A pony.

Allyson! In a piece about pets that got rescued and were now in Chicago looking for new homes -- I saw a beagle.

And Gus, c'mon. "Moon" is at least a little about libertarian ideas, ain't it?

Dang! Wander off for a month or so to have a depression, and miss a direct-address from The Tim Reaper.

Yes, "Moon" is all about libertarian ideas. It enamored me greatly of that philosophy, in my youth. Later, things occurred to me, though. For example, what would be the libertarian take on the Katrina governmental cluster-fuck?

Government failed. Plus-mark for libertarianism. Individual effort was hampered by lack of resources. Minus-mark for libertarianism.

Heinlein explored this (in Cat Who Walks Through Walls ), in a sequence in which two entrepreneurial Search and Rescue companies climbed all over each other in an effort to be the first surcrease in an emergency. The message being that market forces will bring agile, effective forces to those in need.

It breaks down here: People who cannot offer payment for rescue are fux0red. People who cannot afford to flee the danger are fux0red.

I am forced to think that, until everyone is equally wealthy, libertarianism is a pipe-dream.

Somebody online said "There are no libertarians when the levee breaks". I kind of like that, except that there are already people saying private levees would have been less breakable.

I have no idea how you organize everybody on your street to build a levee. I've seen streets where they did that with fences and all of a sudden there's one house with 10 feet of no fence. I understand this doesn't work well with levees.

private levees would have been less breakable ...

Bag that. On a really good day, levees would be up to the letter of the agreement. On a real day, the levee would be as they were: insufficient.

Wait. I am agreeing with Betsy, at the top of my lungs.

I have no idea how you organize everybody on your street to build a levee.

Given how well most coop and condo boards are run? Best build your house on pilings.

Houseboat.

There has to be an award for one-word replies. I nominate Zenkitty.

Well, unless they build the levee first, most folks are unlikely to build their houses 8 feet underwater. As for the search and rescue situation, private folks got to NO first and were doing a fairly effective job of pulling folks out until FEMA told them to beat it and began stopping anybody heading into the city with supplies and rescue equipment. FEMA seems to have wanted to coordinate all rescue efforts according to a master plan they didn't actually start writing until a few days after the storm. By and large, most disaster rescue and relief tends to be done by the folks actually there rather than by outside authority figures. As for the profit motive, it's been my experience that most folks are perfectly willing to absorb some degree of financial damage to help folks who really need it. Why would this change in the absence of governmental coercion? Or do you only give money to the homeless when the government tells you to?

I am not trying to set up a political flame-fest.

Here is my take: Individual effort (non-governmental) was and is more effective in the Katrina thing. Everything government has done around this has been a disaster, impeding individual effort.

Government? Bad, in this situation.

Here, however, is my question: What natural forces of the marketplace were missing for the people in the Domes?