Natural Disasters ...destructive statism versus the heroic free market
"Countries that experience economic growth are putting themselves in a better position to reduce the number of deaths that result from natural cataclysms, and the clearest way to produce that economic growth is to allow people to interact in the marketplace without government intrusion." - Timothy D. Terrell, Government-Enhanced Disaster
"If government intervenes by mandating artificially low prices, it conveys misleading information to consumers, causing them to use more than they should of scarce resources, and making existing shortages more intractable." - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., How Government Makes Natural Disasters Worse
Hurricane Hypocrites Our Rulers are shocked, shocked that when they dangle free money in front of us, we rise to the bait. - Becky Akers, July 1, 2006 [LewRockwell.com]
A Flood of Folly Economic ignorance rises to the top: that seems to be one explanation for FEMA's continued support of building in flood-prone areas, and Congressional demands for FEMA to do even more of the same. - Tim Kern, December 30, 2005 [Mises]
Katrina Exposes Government for What It Is If a private-sector employee performed as badly as the federal, state, and local governments performed before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, he would be summarily fired. - Sheldon Richman, September 14, 2005
The Heavy Hand If you vote, you are responsible for the disaster in New Orleans. - Mark D. Valenti, September 6, 2005 [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
Chaos hinders efforts to treat Katrina survivors Volunteer physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors while health problems escalate. - September 4, 2005 [MSNBC]
The Super Bowl in LA The blame for it all belongs to the tens of millions of voters who have swallowed the obvious lie that government can work magic when the discipline of the market finds that a project is fundamentally unsound. - Jim Davies, September 3, 2005 [Strike the Root]
Planning, response to Katrina faulted Officials failed to plan for serious levee breach. - Josh White and Peter Whoriskey, September 2, 2005 [The Washington Post]
Report Calls Payments By FEMA Questionable The Federal Emergency Management Agency made $31 million in questionable payments to residents of Miami-Dade County for damage from Hurricane Frances last September even though the storm caused only minimal damage in that area of Florida. - John Mintz, May 19, 2005 [The Washington Post]
A Foreign Aid Disaster in the Making Foreign aid has also caused all kinds of inappropriate capital investments, as well as overinvestment, because of the calculation problem. - Thomas J. DiLorenzo, January 6, 2005 [Mises]
Disasters: Natural and Un-Natural Government disaster relief is, in fact, disaster redistribution. - Paul Hein, January 5, 2005 [LewRockwell.com]
Government-Enhanced Disaster As nations become wealthier, their losses of human life from natural calamities tend to fall. - Timothy D. Terrell, December 31, 2004 [Mises]
The Safety Zealots - Thomas Sowell, October 16, 2004 [Capitalism Magazine]
Price Controls Are No Answer to Isabel By interfering with the price system’s method of sending vital information to consumers, price controls distort the market economy’s ability to allocate scarce resources. - Jacob G. Hornberger, September 19, 2003 [Future of Freedom Foundation]
Clinton's Biggest Disaster Fraud Fewer events present more opportunities for the flaunting of compassion and buying votes than do natural disasters. - James Bovard, January 1997 [Future of Freedom Foundation]
The Disaster of Government Disaster Relief In general, government has caused that harm by socializing the costs of living in high-risk areas; that is, through taxation, the political system has been able to deflect some of the costs from the people choosing to live in risky areas and to spread them across the rest of the population. - Sheldon Richman, May 1994 [Future of Freedom Foundation]
Saying No to Federal Disaster Relief [D]isaster relief today can result in additional disasters tomorrow; and those who genuinely care about the well-being of their fellow citizens should be willing to allow some suffering today to prevent a far greater amount of suffering tomorrow. - William B. Irvine, March 1990 [FEE]
"It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being
forced to pay the cost." - Murray N. Rothbard
President Discusses Hurricane Relief in Address to the Nation To carry out the first stages of the relief effort and begin rebuilding at once, I have asked for, and the Congress has provided, more than $60 billion. - September 15, 2005 [George Bush addresses the nation]
On the Alert for a Category-1 Recession The American economy will suffer as a result of Katrina. Your future earnings, not to mention your children's future earnings, will be taxed to pay for the $60+ billion in unscheduled expenditures by the U.S. government. There are no free lunches or free cities. - Gary North, September 14, 2005 [LewRockwell.com]
U.S. Government Should Not Help Tsunami Victims Charity should be left to private organizations and individuals, because the money is not the government's to give. - David Holcberg, December 30, 2004 [Capitalism Magazine]
The "Compassion" Racket In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics. - Thomas Sowell, September 9, 2004 [Capitalism Magazine]
Defining Anarchy The more freedom a society has, the better the living conditions of that society will be during good times and bad. - Mark Davis, September 8, 2005 [Strike the Root]
Companies pitch in Major companies -- including Home Depot and Ford -- pledge millions to hurricane relief efforts. - September 2, 2005 [CNN Money]
Sandra Bullock donates $1 million The bubbly brunette actress has given $1 million to the American Red Cross for its tsunami relief effort. - Marsha Kranes, January 4, 2005 [NY Post]
Water donation for stricken area Forty tons of water donated by Scottish companies are being flown to the Maldives as part of the tsunami aid effort in Asia. - January 4, 2005 [BBC News]
