Should the state stop you from looting essential items?

On the one hand, hell yes. It’s stealing. And why should people have to choose between risking their lives in a storm and losing all their property to looters in the aftermath?

On the other hand, this is the same state that forbids private entities from being paid for the cost of transporting essential items into a disaster area (or preserving them during a disaster, or stocking them up against the possibility of a disaster) when selling them to disaster victims. According to the state, this is “gouging”, and it means you’re SOL until charity or taxpayer funded disaster relief reaches you. So where does that state get off stopping you from taking the things you must have to survive that it has left you unable to buy, especially when the owners may or may not ever be coming back?

On the gripping hand, are you really justified in stealing when it was your own outrageously poor decision that caused you to be there in the first place? If others have to pay the price for your idiocy, you don’t have much of a case when you ask them to let you make your own decisions on, well, anything. That way the lifelong nursery lies, and we’re a good part of the way there already. (Granted, this reasoning doesn’t apply to all large-scale disasters, but it sure as hell applies to this one.)

Looting in Louisiana

According to WWL TV in New Orleans, the hurricane has brought out looters.
“With much of the city emptied by Hurricane Katrina, some opportunists took advantage of the situation by looting stores. At a Walgreen’s drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.

When police finally showed up, a young boy stood in the door screaming, “86! 86!” — the radio code for police — and the crowd scattered. “

An August 11 2005 USA Today article noted the passage of an anti-price gouging law and stiffened penalties for looting.
“Civil action can be taken against price-gougers, including fines and restitution. Criminal penalties range up to six months in jail and $500 in fines for each violation.
Also, looting during states of emergency starts carrying heavier penalties on Monday: a three-year minimum prison sentence and up to 15 years. Backers of that bill said fear of being looted was a hindrance to getting storm-threatened residents to evacuate.”

One man watching the looters said.”To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it’s an opportunity to get back at society.”

It is a surely measure of the character of a people what their thoughts turn to in a disaster. That ‘looting’ was foremost on their minds is reprehensible, to be sure. But it speaks volumes for the type of people they are, none of it good.

Get back at society?
I fervently hope this is an isolated incident.

Another Czech President’s Speech

Instapundit notes a Brussels’ Journal article on Vaclav Klaus. who it contends made “‘[t]he most impressive speech during the recent Regional Meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. He begins “View from a Post-Communist Country in a Predominantly Post-Democratic Europe” with Hayek’s description of the intellectuals’ role in shaping society.

They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator. That is not all. According to Hayek “the power of ideas grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness”. Hence it is not surprising that the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas. This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist.

Czech intellectualism is often countered by Czech pragmatism. And here is Klaus’s optimistic belief that the EU setback may be a chance to to “open the door” to reflections on “what makes our society free, democratic and prosperous.” He concludes with succinct descriptions of political, economic and social systems that are indeed free. These values should also govern relations with other countries. And, underlying all should be “a system of ideas, which will be based on freedom, personal responsibility, individualism, natural caring for others and genuine moral conduct of life.”

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Helicopter Parents: why the Hovering?

According to the Boston Globe, colleges are complaining about ‘helicopter parents‘, describing moms and dads whose constant hovering leads to overinvolvement in their student’s life. Such overparenting, they say, “endangers a crucial development phase in which students are seeking to become self-reliant.” Administrators say they began to notice the uptick in parents’ calls and oversight five to seven years ago. Schools have responded, attempting to impede some parents’ intervention on behalf of the student.

Point taken, but one wonders: why the hovering?

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Malcolm Gladwell Tips Over

In the August 29 issue of the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell makes so many errors in discussing national health insurance, it’s hard to believe the piece was reviewed by an editor. To fisk it all would mean to delete it.

Arnold Kling does an excellent job junking Gladwell’s misguided notion of “moral hazard” (and the notion that American health care economists are mistakenly “obsessed” with the idea).

And Slate’s Mickey Kaus nicely rips Gladwell’s claim that health care copayments are a bad idea.

But Gladwell begins his piece discussing how the lack of dental care among the poor demonstrates the need for socialized medicine.
“People without health insurance have bad teeth because, if you’re paying for everything out of your own pocket, going to the dentist for a checkup seems like a luxury.”
Curiously, he does not follow up and tell you whether this method succeeds in producing better teeth in the UK, Canada, or elsewhere.

HT: Instapundit

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