Mike Kole has a post that crystalizes some of what led me away from my infatuation with the Libertarian Party.
Americans have spoken. They do not believe in self-responsibility. They do not believe that they should accept the consequences of their choices.
Very well. If I, as a resident of Indiana, have to constantly see my tax dollars going towards the rebuilding of infrastructure for people who make incredibly dumb choices, such as living in an area that’s going to be pounded by hurricanes every three years or so, as Gustave now illustrates, it’s time to become practical and to adjust.
It’s time for the federal government to ban all occupancy below sea level.
It just doesn’t make any sense to be an idealist on the issue any longer. I’m all for liberty in tandem with self-responsibility. But liberty in tandem with collectivism is dangerous. We all have to pay for bad choices? What kind of stupidity is that?
While it varies from case-to-case and while libertarians have a world-view that is theoretically appealing to me in many ways, I don’t think Libertarians have a good plan for dealing with the realities on the ground. For example, we aren’t going to let people die when their choices dictate that result; we are not going to abandon the corporate form even though it shields decision makers from personal responsibility; and we are not going to overcome the various problems with eliminating the ability of polluters to externalize the costs of their activities. Barriers to personal responsibility necessitate limits to individual liberty — in much the same way as subsidies skew the workings of the free market.
Also, I must confess, I have backed off some of my beliefs about individualism. I still believe individual liberty is very important, but it isn’t the whole story. People are social creatures and there are some things we need to do in groups that we can’t do for ourselves. For example, flood control. We have to work together to defeat water, the common enemy. And, it would not be just if 60% of us devoted time, energy, and resources to flood control only to be either defeated by a holdout who wouldn’t participate and formed a weak link in the flood control plan or to have the holdout benefit from our efforts as a free rider without contribution.
I fit between both schools of thought. Yes, we should help people get back on their feet after something like Katrina. However, we should also limit where people can rebuild after we give out help on a scale like that.
Helping people out that made a mistake is one thing, but helping a future generation make the exact same mistake is another.
If people want the safety net of government, then they have to accept the restriction of freedom to do some stupid things.
Just out of curiosity, Doug, what exactly is the appealing part?
This is, really, a prime example of the ethical system of shortsightedness depending on an equally short-sighted epistemology. The 9th Ward–the particular bugaboo of the Personal Responsibility crowd, which never, to my knowledge, suggested we abandon Florida after 2003–did not flood due to Katrina, or due to being situated below sea level; it flooded when the waters of Lake Ponchartrain flowed back through the canal system, especially the Industrial Canal, designed, as the name suggests, to help make commercial operators “more free” at taxpayer expense (it was built by the state, but taken over by the Federal government in WWII as vital to national defense).
Let’s be clear: a natural disaster the size of Katrina would not have passed near New Orleans without mishap. But the devastation of the 9th Ward was due to a system put in place to facilitate business, not to permit ignorant po’ folks to live underground. One may reply that facts is facts, and they shouldn’t have been living there under the circumstances, but one may not complain that federal dollars go to clean up what federal dollars befoul, unless one scrupulously avoids all products which use the Ports of New Orleans and South Louisiana.
Incidentally, Los Angeles and many points east are desert. People who find this shocking may want to look into who pays for the water that irrigates those California fruits and vegetables we trust they get five to nine servings of.
I’ll take this one. I’m in favor of giving the choice: abandon any area repeatedly hit by a hurricane, or accept sole responsibility for the cost of said choice. This ‘any area’ includes New Orleans, but also coastal Florida, South Carolina, and any other you could name.
I would include all flood areas along the banks of the Mississippi that are rebuilt twice a generation. Extend it to all of these areas where disaster can predictably strike.
It’s criminal to make us all pay for the bad choices surrounding living in places like these.
Ok, I’ll backpedal a little here. Defining what “predictably strike” means can get a little hard, to say the least.
We will have tornadoes in Indiana, every year. Does that mean we can’t live in Indiana?
My knee-jerk reaction is to say we should rebuild the 9th ward in N.O., but how do we decide where to draw the line?
The lower 9th ward should become a big cypress grove or similar, and the walls should be moved to higher, more defensible ground. Then efforts should be made to rebuild the natural storm barriers (cypress groves and marsh) outward from there. Either that, or bring in a few billion cubic yards of fill. Or hope a hurricane never does a direct hit again.
Jason–
“Where do we draw a line” is a good question. Considering actual places that are expensive to defend against nature, I can’t imagine a line that would cause some other location to be deemed indefensible and yet not include the lower 9th.
They did move a number of people out of flood prone areas after the 1992(?) floods in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. They also told people who wanted to stay what they needed to do in order to be protected and to receive flood insurance. After this year’s floods in the upper Midwest there was an article in a news magazine about a farmer who stayed in the flood plain and had to raise his house 1.5 stories in the air.
Of course as everyone points out drawing the line on predictable disasters is tough.
And what of all of the industry and businesses that occupy areas that are prone to natural disasters? Where would our economy be if no one occupied those areas? And what areas would we say are too dangerous? Only those subject to hurricanes? What about wild fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc.?
I’m not saying that people (whether individuals or businesses) should be able to build wherever they want with no restrictions, but all of this ranting about “my tax dollars” every time a natural disaster occurs (especially disasters that happen outside the Midwest) is getting old.
Rants about ‘my tax dollars’ get old? Paying for things that are the result of other people’s choices are not only ‘old’, but unjust.
Absolutely, drawing the line will be difficult. Let’s cherry pick, then, and start with places that are below sea level.
It is not simply getting old, there is something mighty simplistic and a more than a little self-righteous about this “discussion.”
Our economy and our land use issues are far too complex for anyone here to have a credible solution to the problem of building in “disaster-prone” areas. It is easy to rant, but not so easy to actually deal with the issue.
Tax dollars naturally flow from the Northeast, and to a lesser extend the Midwest, to the South and West. Yet most of the bitching about taxes comes from the South and West. The exception seems to be relief from natural disasters, which tends to really gall those from the Northeast and Midwest–mainly because those are high-visibility events that happen more frequently in those other regions and happen repeatedly in the same types of locales (coasts, fire-prone Western forests, earthquake zones, though to be honest who isn’t in an earthquake zone?).