It was a perfect day for helicopter intro lessons today, but some of the Groupon customers will have to wait a bit longer before taking the controls of an East Coast Aero Club Robinson R44. Barack Obama came to our city to attend two fundraising events. Having been shut down by the temporary flight restriction put in place, I became interested in what Obama had to say. In this video, Obama talks about how the Massachusetts flood shows the value of Big Government. Without Big Government, he says, we wouldn’t be able to handle Nature’s wrath. This struck me as odd because, though we are new to our suburban neighborhood, we’ve gotten so many offers of help from neighbors (they’re aware that our house is right next to a pond and, indeed, the pond has expanded to cover parts of the driveway). Had our house been flooded, we would not need to go to a government-run shelter because at least four or five of our neighbors would be willing to take us in until the waters subside.
I’ll be the first to admit that we need Big Government if we are to bring democracy to 31 million Iraqis (there were a lot fewer when we invaded, but the Iraqis have been prolific (older posting)). But isn’t it kind of insulting to suggest that Americans wouldn’t be willing to help their neighbors and therefore the government must step in to deal with heavy rains that seriously affect perhaps 1 in 100 households?
[I might add that approximately one percent of the people I know in Massachusetts had a serious problem, e.g., a flooded basement that destroyed their furnace and/or hot water heater. In no case did they get any help from a government worker. In no case did they get any help from an insurance company (there is some fine print in the standard contract that excludes flood damage). They got help pumping out from neighbors, family, and friends.]
I don’t think that people are any less likely to help out these days, but the level of skill that is expected in a response by the public is moving more and more functions to the government sector. See the slow but steady transition of volunteer fire departments to paid departments. In the volunteer departments that remain, most if not all are dependent on tax dollars due to the cost of equipment and training.
I think you just defined the liberal mindset. Even if the community helps, there are some left out and so government must step in to be the fairer version of the community.
@Charles, did you read the post? Please define what increased level of skill is required to help a neighbor in need during an emergency? And what correlation is there between the cost of equipment and firefighters transitioning from volunteer to becoming pensioned government workers? None and none.
When I was young and we lived out in the country (eastern New York, just to the west of the Berkshires), I was told of a family from Sweden who lived in the area who was amazed at the way the community came together to help when there were problems, because back in Sweden “the government would take care of them”.
Now, three decades later, I’m taking CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) classes, and the teachers are saying “in Katrina, FEMA performed exactly as expected: it’s up to you to make sure your neighborhood is safe”.
And, thinking back on my experience with a few whitewater and rock climbing rescues I was involved in back in my glory days, I can’t help but thing “when the authorities arrive, then you’ve got *two* problems”.
So much of the economic advantage of scale that the government appears to provide seems to be sweeping externalities under the rug. We can think that the Feds have our back in a disaster because of that consolidation of resources, but, in fact, we’d do better if we were looking to disaster preparedness at a block by block level: Even though it seems more expensive to do it that way, the reality is that with those distributed resources we’re then able to deal with bigger disasters.
On the transfer of volunteer fire departments to paid ones, a few years ago, before he died, my grandfather, who was a volunteer fireman still certified by New York State in his late ’70s, described at least a ten-fold, if not hundred-fold, increase in emergency calls over his over half-century of participating in his town’s emergency services. Over that time their population remained constant (they’re just outside of New York City, and didn’t gain any land from the ’40s). It’s just that what used to be first aid dealt with in the house is now an ambulance trip and emergency room visit.
That costs money, and any time you get aggregation of services you get people looking to shave dollars by cutting things that aren’t used regularly.