Coyote Blog

My mom, who lives in Houston, spent much of today trying to get out.  Getting on Interstate 10 about 4AM, she doesn't seem to have made even 60 miles my 8PM at night, where she just plain couldn't drive any more.  Since she somehow got separated from my sister in their driving convoy, she pulled to the side of the road to rest.  Fortunately, a local minister and a fireman took her to a local shelter at a fire station to sleep tonight, where she reports all is well (many props to those folks).  Hopefully she can make it to San Antonio tomorrow, and hopefully they have not given away her reservation.

She reports that gas availability seems to worry folks the most.  No one was running their air conditioning, to save gas, and traffic was moving so slow that several were pushing their cars with the engine off down the road rather than running the engine.  There is apparently gas in inventory in the area, but tank trucks can't get to stations since inbound traffic is blocked.  Also, cars seem to be taking literally hours just to get to the next exit.  Yuk.

Since I grew up in Houston and know the people there fairly well, I can make one prediction:  They will evacuate this time, if only as part of the post-Katrina panic, but if the city is not leveled they are not going to do it again any time soon, no matter what is coming at them.

Update: Mom is back on the road this morning, and traffic is moving much better.  She reports she is 99 miles from San Antonio and has a half tank of gas.  That means in her first 27 hours of travel she made less than 100 miles of progress.  She says that there are hundreds of cars by the sides of the road that have run out of gas.

Final Update:  Mom reached SA OK, and in fact as of Monday morning is back at home in Houston.  The power is on, the cable is running, and the house is fine.  Mom lives does not live in a low-lying area, and her house has survived many hurricanes.  I know that Rita veered off from Houston, but was it really safer for her to be on the road for 30 hours, with no place to sleep at night, worrying every minute about running out of gas?

Technorati Tags:  Katrina

Whether it is the French influence or the long shadow of Huey Long's patronage driven socialist experiment, Louisiana has a tradition of bad government.  I remember several years ago the governor's race featured a Nazi running against a convicted felon (convicted in office of bribery and influence peddling, if I remember right).

So one of the problems with the management of Katrina problems is that Katrina hit Louisiana, the US's own version of Haiti.  Don't believe me?  This is already coming out, and you can be sure there is more:

Police found cases of food, clothes and tools intended for hurricane
victims in the backyard, shed and rooms throughout the home of a chief
administrative officer of a New Orleans suburb, officials said
Wednesday.

Police in Kenner searched Cedric Floyd's home Tuesday because of
complaints that city workers were helping themselves to donations for
hurricane victims. Floyd, who runs the day-to-day operations in Kenner,
was in charge of distributing the donations.

The donations, including lanterns, vacuums and clothes with price
tags attached, had to be removed in four loads in a big pickup truck,
Kenner police Capt. Steve Caraway said.

"It was an awful lot of stuff," he said.

Technorati Tags:  Katrina

Cafe Hayek points out that Rep. Earl Blumenauer wants to make sure that New Orleans is rebuilt with a strong urban planning vision.  Since Mr. Blumenauer represents Portland, Oregon, the city beloved of planners that has been planned into having some of the highest priced housing and worst traffic of any city of its size in America, I presume he wants something similar for New Orleans (Portland was also the city that thought it had solved global warming).

Here is my urban plan for New Orleans:  Every person who owns property can build whatever the hell they want on it.  If other people want something else built on that property, and value this outcome enough, they can buy the property from its owner.  This novel concept is called "private property rights" and falls under the broader category of what are called "constitutionally protected individual rights" or even more broadly, "freedom".  It is a concept that used to be taken for granted in this country and but now is seldom even taught in schools. 

For the property owned by the government, well, they are going to build whatever dumbshit thing they want to on it anyway, so I'll just root for their choice to be fairly inexpensive.  We here in Phoenix built a half-billion dollar stadium for the for-god-sakes Arizona Cardinals that is used for its core purpose 3 hours a day for 8 days a year.  It couldn't be worse, could it?

Technorati Tags:  Katrina, Economics

Following up on posts here, here, here, here, and here is yet another in a series on government preference for control over results, this time via Overlawyered.com:

In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman
several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered
to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. "I begged him to let me continue," said Perlmutter,
who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come
to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. "People were dying,
and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans
International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers.
Two patients died in front of me.

"I showed him (the U.S. Coast Guard official in charge) my medical
credentials. I had tried to get through to FEMA for 12 hours the day before and
finally gave up. I asked him to let me stay until I was replaced by another
doctor, but he refused. He said he was afraid of being sued. I informed him
about the Good Samaritan laws and asked him if he was willing to let people die
so the government wouldn't be sued, but he would not back down. I had to
leave."

In a formal response to Perlmutter's story, FEMA said it does not accept the
services of volunteer physicians:

"We have a cadre of physicians of our own," FEMA spokesman Kim Pease
said Thursday. "They are the National Disaster Medical Team. ... The voluntary
doctor was not a credentialed FEMA physician and, thus, was subject to law
enforcement rules in a disaster area."

So for those of you who draw the conclusion from Katrina that we need more big government rather than less, that would help.... how?

Technorati Tags:  Katrina

In an earlier post, I wrote a defense of price gouging.  Incredibly, one of the best simple summaries of why "profiting off disaster" is actually a good thing comes from the NY Times of all places:

All this, of course, is capitalism at work, moving quickly to get
resources to where they are needed most. And those who move fastest are
likely to do best.

Exactly (by the way, the above is quoted from an Austin Bay post, which was aimed more at criticizing the NY Times for dropping such pro-capitalist sentences from its European version.)

Higher prices for generators and lumber in the disaster area is what tells Home Depot and others that it makes sense to shift lumber and generator inventory to Louisiana from California.  High prices for gas give the following two messages simultaneously and unambiguously to hundreds of millions of people:  "you can make some good money if you can figure out how to get more gas to consumers right now" and "you might want to drive a little less right now". 

Think about that last statement.  Congress has over the last 30 or so years generated numerous energy "plans" and has spent billions of dollars to figure out ways to promote conservation and increased supply.  All of these plans have been expensive failures.  But now, post Katrina, in less than 48 hours, with no one in charge, the market has achieved what Congress could never do.  The least valuable auto-miles will be eliminated, without years of study by Congress to figure out which miles are the least valuable.  The most economic new sources of gasoline will be tapped, without debating in Washington what those sources are.  All bottom-up, with no one ruling the process, by the voluntary self-interested efforts of hundreds of millions of Americans reacting to a simple price signal.

(previous paragraph best read out-loud with someone humming America the beautiful in the background)

Postscript:  Apparently, according to Austin Bay, Texas and more specifically Houston are now the great Satan.   Since I am a white male in my forties who is fairly well-off, still believes in free markets, and was born Houston, Texas, I guess that makes me the ultimate oppressor.

Technorati Tags:  Katrina, Economics

So, unsurprisingly, Paul Krugman and others are arguing that Katrina is a vindication for large-government liberals  (One would think we would love GWB, who has been a better large-government builder than Clinton, but that is another topic).  Anyway, I think it is worth thinking for a second about the federal government and hurricanes.  I will divide the post into two parts:  Preparedness and Response, and show that in fact, large central-government thinking is at the heart of many of the problems that are being faced.

Disaster Preparedness
I cannot come up with any justification for the US Government taking the lead role in local disaster preparation or protection.  The types of disasters are just too wide and varied:  Tidal waves in Hawaii, earthquakes in LA, mudslides in San Diego, fires in the west, tornados in the plains, hurricanes on the gulf coast, blizzards in the north, etc. etc.  And why would anyone want the feds taking over their local disaster plans anyway?  Do you really want to rely on the hope that a national organization has the same priority on your local risks that you do?  The resources, the knowledge, and the incentive to prepare for emergencies are all local, and such preparation should be done as locally as possible.

The only reason locals would even tolerate federal involvement in disaster preparedness is $$$.  Every local politician loves federal dollars.  And even a hardcore libertarian like myself is probably willing to admit that some of the preparedness investments truly are public goods.  Take levees for example.  I am willing to have them as public goods.  However, no one can convince me that levees whose sole purpose in life is to protect New Orleans are federal public goods.  Why do I need to pay for them?  Why don't New Orleans people bear the full cost of their choice to live below sea level?  My family chooses to live in a place that is relatively free of disasters (though if the Colorado River dries up you can come visit our bleached bones as we are consumed by the desert).  Why should I subsidize people's choice to live in a location that sits in mother nature's cross-hairs?

But beyond my cantankerous libertarian desire not to subsidize you, those of you who live in disaster areas should demand to take responsibility for your own preparedness.  The feds are never going to value your safety the same way you do (as evidenced in part by the 40-year ongoing fight for levee funding in New Orleans) and are never going to understand your local problems like you do.  In fact, the illusion of federal responsibility for disaster preparedness is awful.  It gives irresponsible local authorities an excuse to do nothing and a way to cover their ass.  It creates a classic moral hazard and sense of false security.

I have resisted saying this for a week or so out of respect for the plight of individuals still struggling in Louisiana and Mississippi:  If one divides the world into the ants and the grasshoppers (per the classic fable), New Orleans and Louisiana would make the consensus all-grasshopper team.  They have lived in a stew of bad and corrupt government for years, mixed with a healthy dose of Huey Long-style patronage that created expectations that "you would be taken care of".  Their state officials have for years not only been grasshoppers, but have demanded that they be supported by the ants, and seem lost and confused that the ants didn't protect them somehow from Katrina.

Disaster Response
Its probably good to have a national body that can help focus resources from around the nation onto local regions that have been devastated by some disaster.  But here is the key point.  The federal government itself is never, ever going to have the resources stockpiled somewhere to handle a disaster of this magnitude.  They can't have the doctors on staff, the firemen waiting around, the medical supplies in a big warehouse, a field full of porta-potties ready to deploy, etc. etc.  There is just too much needed, and the exact needs are too uncertain.

What they can do, though, is understand that in an emergency, Americans from all over the country are always willing to help, to volunteer their time or skills or money to aid the victims.  More than anything, the Fed's role needs to be to remove barriers from these resources gettting to the the right places as fast as possible, and to backstop these private efforts with federal resources like the military.  Take the example of refugees.  There are over a million from this hurricane.  Of those, at least 90% will be helped privately, either from their own funds or friends or family or private generosity.  Probably more like 95+%, if you include resources offered by local governments.  The feds role then is to help the remaining 5% find food and shelter.  Note, though, that the problem is not dealing with 100% of the problem, it is dealing with the 5% the leaks through bottom-up efforts, while removing barriers that might stand in the way of bottom-up efforts helping the other 95%.

Unfortunately, the feds don't think this way.  Most feds, including Krugman type large government folks, distrust private and bottom up efforts.  They are top-down technocrats, putting an emphasis on process and control rather than bottom-up initiative.  I wrote much much more about the failed technocratic response to Katrina here.  I think one can argue the reason that the refugee situation for 95% of the people worked well is that these folks quickly got out of the sphere of influence of the FEMA folks -- in other words, they got far enough away to escape FEMA control.  Can you imagine what a total disaster would be occurring if FEMA tried to control the relocation of all 1 million people?  But on the LA and MS gulf coast, FEMA is exercising total control, actually preventing private initiative from helping people, and everyone is the worse for it.  I encourage you to read more in this post about valuing control over results, but I will leave you with this one anecdote that sums up the big government technocratic top-down world Mr. Krugman longs for:

As federal officials tried to get some control over the deteriorating
situation in New Orleans, chaos was being replaced with bureaucratic rules that
inhibited private relief organizations' efforts.

"We've tried desperately to rescue 250 people trapped in a Salvation Army
facility. They've been trapped in there since the flood came in. Many are on
dialysis machines," said Maj. George Hood, national communications secretary for
the relief organization.

"Yesterday we rented big fan boats to pull them out and the National Guard
would not let us enter the city," he said. The reason: a new plan to evacuate
the embattled city grid by grid - and the Salvation Army's facility didn't fall
in the right grid that day, Hood said in a telephone interview from Jackson,
Miss.

"No, it doesn't make sense," he said.

Technorati Tags:  Katrina, Economics

Government bureaucrats tend to resist bottom-up solutions to problems -- after all,their jobs depend on the primacy of central planning and solving problems top-down.  It is interesting to read this email posted at Vodka Pundit in this light:

Fed is dropping the ball on basic necessities such as water, portolets, you
name it. Woefully unprepared and nobody seems to be in charge or have the
gumption to get it done.

Louisiana politicians should be absolutely raising hell right now. Lots of
people including yours truly have volunteered to bring (including food,
generators, food, etc., to be self sufficient for a week or so) the most
important thing which is a boat but have been told NO under no uncertain terms.
"My" town is under water, people are in critical condition, and I have skill
sets and assets - including a boat which will come out of the hole in 14 incles
of water - and we are being denied the opportunity to help. And quite frankly,
that REALLY PISSES ME OFF.

Military is stepping up and bringing considerable skills and assets to the
table. Had they been listened to earlier, lots of logistical issues would have
been resolved. IOW's, the bureaucrats are getting moved to the sidelines but
"turf issues" are not going quietly into the night.

You can see the bureaucratic mindset at work hear:  An emphasis on being in control vs. solving the damn problem.  Don't want a lot of citizens running around on their own bringing in supplies of helping people, do we?

If we are going to insist on a 100% top-down approach, then its good the military is coming in to take over.   Only the military has the large-scale logistical experience and resources to take-on something of this scope top-down  (and even they have struggled with what may be a smaller rebuilding task in Iraq).  The US military did more good than any single organization during the Asian Tsunami, so I hope for the same here.  I would hope there are a few aircraft carriers heading to the area.

Postscript:  I know everyone is having fun blaming the feds, but what about the locals here?  If my town was below sea level with only a single dike between me and being 30 feet under a lake, I might insist that my local politicians have a contingency plan for breaches.  I have wondered why a few ships couldn't have been scuttled in the breach early in the crisis.

Update:  Much more on top-down vs. bottom-up response to Katrina here.

Technorati Tags:  Katrina

Very funny from Scrappleface.  Here is an excerpt:

Fears increased today among hundreds of thousands of refugees from the
hurricane-ravaged gulf coast as they faced a Labor Day weekend with little hope
of an eloquent speech from President George Bush....

One New Orleans man, currently living in the 'Plaza End Zone' section of the
Superdome as he awaits news of his missing family members, said, "I can survive
for some time with little water, no food and highly unsanitary conditions...but
if I don't hear some poetic words of comfort and stirring verbal imagery from
the president pretty soon, I'm a goner."

Read it all.

Technorati Tags:  Katrina, Humor