We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I have read a comment that said that New Orleans had large numbers of school buses, literally hundreds of them, which were not only not used by local government to move people out of New Orleans, they were abandoned to the floodwaters. Is this true?
Now presumably the local authorities in New Orleans were uniquely aware of the economic situation of their poorer subjects and thus aware of their lack of motor transport when they started telling people to evacuate New Orleans.
If that fleet of buses was indeed available right there within the city, can anyone explain why, rather than encourage people to assemble at the Superbowl without any logistic planning in place to actually cope with them or plans move them elsewhere promptly, why were these buses not used to move those displaced people to several sites not so close to New Orleans (i.e. somewhere the transportation and logistic infrastructure were not so badly disrupted) and then use those same buses to provide logistic support for a few days for the relocated people. Presumably Louisiana has contingency fuel stockpiles that are enough for a few hundred buses for, say, 4 to 5 days (i.e. the peak crisis period)?
I realise that logistical planning is not a game for amateurs but seeing as the transportation assets were just sitting there near the people who needed transportation, surely there must have been a way for the city government to have avoided what happened in New Orleans even if the situation in more rural areas may have been more problematic. Am I am missing something?
Update: Take a look at this. Yes, the buses were indeed there and some people did indeed get evacuated… but guess who?
Robert Tracinski has written an interesting article laying out why he thinks what happened in New Orleans was a man-made rather than natural disaster.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider “normal” behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don’t sit around and complain that the government hasn’t taken care of them. And they don’t use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
I do not entirely agree with the article’s assumptions but the general thesis is compelling.
I became very familiar with that phrase when participating in online debates about guns. It is an odd thing that many of the same people who make the argument that whatever might save one life must be done when advocating gun bans are so scornful of government efforts to give advice on self-protection in the event of disaster. Their scorn is based on the premise that having a supply of bottled water will avail you nothing in a nuclear explosion or catastrophic flood. All it will do, they say, is give you a false sense of security. That is quite true near Ground Zero, but the bottled water could easily make the difference between life and death for some people at the edge of the catastrophe. Why not put some by?
I do not often defend government efforts on anything, but pamphlets on basic precautions seem to me to be a great deal more useful than so much else they do. Cheap per life saved, too. Perhaps that is the problem. The mockers feel that the pamphlets are a substitute for whatever action (which usually means tax-funded government action) they would like to see taken. Could be, could indeed be, but if it saves just one life…
→ Continue reading: If it saves just one life…
Apparently, according to this great story over at CNN, it was still possible to get a decent drink in the centre of New Orleans over the past few days, in the finest decadent traditions of that city.
That must have really annoyed the self-loathing creeps who opined that Katrina was some sort of Divine Punishment for the city’s libertine, jazz-loving past. Screw ’em and make mine a tequila.
Thanks to the eagle-eyed Reason Hit and Run blog for the pointer.
Totalitarian systems are not sustained at the top, but at the bottom, where a system of mutual surveillance prevails. The influence of Desert Islam on the region has engendered just such a totalitarian system, whereby a woman who refuses to wear the hijab is stigmatised, and possibly threatened with violence. Even in liberal Lebanon, where women have historically been highly expressive in their dress, the present generation is increasingly adopting the hijab and shaming those who don’t. Some people see this trend as a reaction to the West and modernity. It is anything but. It is merely a succumbing to the encroaching influence of Saudi-funded Desert Islam, a totalitarian system expounded by highly rational modern means.
– William G. Ridgeway, Those Drunken, Whoring Saudis: Desert Islam’s problem with women
Note: This article was published on Social Affairs Unit blog and someone (we do not know who) redirected the url of www.islamchannel.com to point at it, to much consternation of the Islam Channel and bafflament and bemusement of the Social Affairs Unit. It also attracted some atypical commenters…
The European Union has agreed an “equitable” outcome with China over the vexed issue of whether the Chinese should be allowed to sell textiles to us at those oh-so unfair low prices. It looks like a pretty fudged deal to me, possibly not as draconian as the original quotas demanded by protectionist lobbies in Europe, but still a slap in the face for principled free trade.
While I have my concerns about China – it has a lousy record on human rights for starters – the development of the country’s economy along hopefully free market lines is surely one of the most positive developments of its kind in the world at the moment. Europe’s economy can only benefit in the long run if China becomes prosperous and hence generates a large middle class with a keen appetite for consumer goods and services.
And some of the poorest people in Europe surely stand to gain if they can buy garments for far less than the amount they would otherwise pay. If the case for free trade is to succeed, it is vital that this point is rammed home time and again.
Let Adam Smith have the last word on this from his Wealth of Nations:
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce
And another thing to think about when we start pointing fingers is this. The government is never equipped to handle a crisis like this. There’s too much bureaucracy – initiative-stifling bureaucracy which prevents swift, effective action. I would like to hear from government employees on this. The nature of that bureaucracy is such that you have very specific guidelines to follow for even the most minute tasks. You need approval for just about everything, and the person you need approval from usually needs approval to give you the approval.
It’s not as easy as say rounding up 4 of your co-workers and saying, “We’ve got someone at such and such an address, let’s go grab her and get her out of there.” Now add a destroyed or disabled command and control center to that bureaucracy and you’ve got a total and complete mess.
You (as a civilian) don’t need “Approved” stamped on 3 different forms before you can run into your neighbor’s house and pull them out. I hope this makes sense.
Anyway, I’m sure there’s been human error in this catastrophe. How could there not be? But what I’m saying is that I’ve come to expect poor decision making and a total lack of initiative from government. They can’t even balance a budget, at the federal, state, or local levels. I could balance my checkbook and spend within my means when I was a teenager. But I’m not gonna point fingers and get into the blame game. If you want me to blame something besides the storm herself, I blame the nature of government in the first place. It’s too big, it’s too slow, it’s too inefficient, it’s too bloated, and it’s too intiative-stifling to be effective in normal circumstances, much less in a disaster. It’s a systemic issue, more than an issue of individual people in government.
– The Interdictor writing yesterday
According to the SMCCDI, the Iranian government is strengthening gender apartheid in that country.
The Islamic republic regime is to apply more discriminatory measures against Iranian women in days ahead. Based on some official reports, the Gender Apartheid policy is to be strengthen and Sexual Segregation to increase in Iran.
The theocratic regime is basing the application of such policy on the strict interpretation of Islamic rules which are dating from 14 centuries ago in the tribal Saudi Arabia which became the cradle of Islam.
Already since three weeks ago, clerics have increased their anti-woman speeches and are using the Fridays’ collective prayers in order to mobilize their followers in what has been qualified as “making respect the values of Islam and morality”. Members of the brutal Bassij paramilitary force and the feared Islamist Moral Squad have been deployed beside the regular police force and reports of harassment of women, sometimes brutally, are increasing.
It is also apparent many Iranian women will put their lives on the line before accepting their Mullah designated social role as bare-foot and pregnant pleasure machines.
Many Iranian women have burned their mandatory veils in some demos in order to attract the world’s attention to their case. They’re believed to be the force that will bring down, a day, the Islamic regime and would impact the entire Middle-east.
When the excrement finally does impact the Iranian rotational air moving appliance, I expect the lasses will ensure these ‘religious’ authority figures wear their testicles about their windpipes rather than their original lower coordinates.
This article contains some pretty damning stuff.
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. “Quite frankly, if they’d been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,” said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
[…]
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
Yup, let the finger pointing begin. However although I am rarely loath to heap scorn on the state for cocking things up, it does need to be kept in mind that this is the worst natural disaster in US history and any blame laying needs to keep a sense of proportion (ha, as if) as expecting the state to magically solve even the most unexpected problems with seamless efficiency is at best (and I do mean at best) rather like relying on a well meaning but hopelessly alcoholic uncle to be there for you when things go badly wrong. Well, he might come up trumps but it is probably not a good idea to expect him to be there when you need him.
I also expect membership in the NRA and other similar groups to surge as people re-learn the lessons of the Los Angeles riots: the state might help you pick up the pieces after the fact and a policeman might come around to draw a nice chalk line around the bodies of your murdered loved ones, but when the veneer of civilisation cracks, you had better have a gun and be psychologically prepared to use it because the reality is that when the predators turn up, you are on your own.
Hat tip to Tom Pechinski
Update: LGF has some more as the blamefest starts to gather steam.
The EU Referendum blog links to this fascinating article about the engineering history, so to speak, of New Orleans, referring in particular to this paragraph:
The lower Mississippi is in no way a natural river anymore. A law instituted in 1724 by a French colonial governor, whose name was Perrier, of all things, demanded that early homeowners in New Orleans raise the low natural levees upon which they all built. Three year later, Perrier declared the little city floodproof.
So there you have it. Do not blame Bush. Blame France.
Not really. The situation is a deal more complex than that. But it does seem to be true that once they decided on living lower than the Mississippi River, they found that the methods they chose to protect themselves from it only served to make it rise ever higher into the air, and themselves to sink lower and lower.
Glenn Reynolds recently interviewed Ray Kurzweil, the futurist thinker who has recently come out with a new book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. I first came into contact with Kurzweil’s ideas when I read his earlier book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. In this, he expounds his idea of the Law of Accelerating returns, which holds that technological progress grows at an exponential rate.
If you are not familiar with the idea of the Singularity, the Wikepedia page is a good place to start.
It must be emphasised that the ideas and predictions made by Singularity enthusiasts should be examined with caution. I myself am hugely optimistic about the possibilities, however, I should point out that futurists have a patchy record. This is not because they are bad; it is rather a reflection that our technological society is now so complex that understanding the various trends of our society is becoming too much for a single individual. Singularity enthusiasts concede this, and part of the reason why the term ‘singularity’ is used is that beyond the ‘singularity’ we can not really comprehend what will happen. (Just as an event horizon clouds everything within a black hole.)
However there are some features that most futurists agree will occur as progress nears the Singularity, and my purpose is to ask some questions about how they will affect issues dear to the heart of this blog. → Continue reading: Ruminations on the Singularity
Sci-fi addicts will understand why the Star Trek reference in the title is appropriate.
A comment by the minimally named ‘IC’ on a previous article here neatly sums up an aspect of the situation in the United States:
How many of those who died in the Katrina catastrophe chose not to evacuate? When you died and became one of the satistics, your loved ones would cry and wail in front of CNN, someone started to sue, some politicians’ cushy jobs died with you for not doing their jobs of rescuing you from yourself. Hence we have all these idiotic CYA [cover-your-arse] laws.
On the other hand, if you were forced to evacuate, and Katrina hit Houston instead, and your New Orleans home was looted while you were gone, you start fuming in front of CNN, some politicians got blamed for forcing you to leave…
So either way, it was all bound to be Bush’s fault 
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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