apeman wrote:KerningChameleon wrote:I'm sure Fife and the other resident libertarians have a well-thought out and perfectly reasonable argument for why government aided relief will always be strictly inferior to a purely private system to manage the crisis instead. Probably involving an anecdote about owners fining the water for illegitimately squatting on their toll roads.
With a side tangent denouncing all the people scavenging the flooded and empty Save-a-Lots for soggy bread loaves for violating ironclad property rights.
Not a libertarian, but I have noticed you have few "well-thought out" ideas, period, although a lot of snark, but want to point out why it HAS to be the federal govt doing most of the MASSIVE rebuild.
The money isn't coming from somewhere, we're not raising taxes nationally (in any meaningful way) to pay for Harvey, only the federal govt can metaphorically print up the piles of loot out of thin air to fund the effort. Obviously states don't print their own currency.
The libertarian response is probably along the line of: if we paid much less taxes, there would by much more $$$ to be donated to rescue, and donated/invested in the rebuild. Not sure if that's reasonable view, we'll never get to see it tried.
FYI private investors made a lot of money on teh Katrina rebuild, actually read about it this AM, but a lot of that is likely just front-running federal dollars, which is the surest way to wealth in our system
Maybe the feds HAVE to do it. Maybe. With the level of crowding out and moral hazard going on, how could we every really know? The evidence we do have is pretty favorable to the efficiency of the greedy robber barons in helping people.
Herr Prof. Shughart, who I took 3 classes from in undergrad, and who taught me the First Rule of Macro, sets it out pretty well:
Disaster Relief as Bad Public Policy
Check out footnote 19 re: the Red Cross and page 533-534 re: the Walmart, Home Depot, and FedEx before, during, and after Katrina.