Well it's not the case. Far less people die in earthquakes today than they did in the past, even though billions more people live in cities made of concrete and steel and other things that hurt a lot more than grass and straw when they fall on your head. As bad as this week's Indian disaster was, it can't compare to the subcontinental quakes of earlier this century or, say, the 300,000 dead in the Calcutta quake of 1737. The famous San Francisco earthquake of 1906 killed 667 people, ten times more than the quake of 1989 even though it had half the people. I would bet that if the earthquake that hit India this week, had hit Los Angeles, the deaths would be in the double digits, not over 20,000.
Modern buildings have a tendency to fall down less than squalid tenements or shantytowns.
Especially when you're rich enough to make them quake proof. Well, if you listen to what the anti-globalization protesters are saying at the World Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or at my local coffeehouse, you'd get the impression that they have the best interests of poor people at heart. Globalization is generally something rich people are against and poor people are for, which is funny since rich people are supposed to be greedy and poor people are supposed to be content. This is true about both certain conservatives and liberals but for different reasons. Conservative anti-globalists and trade unionists fear what globalization will do to people inside our borders.