I am still alive after hurricane Irene hit New York City. In fact, everyone is alive, and there hasn’t been any major damage to speak of. Besides electricity being down for thousands of homes, and a bit of flooding, most everything is intact. Listening to the radio or watching the television, one would think that New York City’s own Mayor Bloomberg singlehandedly weakened the storm. I found it interesting that I found myself hanging off of every word uttered by the mayor and other city officials.

I don’t like it when government becomes the de facto solution to every problem. I don’t like it because people seem to become dependent on government for an ever-increasing number of needs. And with this kind centralization of control, there is built up a single entity that, should it fail, leaves all those dependent on it utterly helpless.

The best evidence I’ve found that government should not be involved with disaster relief at all is Wal-Mart’s response to hurricane Katrina in the midst of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) grand failure. While it is in Wal-Mart’s interest to send convoys of trucks with relief supplies to the hurricane’s victim, it is not in the interest of government. In fact, it is contrary to the government’s interest. After all, government workers get paid if they help or not. In addition to the poor response after hurricane Katrina, FEMA’s failures are well documented. Why, then, are they still around?

Imagine for a moment that FEMA doesn’t exist. Instead, imagine that there is a Private Sector Emergency Management Agency – let’s call it PEMA. PEMA is not under the control of any government. People pay PEMA a small amount every year, as a type of insurance, with the promise that PEMA will send aid to them in the event of an emergency. Let’s say that a major earthquake hits a city, and thousands of people are stranded without access to food and clean water. Under contract, PEMA is to provide these things. Instead, precious days go by without any meaningful assistance. Several people die. Other private sector emergency services fill the gap, trucking in bottled water and food, and offering relocation services for people whose homes have been destroyed. PEMA makes several poor management decisions, causing their food supply to rot, and aid trucks to get stuck.

Since PEMA is obviously such a failure, one would assume that funding for this organization would immediately cease. Why would people pay for a service they never received? Why would stockholders invest in such a poorly-run organization? One would also assume that PEMA would face legal action and be forced to compensate those who suffered because of PEMA’s failure. In the end, I think it goes without saying that PEMA would go bankrupt and would cease to exist. Competitors with better reputations will step in to fill the void.

FEMA, the real-life organization, seems to exist in some bizzaro-world. FEMA had the exact same failures as PEMA, but instead of going bankrupt, FEMA gets more funding. Instead of being crushed under the weight of substantive legal action, FEMA emerges from the legal system relatively unscathed – after all, the courts are part of the same organization as FEMA. For a government agency to be sued when the trial is conducted by government is at the very least a conflict of interest, and at the very most a gross perversion of justice.

So let’s abandon the illusion that the state is here to rescue us, or at the very least, if it fails to rescue us, let’s open our eyes and look to alternatives. The real storm that is upon now is the one being created in congress, and you can be sure that there is no one to rescue you from this one, except yourself.

Thanks and peace,

Nick Foley
The Basic Liberty Letter
http://www.basicliberty.com
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