Are We Looking at Anarchy in New Orleans?

[Griff]

I don't think we're looking at anarchy in New Orleans. We are looking at government failure in the extreme.

Folks in the Big Easy have lived under the impression that they were being looked after by the Army Corp of Engineers with backup from Local, State, and Federal government. The Engineers knew what needed to be done but they couldn't get the resources to do it. This is a direct result of placing an urgent need before the most remote level of government. It looked like a good idea when they were passing the cost off on the rest of the country but it obviously wasn't since the rest of the country didn't see it as a priority, it was too remote from them. The people of New Orleans were given a false sense of security because the believed that government would take care of them. Considering the level of corruption in the State it is suprising to us on the outside that they could harbor such beliefs, but they probably assumed that corruption would be limited to non-life-threatening areas, now they know better.

We are looking at the result of government intervention not the lack of it. Transitioning to anarchy would be ugly like this but actual anarchy could be far better. At this minute, I'm with the minarchists, have the government do the things that need to be done, like diaster relief, but avoid growing a bureaucracy that stupidily prevents real need from being addressed. Keeping responsibility as local as possible would have helped this stuation. Each level of government has been pushing responsibility up the ladder toward, in this case, someone who doesn't give a shit.