While writing this book, I discovered that there is a field of study called “disaster theory.” A lot of the work in this area explores self-interested motivations. In the United States, for instance, presidents are more likely to declare national disasters during election years, and battleground states get more donations than others; money allocated to address disasters is used as an inducement and a reward. Other research in this area illustrates the arbitrariness of what we focus on, the way our interests fail to coincide with any reasonable assessment of where help is needed the most or
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