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Disaster or Human Folly in Florida? The recent storm in Florida has me thinking of the disaster that is federal emergency management. Not that I have any complaint about FEMA and how they operate. My issue is at a policy level. For quite some time it has been clear to me that there should be a distinction between unlikely disasters and probable disasters. The poster boy of this is flooding in the Mississippi basin. Every few years we are treated to the site of people filling sandbags, submerged houses, people on rooftops refusing to be evacuated, etc. Why are all those houses where they are? It's great farmland. Why is it great farmland? It's very rich in nutrients from the alluvial mud that periodically gets dumped on it when the Mississippi river floods. Oh. Shouldn't these people live on higher ground, or build on stilts, or something, and just farm in the flood basin? The obvious response to that is: 'Why do the liberals always want government to tell people how to live their lives?' Next up: Malibu, California. Home to very wealthy people who live in very expensive houses along the coast and up in canyons. Beautiful spot, love to go biking through those canyons. Small problem. As Mike Davis so nicely put it in his book 'Ecology of Fear' (I'm paraphrasing of course): If one wanted to design a system to create intense wildfires one would design a place with high-intensity warm winds, low rainfall, highly flammable foliage, and narrow canyons to channel the winds to maximize their heat effect. In short, Malibu. Every few years there are massive fires in Malibu, lots of very expensive houses burn, millions of dollars are spent saving other houses. Is this money covered by taxes on the people who live in Malibu? Of course not. It is handled under LA County, California, and Federal emergency funds. This amounts to a tax on everyone to pay for the risk these people are taking living in a fire zone. As we saw this winter, people are moving more aggressively into similar fire zones elsewhere in SoCal. And that's not even mentioning Earthquakes. So, how likely would we say it is that the state of Florida would get hit with a massive tropical storm causing significant damage? It's clearly not a question of if but when. Of course, this all comes under the general rubric of American hubris. We think that we can live wherever we want and be unaffected by nature. Then we think that the government should help us if we were wrong. Then we bitch about how much money we have to give the government in taxes. Bah! I bet that even after eagerly turning to the Federal government to help them a lot of these people in Florida will still vote for candidates who promise them lower taxes and less government. If this doesn't teach them what we on the left mean by community, are they teachable? BTW, none of this detracts from my feelings of sympathy towards the people in Florida. They are going through a horrible time right now, and many will take years to get back what they have lost, if they ever do recover. But this seems like such a great example of what is really at stake in the liberal vs. conservative argument here in America. If the liberals had their way we would declare large areas of the country hazardous, stipulate that there would be no government aid for particular events within those areas, and encourage people to move elsewhere. If the conservatives had their way there would be no government to help these people. By accepting the government assistance (rather than insisting on getting help from the private sector) the conservatives are betraying their principles. By providing the aid without conditions on rebuilding, the liberals are betraying theirs. Does anyone win here?