One more thing. If some of us look around and feel that their local situation resembles Haiti to an uncomfortable degree, get to work. If your local leaders aren't up to snuff, work actively to replace them with those who are better. See to it that better standards are instituted, and that public service agencies are improved.

This does happen. When I was in college (ancient history lesson here) three Boy Scouts went missing while attempting a summit climb in a local mountain range. The resulting search was wildly mismanaged. In the next election, the incumbent sheriff was bounced, his successor worked to improve SAR, and things got better - not immediately, but it did improve. A huge factor was the involvement of concerned citizens, who worked in preference to complaining. A lot of good things happened because of their work.