In government we trust

What should we have learned from last summer’s deadly and destructive hurricanes? Primarily that we shouldn’t have much faith in a bureaucracy like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). They amply demonstrated their incompetence, but what’s our response? We’ll give them more money and more authority. That’s not smart.

The FEMA fiasco is discussed in several articles in the December 2005 issue of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty magazine, published by the Foundation for Economic Education, the nation’s first free market policy institute.

Hillsdale College Economics Professor Robert Murphy cites some of FEMA’s stupid responses to Hurricane Katrina, which include “delaying firefighters two days in Atlanta hotels to receive sexual-harassment training and watch videos on the history of FEMA while people were dying in New Orleans.”

By contrast, private firms like Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Home Depot had trucks on the road right after the hurricane.

Stores even gave away items like chain saws and boots for rescue workers, sheets and clothes for shelters and water and ice for the public. Wal-Mart was so efficient there was talk among some Louisiana officials of letting the company take over FEMA’s job and a suggestion Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott run FEMA.

Freeman editor Sheldon Richman says the latter suggestion misses a very important point. Wal-Mart was effective because it was not a government agency. Were Mr. Scott in charge of FEMA, he wouldn’t do much better than its former director, Michael Brown. Government cannot achieve the efficiencies of a business. Trying to make government as efficient as business is as hopeless as trying to teach cats to bark and dogs to meow.

Dwight Lee, University of Georgia professor, penned an article with the instructive title “Mitigating Disaster: Abolish FEMA and Let Gas Prices Rise.” I’ve written several columns about the surge in gasoline prices and criticized the “price-gouging” demagoguery. Mr. Lee has an insight I overlooked. He asks whether it would have been a good idea, after the supply disruptions of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, for Americans to continue using gasoline as if there had been no disruptions.

After the hurricanes, more gas was suddenly needed to bring rescue personnel, evacuate the homeless, clear rubble and a host of other things to get the reconstruction under way. If gas prices had remained as they were before the hurricanes, Americans would have continued using the same amount of gas. Mr. Lee says, “The higher gas prices motivated tens of millions of drivers to conserve gasoline, allowing more to be available where it was badly needed.” What’s more, we didn’t need a government edict; we voluntarily cut back consumption.

Professor Lee explains the waste, delays and incompetence are an inherent part of all federal programs and we would be better off without FEMA. He gives many reasons why private or local disaster relief will produce a better outcome.

However, Mr. Lee omits a question I always ask when people assert this or that government program is an absolute necessity: What did we do before?

In 1871, a fire virtually destroyed Chicago. In 1900, a Category 4 hurricane wiped out Galveston, Texas, and killed up to 12,000 people. In 1906, an earthquake leveled San Francisco. Loss of life was estimated at nearly 3,000, and the damage at the time at $400 million — about $8 billion in today’s dollars.

After those massive disasters, each city recovered. I would like an explanation, from those who would argue federal disaster relief and a FEMA-type agency are the only ways to recover from a disaster, how these cities recovered.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist.