Who actually thinks this was the right thing to do? Should Texas just eliminate state funding of fire services completely? What’s the libertarian argument here?
Don’t be silly, they are praying to the omnipotent, eternal God. Can’t get any more unlimited than God!
Makes perfect sense. Push the cost off to someone else.
Slash funding then cry to FEMA for help.
Then point to FEMA as an example of government bloat.
Have your cake and eat it too.
The Forest Service cuts were part of a much, much larger set of budget cuts forced by diminished revenues, which is a situation all states are familiar with.
All Perry could have done is veto them, which probably would have been overridden anyway by the Republican supermajority in the Legislature.
Blaming him alone is idiotic. Had this been a hurricane, you’d probably be bitching at the Legislature for cutting funding to other state agencies. That’s the problem- every state program is vital to someone at some point.
A hurricane is an event, a drought is a process. A hurricane wasn’t there two weeks ago, and won’t be here a week from now. Drought is a known factor in Texas, and wildfires that result are also a known factor. I am of the opinion that cutting responses to a probable event isn’t very smart. But then, I’m a recovering Texan.
To answer part of the OP:
The strict libertarian answer would be for the property owners to be responsible for providing for their own fire fighting needs. Presumably this would be by banding together in some way, possibly through insurance. They would also be more motivated to take steps to mitigate fire danger through removing underbrush, etc. (not sure if that is relevant to Texas; it was a big issue in the big Oakland, CA drought fire of a few years ago). Such actions would lower insurance premiums.
Probably some of the burned land is publicly owned (I have no direct knowledge of this, I am assuming based on what happens in states that I have lived in). In a strict libertarian society, there would be no publicly owned land, so again the property owners would be responsible (and motivated) to mitigate the causes and spread of fires and to provide for fire fighting options.
To compare it to something I am more familiar with than Texas drought, this would be similar to the way buildings can be built to mitigate the effects of earthquake. This is an added expense, but since earthquakes are relatively common in California, it is generally regarded as a legitimate cost of living or of doing business here.
Every location has its potential disasters; some have multiple types. Prudence would dictate being prepared for the more likely and destructive ones. The libertarian stance is that this prudence is best exercised by those who have the highest stake in the outcome.
Note: I am not an official spokesperson for libertarians (there probably isn’t such a thing anyway) so other libertarians might certainly disagree with my remarks. Then we can all argue about who is a real libertarian. What larks!
Roddy
With the effect much like we are seeing here. A bunch of stunned Libertarians staring despondently at the smoking remains of their life, while other luckier Libertarians castigate them for their lack of foresight.
Then he should have vetoed them.
Property owners are already expected to remove brush, etc. I don’t know if this results in lower insurance premiums or not, but it should. I know there is strong advice for those living in the California mountains to do this,especially in times of high fire danger.
There are a few problems with this. First, fires don’t respect property lines. There is some land which is going to naturally be prone to fire danger, especially in droughts. Much of this land may be of low value and fire might actually increase its value by clearing brush. Property owners with lots of this type of land cannot be expected to spend lots of money reducing fire danger, even if possible. Those with high value property can afford to spend on their property, but have no control on the property of others.
Since the chance of fire breaking out in any one acre is small, getting any reasonable contribution to fire services privately is also small. This is clearly a good role for government, which can provide services over a big enough area to let the individual payments be relatively small.
There is also the problem of freeloading. The person in the middle of a set of houses may not feel the need to spend on fire prevention, since those living around him will have to stop the fire before it gets to him to protect their own houses.
However not retrofitting my house to be earthquake resistant will not affect my neighbor, since my house is not tall enough to fall on his house. Letting my house burn might, since the fire can jump, and since no house is totally fireproof. In any case, how many private homes are retrofitted, and how long did it take to fix the Bay Bridge?
Those with the greatest stake in the outcome might be unable to affect it unless they got to exercise coercive power over those who could mitigate the problem.
There are cases where we are libertarian in the sense that there is nothing government can do, such as those fools who build their houses on hillsides and then see them slide down them. Doesn’t bother me, they should know what they are doing and they every so often stimulate the construction industry by paying a stupid tax.
Have the cuts proven detrimental to the ability to fight the wildfires? Would the fires be out now, or be more contained, if those cuts had not been made? If not, then this is much ado about nothing.
In Texas we have a rainy day fund, and though I don’t know the specifics, I think they could have used it to help fund fire fighters, and other emergency responders. We knew we were in a drought year, and we knew wildfires were only a matter of time.
Houston is covered in smoke today, or at least it was this morning when I drove to work. Reminds me of when i lived in southern oregon during our record wild fire year. It’s miserable, unhealthy, and for all the 1000+ families who have lost their homes, it’s downright devestating.
I hardly would blame him alone. There plenty of stupid in Texas to go around. However, this does demonstrate the fallacy of the “government waste” argument. Here we have a state, fully controlled by the waste cutters and tax hike haters, who clearly could not find enough waste to cut so they could avoid cutting things that were really necessary.
Then what good would a rainy day fund be? I run rings around you logically. 
LOL! I bow down to your ultimate logic and flagellate myself continually for the rest of the day in deference to your greatness.
Although, I wouldn’t put it past Perry or the Texas republicans to make the argument that the rainy day fund could literally only be used on rainy days.
Andy Revkin say an underlying factor is that the population in Bastrop County quadrupled in the last 40 years and that the additional risk simply wasn’t factored into their building codes. When you build a lot of houses adjacent to wooded areas the risk goes up.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/a-hidden-factor-behind-losses-in-texas-fires/
BTW, don’t they have the same problems in California during every El Niño?
In California we have a “drought” nearly every summer, during dry season. The problem is that during wet winters the underbrush grows so the fire danger increases. This year we’ve had a relatively wet summer, and the fire risk is much reduced.
With a few exceptions, like in San Diego a few years back, homes that burn are often in relatively isolated areas. Interviews I’ve heard with homeowners in the Santa Cruz mountains, which often have problems, make me think that they have a strong libertarian bent and like being far away from the government and other such riff-raff. My unscientific opinion is that they seldom whine and seem aware of the risks.
ETA: California spends a lot of money fighting fires some years, and seems to be pretty good at protecting homes for the most part. This kind of fire fighting seems to be very expensive and labor intensive. It is not something you can fight by hiring random people off the street when a fire breaks out - it is dangerous work.
“Nobody could have predicted that cuts to firefighting budgets would possibly lead to a lessened ability to fight fires. Nor could it have been predicted that drought conditions would lead to more and larger brush fires that could spread. This was completely unexpected and unanticipated.”
The solution is probably to cut taxes.
Current conditions are not conducive to libertarian behavior. For example, those folks are already presumably paying some taxes for (ineffectual) fire fighting. I don’t expect them to also be paying for some sort of private fire remediation. Transitions are difficult, even chaotic.
These issues are all adjudicable. To be libertarian does not mean there are no laws protecting property rights, in fact just the opposite. If I take reasonable precautions on my land, and you don’t, a fire spreading from your land to mine might result in a lawsuit. The feeloader is luckier; presumably the cost of such property is higher to reflect the fact that he can freeload. In a free property market such issues would be very visible - location, location, location!
I did say similar, not identical. And the owner of a building that is tall enough to fall on its neighbor would, presumably, be liable for failure to take prudent steps to prevent that from happening. Even houses the same size can slide into each other (see photos from 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake). If my house collapses and I don’t harm anyone else and I don’t have insurance, then I have only myself to blame and no expectation of rescue from other parties.
The Bay Bridge is an excellent example: it has taken 22 years, and it isn’t finished yet. If this bridge were privately owned (this is a complex issue, so bear with me for the sake of argument) I would be willing to bet that it would have been fixed much sooner.
Roddy
eta: I have unintentionally gone from expressing one libertarian point of view, to defending it, something that so far I have been loath to do, as I don’t have confidence in my argumentative abilities. But lead on, MacDuff.
I also call myself a libertarian, and I completely disagree with Roderick. The government should be used to combat fire for the same reason it should be used to combat plague, enemy armies or crime sprees. If there’s a fire on your property, it is in my best interest for it to be dealt with as quickly as possible, before it has the chance to spread and become a bigger threat to me. That’s just sensible strategy.
Providing safe harbour for an enemy of all is not the type of neutral choice libertarianism is supposed to protect.
This year’s fires are exceptional; this is some sort of unholy combination of the hottest summer in 60 years or so, and one of the longest and most severe droughts in probably a similar amount of time.
I can’t fault the Legislature for not being prepared for something quite so extraordinary; usually you hear about a couple of local wildfires in the height of summer, but widespread fires like this are really, really unusual in Texas.
And Bastrop isn’t exactly what you’d call a big town, nor is it a suburb of Austin. It’s a good distance from there, and that area has grown quite a bit in the past 5 years alone, not to mention the past 40. I suspect that the growth has been such that the county services have not caught up yet.