HDD-fabrikanten overwegen (tijdelijke) verhuizing

Ik heb even moeten zoeken, eerst in mijn geheuge, daarna in een boek, naar een passende passage uit een boek die aardig past bij de situatie in Thailand anno 2011.
Deze passage beschrijft een situatie in China 900 jaar geleden.
Met enig mentale gymnastiek zou deze passage met wat aanpassingen direct toepasbaar zijn op Thailand.
Het is in het Engels, ik hoop dat velen dit kunnen lezen, vertalen leek me niet nodig.

James Michener
Hawaii
1959

What the Hakka, looking down on the recurring flood disasters, could never understand was this.
In the year 1114, with the aid of nearly 60,000 people, Hakka and Punti alike, the government built a great spillway which started above the Low Village and which was intended to divert the flood waters away from that village and many others.
And the idea was a capital one and would have saved many lives and property.
Except that greedy officials seeing much inviting land in the bottom channel and along its sides, reasoned: “Why should we leave such fine silted soil lying idle? Let us plant crops in the channel, because in nine average out of ten years there is no flood and we will make a lot of money.
Then, in the tenth year, we lose our crops, but we will already have made a fortune and we can bear the loss”.
But over a period of seven hundred years the Hakka and Punti noticed that the escape channel for the river was never once used with the resulting loss of life, crops and property.
And for this reason: “ We can see there will be floods, and a great many people are bound to be killed, a huge amount of property will be destroyed and crops will be lost.
But if we open the floodgated to save the villages, our crops in and on the sides of the channel will be destroyed. Now let’s be sensible, why should we allow the waters to wash away our crops in the channel in the one year we when we will be able to charge the highest prices for them?”
So the gates remained close and the channel detoriated, and to protect one thirtieth of one percent around the villages near the channel and floodgates, all the rest was laid waste.
Flood after flood after flood swept down, and not once were the floodgates opened to save the people.
The backbreaking work of 60,000 peasants was used solely to protect the crops of a few already very rich government officials, whose profits quadrupled when the countryside was starving.

Ik weet het, China is niet Thailand.
Maar, wellicht spelen er toch wel belangen in de richting van overeenkomsten?