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An interesting debate has emerged in the media in the wake of Katrina. (I get most of my news from NPR because interruptions are minimal and low-key and it keeps my eyes free to drive, cook, clean, and so forth.) Pointing to the incompetence of local, state, and federal governments, many "mainstream" commentators argue that this disaster shows that *government in general* is incompetent at securing the lives and property of citizens. In respose, other commentators argue that the problem is not government in general, but a *specific* government -- one or more of the local, state, and federal governments responsible for the storm areas.
Like most libertarians, I agree with the first statement in that I believe that governments tend to be incompetent at their theoretical purpose of protecting life and property. But I think that this valid point can lead people to let specific governments off the hook. If all governments stink, why single out, for instance, the Bush administration? I see a lot of generally pro-government commentators taking this line (such as David Brooks the other day on NPR) to deflect fire directed toward big-government Bush.
This would be a mistake. In the case of the federal government and Katrina, I think it has done an *exceptionally* bad job (as it has in Iraq), and it ought to be held accountable. Some governments are worse than others. Some Presidents are worse than others. And Uncurious George may be among the worst ever.
The whole city of NO was rendered uninhabitable by virtue of the fact that most of the city was flooded. The non-flooded parts can't function as habitations given the dysfunctional character of the rest of the city.
I don't see any sense in which my questions are aimed at strawmen. But I am beginning to see reasons why you can't answer them.
Of course I acknowledge respects in which the State made things worse than they could have been. Any institution or absence of an institution can make some things worse than they could have been. That is not an argument against the relevant institution and not an argument that the absence of the institution would have made things better. So my acknowledgement there is hardly a concession. I am still straining to see how the absence of government-by-the-State would have made things better than its presence.
Let's grant that the welfare state makes a contribution to poverty. How does that fact demonstrate that the absence of a State would have made things better in New Orleans? I'll answer my own "strawman" question: it doesn't.
William Stepp -
9/12/2005
The whole city of NO was not rendered uninhabitable. Some people never left. At least 20% (the French Q and a couple other parts) were not flooded.
Your two questions in the first paragraph are aimed at strawmen.
And you do acknowledge that some of the things the state did made things worse, which was all I was pointing out--and I mentioned what they were.
The welfare state does make poverty worse and it weakens the incentive to work, and to do the things that make a person attractive to an employer.
If you don't believe me, just walk by a project, taking care to avoid the drive by shooters, the crack vials and heroin needles, and the wanna be rappers going out for a night of high-risk behavior.
QED, even for an alleged induction lover.
Irfan Khawaja -
9/12/2005
I don't see how that even attempts to answer the question. The whole city of New Orleans was rendered uninhabitable by flooding. Are you saying that had there been no State, there would have been no city of New Orleans? Or better yet, that if there had been no State, people wouldn't have lived on any hurricane-prone coastline in America? These claims are based on precisely zero in the way of empirical evidence. They are ideologically-driven fantasies and no more.
Even if I granted every factual claim in your post (and I wouldn't, on my induction-loving life) you haven't grappled at all with the issue. Some of the things the State did made things worse. But how would things have gone in New Orleans had there been no State at all? I'll grant you that there would be less incentive to build right on the coast. But that doesn't account for the bulk of the problem.
Suppose that I was born poor in New Orleans. It would not have been easy for me to pack up and leave town simply because someday a Category 4 hurricane might destroy the levees and submerge my home. I might not have had the wherewithal to know that that might happen. You can wave your hands all you want about the "caustic effect of the welfare state" but unless you are trying to pretend that there would have been (a) no New Orleans and (b) no poor people in your fantasized utopia, you are simply ducking the issue. An extended fantasy is not an answer.
Roderick T. Long -
9/12/2005
I think a better Tolkien analogy is the ring itself. It can't be made safe and used for good -- "chained" and "carefully directed" -- because its very nature, the perverse incentival and informational constraints it faces owing to its being a monopoly, will always make it tend to cause horrific results. The only solution is to throw it back into the fires where it was forged.
William J. Stepp -
9/12/2005
As Eliot Kleinberg writes in his essay on the 1928 hurricane that hit Florida:
People continued to build along the coast and in flood-prone areas, ignoring the dire predictions of hurricane researchers that the historical cycle of hurricanes was bringing a new era of more and bigger storms and that the precautions in place might not be enough.
The reason people continue to build in flood prone areas is that home owners and developers receive government subsidies to do so, including flood insurance, subsidized loans, and outright grants. One official was quoted in the press last week to the effect that hurricane damage amounts to an urban renewal program for builders. Cities and localities also like shoring up their tax bases by rebuilding in the wake of property-destroying disasters. One business columnist wondered aloud if the affected cities would ever zone against developing in flood plains. (Answer: not on your tax-paying life.)
Condsider to the pre-history of Katrina, with all the subsidies to developers in the Gulf coast area, and the reengineering of the local ecosystem by the Army Corps of Engineers, which a couple scientists
claimed increased the storm surge and worsened the hurricane's impact.
There's little question that the government made the storm worse.
And let's not even get into the effects the State has had over decades and more on the local economies through taxes, spending, and regulation; and the caustic effects of the welfare state on the poor.
Irfan Khawaja -
9/12/2005
Well, how would things have worked if there had been no government?
Kobra -
9/12/2005
Governments are the ecquivalent of cave trolls (That's for you Lord of the Rings fans). They need to be chained always and must be directed carefully because they squash everything in their path. The best thing a government does is tyrannize and break stuff.
Thanks, Kobra
David T. Beito -
9/11/2005
Well said. In some ways, Bush should be held more accountable because in the wake of 911, he overpromised and overpromoted the glories of the federal government. In addition, through the war on drugs and other initiatives he undermined local and state governments. When a disaster finally came, however, these grand promises of federal efficiency and power proved unrealistic.
