Salomon

I can't help but wonder how events such as Hurricane Katrina or other disruptive and destructive events like it would be handled by a Libertarian administration, with its laissez-faire policy of minimal interference in the lives of its citizens. We understand the Liberals wanting more government intervention, Conservatives wanting less, the Anarchists wanting none.

How would a Libertarian President cope here?

djtestudo

Apparently the mayor of New Orleans and governer of Louisiana are Libertarians then...

Seriously though, I think they would be assisting with the rescue and populations relocation and control, but I doubt they would attempt much more then that if they are a full Libertarian.

Depending on how long they had been in power and been able to streamline the federal government, they might have been able to respond faster then our present government as well.

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Salomon

I have to admit I'm pretty pissed about how both the mayor and governor responded to this, in particular the mayor. If I'm not mistaken, in a country with a libertarian federal government, the onus of authority is at the local level. You say that they (the governor & mayor) would be assisting with rescue and relocation in such a system. Is it implied that because they are in a republican system, that they are absolved of any blame...that all they needed to do was wait for the Feds to bail them out?

To my knowledge, the mayor did very little by way of helping people to evacuate - before, during and after the storm. There are pictures all over the Internet of bus yards filled with schoolbuses, which could have been used for evacuation/relocation purposes. Did this guy do ANYTHING to help the people of his city? If he did I'd like to know what it was. Then he proceeds with his public, emotional tirades against both the Feds and the governor that no one is helping his city. Seems to me he hit the deck, assumed the fetal position, and waited for the cavalry (the Federal government) to arrive.

I think that without a strong, central federal government to intervene and help out in such circumstances, the Nagins and Blancos of the world would grind the country down to nothing in a hurry.

/rant

samcol

Bush's policy on the whole matter seemed very lassiez-faire to me. Taking 3 days to respond to an event they knew was coming is such a joke. A level 5 hurricane was number 3 on FEMA's list of worst possible disasters (just behind a nuke in a major city and a 9.0 earthquake in CA).

Things wouldn't have gotten out of hand if the feds didn't bottleneck the process. The Libertarian policy wouldn't have locked people in sports arenas and convention centers without food or water for days. The good citizens of LA and United States were the only ones who were really trying to help.

Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food

Charlatan

Libertarians would leave the aid and rescue efforts to charities.

If an individual isn't strong enough to help themselves, they should just try harder.

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samcol

In this situation, who helped more? FEMA, HLS, the president? Or charities like the salvation army, red cross, and church groups? The evidence points to the federal government letting this get so out of hand that the only solution was to bring in the troups as our saviors which is a very scary precident.

Libertarians are not anarchists. They simply believe citizens can do a better job than the government, which I believe was demonstrated here.

Why do we even have to give massive amounts of money to charities? Shouldn't most of this be covered by FEMA and DHLS's budget?

Salomon

Right. But charities aren't enough are they. They are not equipped to do the heavy lifting. And New Orleans would NEVER recover. Without the help of the Federal government, New Orleans would be gone forever.

How was it demonstrated here? You mean the looting, sniping, raping, and general mayhem? How could the citizens have provided law & order across the city? How could the citizens have brought in food and water for tens of thousands of people? How could the citizens repair the levees?

This is a prime example of why Libertarianism is an obsolete political philosophy.

Ustwo

One issue you need to understand is that under a libertarian form of government, a helpless uneducated underclass would not have existed in NO in the first place.

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Charlatan

That's a good one...

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Salomon

Maybe in a perfect world, but people will have their strengths & weaknesses, and differing social classes will always be present. Libertarianism is as much a fallacy as communism, in that instead of meeting at the bottom, they meet at the top.

Either a Slave, or a King.

alansmithee

No, he's right. They wouldv'e been dead long before a hurricane got to them.

Supple Cow

Ustwo did say 'helpless uneducated underclass' and not just 'underclass'.

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Salomon

Perhaps I'm missing the subtle distinction.

Is there such a thing as an empowered, educated underclass?
Wouldn't that, by definition, take them out of the underclass?



edit: wait a second. I missed alansmithee's post. Are we talking about a 'purge' of sorts; get rid of the weak? Like in Star Trek, where people are herded into 'disintegration machines' to keep warfare neat, tidy & bloodless? I guess in that case, Ustwo would be correct.

Ustwo

When the state creates dependants it is not surprising that those are the people who suffer if the state does not provide everything they need in a time of crisis. State welfare programs have created such dependants who were unable to fend for themselves, think for themselves, or act for themselves. Perhaps we have been giving out too many fish.

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Yakk

Yes. As noted, under a Libertarian system, the helpless undereducated underclass would have starved to death/been shot by private securty/died of desease and exposure already.

In the event that some of this detrius where to die in the aftermath of a hurricane, it wouldn't be anything unusual or commentworthy. With thousands of unworthies dieing without a hurricane, a few extra deaths from inclement weather would be ignoreable.

The producing members of society would have the wealth to flee. Those who chose not to flee would be getting what they deserved, punishment for not being clever enough.

And, under a libertarian system, it is unlikely that N.O. itself would be around. It isn't a very safe or efficient city -- having a city built beneith sea level isn't a very financially sound idea. Large numbers of people (on the order of millions) forced to pay money in order to maintain the levees is antiethical to libertarianism -- for each person, shorting the levees generates more personal benefit, even if the levees would be worth it overall.

In addition, the lack of the distorting Federal Flood Protection program would result in the gulf coast being ... rather poor real estate. As would most costal areas and areas in flood plains.

So really, in a Libertarian society, N.O. wouldn't be a noticeable problem.

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samcol

You're correct that charities are not enough to do the heavy lifting, and that's where the state and federal government should come in. State governments do have the authority to call up the troops from what I understand.

The government tells thousands of people to go to the Superdome and they lock them up there for 3 days without food or water. Meanwhile FEMA tells the Red Cross they cannot distribute provisions. Look at who caused the escalation in violence, raping and mayhem. FEMA did nothing but get in the way of the relief effort.

I guess my point is who are the heros in this situation? Is it the feds who are paid BILLIONS of dollars to take care of this exact scenario and failed miserably? Is it the police who turned in their badges or simply joined in the looting. Or is it charties, health care volunteers, churches, the people of Baton Rouge, Houston, and other cities who are receiving refuges with open arms?

I would venture to say the real relief effort came from the citizens of the United States and not the Federal Goverment. Libertarian ideas did not fail in this situation, the belief that a powerful government can save you from disaster did fail.

Yakk

P. J. O'Rourke

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

smooth

that's very interesting samcol.

but it begs the question?
Why did the US federal government fail in this situation?

Was it because it had to do something and couldn't or because it had to do something and wouldn't?
And if it could have, but didn't, and the man at the helm who refused to make the critter crawl believes in a particular political ideology mandating a limited role of federal government in the lives of its citizens...

well then what exactly is being proven here...what exactly indeed...


EDIT: oh good one, Yakk. I guess your quote answers my question. I must have opened this thread and left it sitting around without refreshing for like an hour because I didn't see your post!

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Salomon

This is a slippery slope. I don't deny the existence of abuses in Federal/State aid, but what is the alternative? Cut them off, and let them fend for themselves? OK, you do that, and a generation dies out. Then along come the offspring of the Strong. What are the odds that some of these offspring fall behind and need help? What if they get sick and fall behind?

Surely this is a utopian dream -- for all citizens now and forever to be healthy, wealthy, educated and productive. I think one of main tenets of a healthy society is its capacity of emapthy and compassion for the sick and weak.

Hah, I think they call that "biting satire"...
In the form of Sean Penn, for example?

Kidding aside, I do agree there is blame enough to go around. I just have a hard time seeing how the citizens could have fended for themselves.

Ustwo

Pain now or pain later. The pain later will be worse because the government will have more dependents, this is no slippery slope, it is happening before your eyes.

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filtherton

I think a libertarian administration would be too busy dealing with a massive (economically necessary) underclass, who seeing that the minority of their society with the most money (the same minority who has all the power) cares little for their well being, would be in the process of dismantling and redistributing the wealth/power.

Ustwo

You have described a monarchy quite nicely. I would be interested to hear you explain how that fits into a libertarian viewpoint.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

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smooth

He's describing a revolt, btw, not a monarchy.
Re-read it his post.

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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

Ustwo

Re-read it yourself. The conditions he presented would be found in a monarchy, something akin to the Russian revolution. I am asking how a libertarian society would turn into such a circumstance.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Yakk

Capitalism tends to create concentrations of power. Because power begets power.

There is nothing special about the laws of economics that state that the optimal state reached won't have a huge, downtrodden underclass. In fact, it is quite possibly economically useful to have such a downtrodden underclass. Given that you are leaving all economic decisions up to the free market (libertarianism), one should expect huge, downtrodden economic underclasses. And if the government, the tool of democratic power, is weak relative to the other powers in society, then democratic power itself is weak.

The beleif that libertarianism would tend to converge towards a feudalistic economic system doesn't seem to be beyond reason.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

filtherton

Well, it seems to me that libertarianism relies on the belief that the goverment should only exist to ensure that the gears of the economy move smoothly and reliably in whatever ever direction the market is pointed. If current and all historical markets are any kind of example(in fact they are the only kind), you'll notice that they all tend toward giant gaps between the rich and the poor(unless they have what you'd probably call socialist tendencies). That is how the market works. However equal it is at the beginning, eventually a certain portion of the population gets its hands on more resources than the rest of the population. Since power is directly proportional to capital, especially in a libertarian system, this wealthy class has more power than everyone else. They inevitably use this power to ensure that they never lose their power. This creates further inequality. The more power they have, the less power everyone else has. Since greedy people aren't subject to the governance of certain forms of rational thought, they eventually amass so much power and so much capital and make the relative powerlessness of the masses so blatant to those masses that they force those masses to use the only power that can't effectively be taken by capital. That would be the power to rebel(which is made much more effective by the right of the populace to bear arms, btw).

In short, libertarianism is a great idea if you have no grasp of the apparently natural human inclination towards greed and shortsightedness. Libertarian systems tend towards monarchy, except instead of kings and queens, you have capitalists.

samcol

If the human trend is towards greed and shortsightedness, and government is made of humans, why would we want more government control and not less.
This lends to companies legislating themselvsing into a greater market share via lobbyists. Government corruption is allowed to run rampant because the government is the law, whereas in a free market the consumer can remove the corruption by changing purchasing decisions.

filtherton

Whether the government's fucking you or the capitalist oligarchs are fucking you you're still getting fucked. How exactly would the consumer control corruption through the market any more effectively than the citizen through the election process? Can you tell me how any of us consumers could effect corruption in the petroleum industry? It's difficult to vote with your dollar when you have to choose between getting to work or not getting to work in the same breath. In a truly free market, corruption is irrelevant unless it effects the bottom line. In a libertarian system, everything is irrelevant unless it effects the bottom line. How would this system be an answer to anything other than the question of when our country is going to quit beating around the bush and just fail already?

flstf

It seems to me that the capitalist oligarchs (Democrat/Republicans) already control the election process and they are the only ones who have a chance to get elected. I don't know if the Libertarian's platform is the best way but anything that can be done short of a revolution to break up the concentration of power (and wealth) at the federal level would be a step in the right direction.

filtherton

I agree that there needs to be some sort of change. I just doubt that such a thing is realistically possible unless some serious shit was going to hit the fan. I also doubt that a libertarian political system can have any kind of stability in the long-term.