Bureacrats and MSM tend to be liberals and view the masses as the problem.

If you review everything written about NO, it comes down to permitting people to do the right thing. Which is why things are going better in Mississippi.

Yes, a better handled evacuation would have saved many lives in New Orleans. But it does not seem obvious that the local political culture would have supported a better plan, or even better execution of the existing plan.

Funny that, in the case of the aftermath of Katrina, “government’s” contactual integrity is being shown-up by an upstart network of internet-based, real-time information relays coupled with citizen volunteerism.

Your readers might find this interesting. Over $200 M in voluntary donations have been received so far. This is more than double the ‘03 budget (download pdf) for Loisiana’s Department of Economic Development (actual ‘03 budget: $99,731,105).

Then, visiting Tim Blair’s blog this morning I noticed that he posted a link to Apple’s innovative donation funnel: its popular iTunes main page. Blair writes,

UPDATE. Reader Jeremy Garrett sends some easy donation news: “… Apple set it up where people with iTunes on their computers can donate money to the Red Cross through the iTunes Music Store just like they would if they were buying a song. The donations show up on your credit card statement as a donation to charity.”

Gosh, might the integration of the internet with voluntary charitable exchanges more effectively execute the will of a free society, than traditional redistributionist “governance?” And should the institutions, media patrons, and others who derive from conventional, government-mediated redistribution feel a little threatened right now?
-Steve

I think many people are unclear on what a mandatory evacuation really means. The state has no authority to order people to abandon their homes and property. No one will herd you safety at gunpoint. A mandatory evacuation order is an explicit statement that anybody left in the area when the disaster hits will be on their own. Conditions are expected to be so bad that nobody can expect outside help. Everybody in Hurricane country understands this.

Anyone who could leave with their own resources but chooses not to accepts the consequences of their actions. The question is what to do with those who want to leave but do not have the resources to do so? It is this second group that relies on the state to evacuate them.

People in nursing homes, especially those who are poor or without families, would be an exemplar of this second group. Emergency planners know for a fact, long before any particular emergency, that these people will need outside assistance. Worse, the government had committed to providing evacuations to such people in its emergency plans. A tacit contract existed. People without resources had every right to expect the government would provide for them.

80% of the cities population evacuated on their own. If we assume that half the remaining wanted to but could not we are talking about tens of thousands of people who were trapped in the city due to the ineptitude of the local authorities.

“Perhaps, in the long run, the evacuation model of hurricane civil defense…will be supplanted by increased emphasis on citizen self-reliance during emergencies.”

If each adult had the consequences of their choices piled on their own shoulders, then individuals, and society as a whole, would adapt properly to all new challenges, even oncoming disasters. A self-determining responsible citizenry, informed in advance by an accurate warning system, will respond rationally, or should be forced to accept the actual costs of not acting.

Our decentralized federal system relies on the local authorities, and finally, local individuals, to take action in response to local stimuli in order to insulate distant others from bearing the costs of the few’s follies. The idolatry of a “central government” and the “government-mediated” response absolves the “believing” individual of her responsibility to act, and coddles the human instinct to huddle under the leaky umbrella called “socialism.” In this church, “Personal Responsibility” and “Feedback Loop” are hated Anti-Christs, and their apostles are run out of town.

A working response would make sure that government actions that subsidize repeated idiocy, like FEMA bailouts, subsidized low-interest loans for infirm real-estate purchases, local zoning regulations that induce construction in order to build property-tax revenues no matter what, are phased out. This collective response should stress private insurance and due-diligence as the aternatives to the dependency-enabling ministrations of “Mother Hen gub’ment.”
-Steve