Weena wrote:
And then cry when they are stranded on their roofs, baking in the sun and starving.
A Libertarian* is going to say insurance markets should be used to deter people building/rebuilding in high risk areas, and that states should be the ones running their own emergency aids.
Insurance markets also gave higher rates to blacks and people with chronic and/or congenital illnesses until the feds made them cut it out. Is that fair, is that just?
Why states? Why not cities? Why not every man for himself? Why the STATE level? Why not go back and break up the country into 50 little Monaco-sized countries with full control of their own affairs while we're at it? Hell, why stop there, we could break up the country at the county level into 600 independent nations?
Let's pretend we play it your way. New York has probably 20 times the wealth, population and resources of a Midwestern state. What, should they just sit on it? What are those Midwesterners supposed to do, just move? Accept wage slavery? How long do you think people would accept government with NO transfer of wealth from wealthy regions to poor regions before the country descended into civil war?
What makes you think that New York's advantage would diminish and not grow over time? ECONOMY OF SCALE. The big rich states would get richer and the poor or small states would get poorer. This is a constant in history, big countries always have the advantage over small ones and their leverage will always grow with time. This is why the overwhelming trend in the history of the world has been towards political and economic consolidation.
The fact that San Francisco sits on a fault line would NOT make people move away any more than it already does for that very same reason which is that it is a wealthy and established community, and that will be a stronger influence on events than "the free market" or the actual merits of the topography. The only "change" would be massive suffering for disaster-prone areas that AREN'T super-rich.
In 1906 SF was levelled by a quake and fire, it had been established the city was situated on earthquake-prone land, and people STILL decided to rebuild on the site. If what you say didn't happen when we had basically no regulation what makes you think it will now?
I challenge you to show me a single example, ever, in the history of the entire world, where a federal state has been successfully managed with no internal transfer of wealth. It didn't work in the days of Pompeii and it won't work now.
There have been many cultures that were undermined or wiped out in large part by inability to respond effectively to disasters - example would be the Mycenaean Dark Age. When there were disasters and governments didn't handle the problem, the result was civil disorder and the fall of an entire civilization. Same with Rome after the Punic Wars, people came home to ruined farms and the government basically said, "Eff you, deal with it, be resourceful etc." The result was dictatorship. Same with the Hundred Years War and the French government telling people to "just deal with" the destruction of their property by forces totally beyond their control.
And no early America does not count because the standard of living was abyssal and the human cost was horrendous (
Grapes of Wrath) and we had the benefit of exploitation of abundant natural resources that have since been exhausted (gold, fur, wood).
Even if your idea wasn't totally 100% impractical in terms of economics and society, politically it's 100% impossible. Libertarianism is fundamentally incompatible with democratic government. People are NOT going to sit there and just "die in a corner".
Whether programs are at least partially constructive (FEMA) or just handouts (EDT), what you don't grasp is that it is those programs that, even though they benefit other people, benefit you in that they prevent this country from descending into riots and popular revolution. If those programs did not exist in some form, the "have nots" would burn down your house and take your stuff.
The lasseiz-faire option is nothing but pure, willful ignorance. Aristocrats have been preaching the "deal with it, it will work itself out, people need to toughen up" bullshit in every time and place and the results have been invariably bad.
If the federal administration doesn't deal with problems too big for regions to handle then people will overthrow the government. Simple as that.
