Fred ,'Life of the Party'
[NAFDA] "There will be an occasional happy, so that it might be crushed under the boot of the writer." From Zorro to Angel (including Wonderfalls and The Inside), this is where Buffistas come to anoint themselves in the bloodbath.
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?
Goods? Services? Capital?
What sumi said, boiled down to "Capital".
Interrupting the political flame-fest for a Tim quote from the latest EW, regarding the fan-based marketing for Serenity:
"I just hope he didn't f--- it up," he deadpans. "I want to direct the next movie."