I have a question for those of you with better knowledge of Libertarianism and Austrian Economics than I:
In the general opinion of Libertarians, who favor less government intervention 99.999% of the time, what is the proper role of government in responding to a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina? Should it offer help to the people, or simply stay out of it – giving the people an incentive to purchase natural disaster insurance?
In Bush’s response to Katrina, did he show a lack of concern for human life or an understanding of Austrian economics and libertarianism? (I’d say the former )
Hurricane Katrina was actually made worse by the government. You had people stranded for days on a bridge blocked by the military. You had police and military arresting people for refusing to hand over their lawfully owned firearms. You had a city and a State who kept people locked up in the Super Dome wear gangs murdered, raped and generally ran the place. The evacuation was screwed from the getgo by the inadequate response of the City and the State.
My basic view of that matter is this: First, Bush has nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina. He cannot be blamed for the “failures” of the federal government, FEMA or anything else. Why? Well, take out your handy dandy Constitution and please locate the section that declares the federal government has the authority to interveen in natural disasters. Oh wait…it doesn’t. That means when a natural disaster occurs the federal government IS NOT authorized to send troops into the State in which it occured. It is NOT authorized to organized “relief” efforts. It does NOT have the authority to take public funds from the public treasury and give those funds to private individuals and businesses for their benefit even if it is for “humanitarian reasons.”
Hurricane Katrina was the SOLE responsiblity of the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisianna. This might be one of the few things we can’t blame on Bush. If government had stepped out of the way and allowed charitable organizations and neighborhoods to organize the evacuation of the city everything would have been a lot better. Instead they let people die in the streets by taking all of the city buses away. Every single person in that city could have been bused out if the government had been in the way.
Libertarians believe that when government steals (I.E., taxation is theft, according to them), government has an obvious obligation to return what was stolen.
When government causes injury, there is no valid means of recourse, because any spending to address the problem is inevitably simply more theft from someone else.
I don’t consider compulsory taxation theft or, even if it is, the government’s injury to the citizens of New Orleans clearly exceeds any injury caused by compulsory taxation. I also believe it was mostly government non-action, not government action that caused the disaster of Katrina, as the levees protecting New Orleans, like the Tacoma Bridge collapse, represent America’s infrastructure crisis which has been recognized for almost 30 years. The possibility of a collapse of the levees have been known for years.
While I concede public works can be wasteful, I strongly disagree that private infrastructure is the solution, on the grounds of the prisoner’s dilemma and the free rider. I see the idea of such mass cooperation as being the kind of idealism about humanity that would essentially imply the merit of Anarchist Communism. See Kropotkin’s belief that human beings will naturally cooperate on a massive scale in “Mutual Aid,” to see what I mean when I say that the idea of private infrastructure implies Communism. If market Anarchism is possible, humanity must be incredibly cooperative with one another, and in practice it would be indistinguishable from Anarchist Communism – which I simply reject outright,
With that said, yes, the government response to Katrina was horrible. Politicians jumped at the opportunity to fund their pet projects and funnel public funds to their business partners under the guise of “helping Katrina victims.” Every politician involved deflected criticism, yet all of them were responsible to some degree. The media and the black supremacist demagogues made things even worse by promoting the vicious lie that most of the Katrina victims were black. And at the end of the day, when billions were spent, hundreds of trailers sat unused in government lots, while many bureaucrats’ buddies were a great deal wealthier, many Katrina victims have yet to be fully compensated or allowed to return to their homes.
However, to some degree, I think that the citizens of New Orleans were themselves to blame, both for depending on government and also the “moral poverty” of the African-American community, incapable of getting on a bus unless the government sends you one personally and knocks on your door, as your own personal taxi service.
The black conservative Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson put it bluntly:
“About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.”
You see the same behavior every time government breaks down, such as the blackouts in New York and Los Angeles.
That view of school buses sitting under water should be what we always picture when we think about government.
The Federal Government has no Constitutional Role whatsoever. They should simply have ignored the situation and FEMA should be abolished.
As for the state and local governments. Their role, assuming a minarchal order, would be to provide sufficient security to prevent looting and preserve the property rights of the residents. Note, providing security DOES NOT mean disarming citizens and harassing them. They would have also had a role to use available transportation to evacuate residents from the area. And that is pretty much it. Insurance and private capital should have been the SOLE source of funding for rebuilding. My thinking would be that without government largesse, New Orleans would have rightly been abandoned as an untenable place to live.
The role of government is to keep the peace by acting as final arbiter in conflicts. Katrina has nothing to do with this.
If your question is “what can a Washington-based bureaucracy do in a natural disaster that takes place in a different time zone”, then the answer is nothing. There is simply no information available to that bureaucracy that would permit it to act appropriately.
The people have to provide for their own security.
Hello, I’m new to much of this libertarian way of thinking. I’m sure to make many mistakes, and hope that folks will be kind enough to guide this Canadian in the right direction.
What about the conflicts that would arise out of the Katrina disaster? If government (federal, state or local) wasn’t able to stop theft, looting and rape contained within a convention centre, how would it have been able to arbitrate or protect the property rights of people if they were spread out over any remaining dry-land around New Orleans?
People have to provide for their own security, but with desperate people crowding around your property, would this mean that you are limited to the amount of ammo and supplies that you have available with no hope of rescue?
Although I understand the principle of government protecting property rights, I’m trying to understand how much intervention is required by government in this type of situation.
Yeah, you seem to be doing a fine job of setting the record straight…
So if you have no car and the public buses stop running because the drivers are just as interested in leaving town as the rest of the population how exactly does one get out of town? That’s a rhetorical question really, I just wanted to point out the blatant racist remarks you posted.
Obviously a troll but, as I’ve said before in another thread, I really can’t resist feeding the trolls…
What’s even worse, as much as I love troll baiting and all that the rest of your post isn’t even worth the time and effort – which really is saying a lot because I take great pleasure in deconstructing the fallacies Statists such as yourself throw around as fact.
The effects of the Feds’ war against Louisiana are still being felt in New Orleans, which has been in decline ever since it.
The Feds subsidizes public works. Giving cities incentive to not fix their levees, but wait for Federal aid instead. A dangerous waiting game.
Many poor people live in New Orleans; caused by the Federal Reserve and Federal/State/City regulations(and warfare/welfare)
Anti-price gouging laws ensured the city would run out of gas much more quickly than it would have otherwise. Stranding people.
Government told people they would be safe if they let the government take care of them in the Dome. If not for government they wouldn’t have been there, they would have looked out for their own safety and likely done a better job.
People were already largely disarmed before the crisis due to federal/state/city gun laws. The National Guard only finished what legislators had started.
I’m sure I’ve over looked plenty, but that will do.
Considering all this does anyone really think that any number of helicopters or buses could cause government to be a net positive force in the crisis? Ridiculous.
Very well said. I think you’ve changed my mind. Thanks
I disagree, though, with the statement: “Many poor people live in New Orleans; caused by the Federal Reserve and Federal/State/City regulations(and warfare/welfare).” I could be misinterpreting this, but it seems like a gross and inaccurate simplification.
That is according to you. The Constitution states the role of government is the common defense and general welfare of the nation, protecting each person’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the latter which implies some degree of equal opportunity.
I believe, in the topic title, you are asking the “libertarian” view of the governments role. Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is from the Declaration of Independence, btw, and is a corruption, it should have been worded, life, liberty, property.
Anyway, the Constitution, or the Declaration is NOT the final arbitor of the proper role of government, if any.
If you live in hurricane alley, knowing that public transportation and possibly even private transportation is not dependable, it is your own fault for not securing your own transportation in advance.
And if you are not aware that public and private transportation are not dependendable in a major hurricane, your ignorance is not the government’s fault.
No one forced anyone to be hopelessly dependent on government. They chose to and, when government failed, they had no means to evacuate.
Besides even a majority of America’s poor have cars. You mean to tell me that most people in New Orleans – all of them – they didn’t have cars?
A huge amount of people in New Orleans were simply idiots who decided to stick it out, as many fools do during hurricane season.
“While I concede public works can be wasteful, I strongly disagree that private infrastructure is the solution, on the grounds of the prisoner’s dilemma and the free rider. I see the idea of such mass cooperation as being the kind of idealism about humanity that would essentially imply the merit of Anarchist Communism.”
perhaps you could elaborate on the prisoner’s dilemma and free rider argument as they pertain to the katrina debacle? what private infrastructure are you talking about, anyway? where did anarchist communism slip into the debate? and precisely which “mass cooperation” are you referring to?
there are some catchy phrases here, which appeal to my curiosity, i just think you need to flesh out you arguments a bit more, and then string them together in a way that ordinary mortals can understand.
reading kropotkin sounds worse punishment than the hurricane. i’ll plea ignorance on “Mutual Aid”. is that a bob geldof concert?
In capitalism, people only tend to act when they have some incentive. The Soviet Union proved that appeals to abstract incentives like “supporting the revolution” or “support for one’s comrades” cannot be taken seriously in any discussion of real, economic behavior.
Individuals, for the most part, only produce when they have some kind of profit-motive. This isn’t completely true, but it’s true enough that economic models based upon rational choice theory tend to be relatively accurate. Some people feel some sense of altruism and will engage in charity, even at a loss. Although the actual amount of charity in the free market is exaggerated by the amount of poorly managed charities that are essentially businesses. As an example of what I mean, my father used to work for a corrupt charity (which I won’t name) devoted to autism research. The charity received a substantial amount of donations annually, but very little of the money went to autism research because those that ran the charity made six-figure salaries and employees received large salaries and bonuses. The board of directors (similar to that of a corporation) elected by donators (as opposed to shareholders) exercised little oversight and there wasn’t any strong demand by donators for strong oversight, probably because it hadn’t occurred to them that the charity was corrupt. People tend to give to charity, not because they necessarily expect any tangible result, but to feel good about themselves.
Now, onto the prison’s dilemma – the prisoner’s dilemma is a theoretical situation in game theory where two individuals with imperfect information may act in such a way that both are made worse off by not cooperating. The classic example is to take two prisoners accused of the committing the same crime together and offer each of them the opportunity to snitch on the other in exchange for a reduced sentence. Because both prisoners will tend to suspect that the other will snitch first, both prisoners end up snitching and neither gets a reduced sentence. Only if both of them cooperate, trusting eachother and what the other will do, will both of them NOT snitch, leading to both of them being set free.
This is the mathematical basis for the free-rider in economics. The free-rider in economics goes something like this:
Say you have two business men in the same industry who would benefit from infrastructure. Neither will invest in inffrastructure, because he suspects that if he just waits long enough, eventually someone else will build the infrastructure for him. Being that every individual thinks this way (because it’s the mathematically the most logical course of action), the infrastructure is never built at all.
The market anarchist solution is the idea that people will simply come together and build the infrastructure if it needs to be built – that is, they’ll collude, as often happens in markets, with trade associations, consumer watchdogs, workers’ unions, political parties, charities, etc..
This doesn’t seem to be any different than the claims made about infrastructure by anarchist communists. In Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, he describes examples of such radical cooperation in nature, and how it exists in human beings, too, because of how it contributes to our survival. And so, in practice, the description of market anarchism sounds relatively similar to that of anarchist communism – radical cooperation, individual sovereignty, lack of persisting violence, and the abolishment of involuntary poverty and labor. The only difference is that market anarchists claim trade will still go on in anarchism. But this seems dubious: If people are capable of engaging in radical cooperation to establish infrastructure, why wouldn’t they simply satisfy the demand for individual wants and needs through the same cooperative process? That is, if they can build bridges, road systems, and railways through joint cooperation, why would they suddenly resort to competition when it comes to providing basic food and shelter?
Now – how this is relevant to Katrina. Katrina flooded because the levees in New Orleans, which are government-owned and funded infrastructure, collapsed. They collapsed due to poor maintanence by the government. Some Libertarians could claim that had the levees been privately owned as private infrastructure, they would’ve been sufficiently maintained to hold back the flood waters. I do not believe that’s a reasonable position, however.
Now – how this is relevant to Katrina. Katrina flooded because the levees in New Orleans, which are government-owned and funded infrastructure, collapsed. They collapsed due to poor maintanence by the government. Some Libertarians could claim that had the levees been privately owned as private infrastructure, they would’ve been sufficiently maintained to hold back the flood waters. I do not believe that’s a reasonable position, however.
with respect, the original question posed by wgeary was the position of government post-disaster, not the various factors leading up to the disaster (infrastructure, amongst others). i interpreted the question more along the lines of whether there weren’t a danger of moral hazard, that is, the reflex aid response from government encouraging risky individual behaviour (building in a flood-zone, with levies that many had warned were inadequate).
thanks for your clear synopsis of the other points, which i appreciated. the points raised by kropotin probably merit a forum all to themselves, maybe others familiar with the literature could play counterpoint.
I see the government failure in the Katrina as threefold:
The federal government subsidizes flood insurance, removing the price signals which cause fewer people to live in flood-prone areas. In addition, this causes an externality whereby people who choose to live in sensible locations subsidize those who do not.
Anti price-gouging laws. These make it illegal for businesses to charge more during a disaster. As a result, disaster relief is unprofitable, and thus it is not provided outside of charity. This is a disastrous law to have on the books.
The natural failure of the government’s (FEMA’s) response. Central planning is incapaple of rebuilding properly, just as it is incapable of building properly in the first place. It all goes back to the economic calculation problem. Demand for relief services must come from those needing the relief directly (and/or their insurers), so the resulting market is driven to serve those caught in the disaster.
The “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution does mention “life, liberty and property” (incidentally, the first draft of the Declaration of Independence also used those words) , and supposedly prevents the government from denying those things without due process of law.
Also, the Constitution does not authorize the government acting for the “common defense and general welfare” outside of its strictly enumerated powers. Article 1, section 8 lists the things the government may in order to provide for the common defense and general welfare, but it has no power to do whatever it wishes under the name of defense and welfare.
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