the earthquake in Haiti, then the world once again sees what we have wrought upon innocent peoples.

Suddenly, the system falls flat on its face. There is not a country who makes it their duty to provide immediate aid and support for these step child countries. Major powers in the world fill the media with unending rhetoric of how they are trying to do the right thing, bringing needed aid to those that need it, such as Haiti.

When does the time come when we admit that our policies set forth hundreds of years ago are wrong, and it is our responsibility to make them right. It should be obvious that artificially sustaining too large  a population in any country with surplus commodities is not in that countries best interest.

Perhaps we have arrived at that time in history, but we are not willing to voice it. Whenever catastrophe hits, new services from all over the world are there in hours reporting on the devastation. Leaders from the the largest help groups in the worlds arrive and pleading starts for donations for supplies.

We are one on this earth, and in many respects each of us is our brothers keeper. Is treating our brothers who are alive only through our misdirected generosity, and only when that generosity suits us, really looking to the welfare of our brothers and sisters  around the world?

When is it time to admit that we are inept helping peoples and lands that are not our own. Maybe it is time we take what we know and produce reasonable alternatives going into the future about reasonable care of the world we live in. We can not prevent natural disaster from happening, but we can reduce the amount of human suffering as a result of a natural disaster.