# What do Libertarians think should happen when disasters strike? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 12, 2012, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758 "2012-11-12T05:22:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/81 "2012-11-13T13:48:20Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > In a word: yes. Yes, they preferred to have the government bear the cost of housing them, even if it was less than glamorous accommodations. > > What possibly is your alternative explanation for the fact they were there four years later (2005-2009, which covers the three years our economy was firing on all cylinders, mind you)? > > . They had suffered a complete loss of _everything_. They din’t have much choice. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_stamos_left_ear/32/3198_2.png) [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Stamos_Left_Ear)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/82 "2012-11-13T14:14:35Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > They had suffered a complete loss of _everything_. They din’t have much choice. But that’s cool, they wanted that to happen. So they could be the takers instead of the makers and they could live [del]high[/del] low off the hog, suckling the government teat which we all know they preferred. Much better to live for free in a trailer and let taxpayers foot that bill than actually have every single thing you ever owned and worked for washed away in a storm. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/83 "2012-11-13T14:31:01Z")
The “still living in trailers” issue demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the result of a true disaster. Even people with the foresight to have insurance for their property are rarely paid full replacement dollar value for their losses. There are deductible amounts which in the case of hurricanes are commonly the standard dollar amount **plus** several percent of the total value of the property. There are also exclusions, commonly including detached buildings (e.g., a detached garage, shed, barn, etc.), screen enclosures, patios and decks, outdoor fixtures, landscaping, and a host of others. Compensation for a “total loss” is almost always less than 100%, and may be dramatically less. I knew people who, after Andrew, received less than 50% of the pre-storm value for their property. And these were the folks with good insurance. Others were covered by companies whose reserves were insufficient to pay the losses, and such folks were just out of luck. There were plenty of uninsured individuals and businesses and, while I’ll cry no tears for those who chose this route deliberately, some were simply refused coverage in the first place. Say you were one of the lucky ones who got 80% or so coverage for the loss of your home. You need to come up with the other 20% to rebuild. You can’t just reconstruct 80% of your house by, say, leaving off the kitchen. So if you didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars in cash reserves **in addition to your insurance coverage** , you couldn’t rebuild until you accumulated that money. And Og forbid that you were one of the unlucky ones holding insurance policies issued by now bankrupt companies, or suffering the death of a thousand cuts from multiple deductibles and exclusions so your total compensation was less than 50% of your actual loss. You need to work an awful lot of overtime, and save up lots of deposit bottles, before any building company will sign a contract to rebuild your house. But your business was also destroyed (employee or owner, same difficulty) so you can’t earn your old living. Heck, even if your place of work was miraculously spared damage, your client/customer base are now suffering the same lack of spendable income as you are. Either way, you’re not going to begin that home reconstruction any time soon. So whether you’re discussing Miami after Andrew, NOLA after Katrina, or any other major disaster, there will be people requiring alternate housing for years and years afterward no matter how you posit the relief efforts. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/84 "2012-11-13T16:17:48Z")
> [@CannyDan](#): > > The “still living in trailers” issue demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the result of a true disaster. Even people with the foresight to have insurance for their property are rarely paid full replacement dollar value for their losses. There are deductible amounts which in the case of hurricanes are commonly the standard dollar amount **plus** several percent of the total value of the property. There are also exclusions, commonly including detached buildings (e.g., a detached garage, shed, barn, etc.), screen enclosures, patios and decks, outdoor fixtures, landscaping, and a host of others. Compensation for a “total loss” is almost always less than 100%, and may be dramatically less. I knew people who, after Andrew, received less than 50% of the pre-storm value for their property. And these were the folks with good insurance. Others were covered by companies whose reserves were insufficient to pay the losses, and such folks were just out of luck. There were plenty of uninsured individuals and businesses and, while I’ll cry no tears for those who chose this route deliberately, some were simply refused coverage in the first place. > > Say you were one of the lucky ones who got 80% or so coverage for the loss of your home. You need to come up with the other 20% to rebuild. You can’t just reconstruct 80% of your house by, say, leaving off the kitchen. So if you didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars in cash reserves **in addition to your insurance coverage** , you couldn’t rebuild until you accumulated that money. And Og forbid that you were one of the unlucky ones holding insurance policies issued by now bankrupt companies, or suffering the death of a thousand cuts from multiple deductibles and exclusions so your total compensation was less than 50% of your actual loss. You need to work an awful lot of overtime, and save up lots of deposit bottles, before any building company will sign a contract to rebuild your house. > > But your business was also destroyed (employee or owner, same difficulty) so you can’t earn your old living. Heck, even if your place of work was miraculously spared damage, your client/customer base are now suffering the same lack of spendable income as you are. Either way, you’re not going to begin that home reconstruction any time soon. > > So whether you’re discussing Miami after Andrew, NOLA after Katrina, or any other major disaster, there will be people requiring alternate housing for years and years afterward no matter how you posit the relief efforts. But…but… they had a _contract_!!! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/85 "2012-11-13T16:33:30Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The purpose of economic activity is to increase goods and improve services. But only for people who can afford more goods and better services. Any organization that exists to provide help the recipients can’t pay for, and the unaffected don’t feel like paying for, is step one to authoritarian commie hell. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/86 "2012-11-13T17:04:21Z")
The classic libertarian line is: Use the police to prevent things like looting. Beyond that, if you want to help people, nobody has the right to stop you. (This is just one reason why I’m no longer a libertarian.) ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/87 "2012-11-13T17:10:45Z")
Yep. It leaves the door open for callousness on a scale that cruelty would have to get up pretty early in the morning to match. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/88 "2012-11-13T17:37:07Z")
This thread illustrates two problems in talking about libertarianism. The first is that opponents always want to talk about how libertarianism would work if we just waved a magic wand and converted the world to ‘libertopia’ overnight. The answer is that it wouldn’t, because government has broken markets and encouraged risk-taking and all sorts of other things that wouldn’t have happened at all had the government not been there. For example, you can make a good argument that the decline in the savings rate is the result of government income security. Likewise, many libertarians (and social conservatives) say that one of the unintended consequences of big government is the destruction of social networks and extended families which used to make up the ‘social safety net’. I spent a few of my childhood years living in rural areas disconnected from the government. Every single farmer I knew purchased crop insurance against hail, because it was a known threat. For other catastrophes, people pitched together. If your barn burned down or you got sick and couldn’t pull in your crops, your neighbors would pitch in and help. There was definitely a sense that everyone had better work together. The local fire department was all-volunteer, and they were very effective. But more to the point, because people knew the government wasn’t going to protect them, they stocked up on food and supplies. Because a crop could fail for a number of reasons and no one would -bail them out, there was a strong culture of savings. We had an entire larder full of canned goods, a large water tank for emergency water, etc. If a big snowstorm hit and blocked the roads for a week, we were fine. We had redundant heat in the form of oil heaters and a giant wood stove that could supplement as a heater in the case where there was no heating oil and no government help. So part of the equation is that in an _evolved_ libertarian world, people wouldn’t have been so helpless in the first place, and there would be private organizations in place for things like disaster assistance. Think ‘AMA Road Services’ on a grander scale. The other problem in talking about ‘libertopia’ is that libertarians believe in emergent order and market innovation, which makes it impossible to predict the exact social structures and markets that would spring up to replace the vacuum of large government. If the government had decided 100 years ago that shoes were a fundamental right and set up government-run shoe factories and stores, we’d probably have really lousy shoes today, and they would probably cost much more than a good quality pair of shoes costs today. In that world, if a ‘crazy libertarian’ proposed privatizing the shoe market, you can predict the arguments: The poor would go barefoot, since everyone needs shoes the capitalists would exploit that and charge usury prices, people in remote areas wouldn’t be able to afford shoes because of the transport costs, yada yada. And it would be hard to answer other than in the general sense of, “The market will figure it out”, because the displacement of markets by the government means we can’t see what actual path the market would take, or all the supporting markets that would spring up to improve efficiency. A good example of this is Minitel in France. Minitel was a government-run information service. At the time, it was believed that the market for online services was ‘broken’ due to the chicken-and-egg problem: No one would build online services until there was a large population of online consumers, and no consumers would go online until there were enough services that it made sense to do so. Hence, the market was said to have caused stagnation. So, France decided to use the government to simply give everyone a data terminal, creating an instant market. And, they put a lot of government services online. At the time, I remember liberals touting Minitel as a model for how government can ‘improve’ the market. But you can’t see the path not taken. The French had Minitel, the rest of the world had a free market. And it turned out that the market wasn’t stalled. The internet took off and very rapidly became much, much more than the inventors of Minitel could possibly have imagined. Within a handful of years, France went from a great example of government intervention to a digital 3rd world, and internet adoption in France lagged the other developed nation by years and ultimately hurt the French people. However, imagine what would happen if we had a world government, and minitel was foist on all humanity by that government, creating a government monopoly in online services. We’d never see what we could have had. We’d never know about an eBay or Amazon. We might convince ourselves that our lame-ass government data network was the best humans could possibly come up with. Any arguments for privatization would have been scoffed at. So we can’t see how the market would have evolved to handle disaster services, because we never let it try. And because the government has guaranteed the financial safety of people regardless of how risky their choice of real-estate is, people have over-built on flood plains and in coastal areas and other places that have a high risk potential. And because people have come to expect that the government will protect them, they don’t protect themselves. They don’t save money, they don’t stock up on food, they don’t build the social networks needed to come to each other’s aid. If you were forced to get flood insurance as a condition of getting a mortgage, then the risk of flooding would increase the ownership cost of the home. If the government didn’t provide subsidized flood insurance, fewer people would be able to get mortgages in areas of high flooding and these areas wouldn’t be over-developed. This means that if we had been living in libertopia from the start, we wouldn’t have so many people in areas constantly hit by disasters in the first place. One possible result is that we’d have more people living in rural and suburban areas where they can look after each other, rather than being packed into cities on coasts where they are reliant on massive relief efforts in the case of an emergency. We might have evolved into a world of less overall systemic risk. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_stamos_left_ear/32/3198_2.png) [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Stamos_Left_Ear)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/89 "2012-11-13T17:50:03Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > opponents always want to talk about how libertarianism would work if we just waved a magic wand and converted the world to ‘libertopia’ overnight. The answer is that it wouldn’t, because government has broken markets and encouraged risk-taking and all sorts of other things that wouldn’t have happened at all had the government not been there. So the problem just _can’t be_ with Libertarianism itself, huh? Wouldn’t such a great social and politic philosophy be able to overcome these obstacles - maybe not overnight, but eventually? ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/90 "2012-11-13T17:52:22Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > So we can’t see how the market would have evolved to handle disaster services, because we never let it try. So how many thousands would you let die before you say the Feds with no profit motive handle disaster areas better? I’d like a number, afterwhich you would admit “Hey, we were wrong”, that is my problem with Libertarianism, they never say when they would be proven wrong, just hide behind “the market will solve all!” like a religious credo. ---
**Author:** ![Agent\_Foxtrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/91 "2012-11-13T17:58:32Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > LOL libertarianism (it doesn’t deserve a more in depth response). My thoughts exactly. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/92 "2012-11-13T17:58:51Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > First, the people flooded put in New Orleans did not have waterfront homes, unless you have a very broad definition of waterfront. They were not even particularly close to the ocean. > > Second, people do not make construction decisions based on whether a hurricane will hit the Gulf Coast, but on whether the hurricane will hit their part of the Gulf Coast, and be forceful enough to damage their house. I lived in New Orleans for 3 years and a hurricane never went near me. In SW Louisiana only very few people live near the ocean, not because of hurricanes but because of the way the land is. How far from the ocean should people stay? > > I live a few miles from the Hayward Fault. It will slip someday. Should I and nearly everyone else in the Bay Area move? > > Third, you say a good chance, but the fact is that the chances are very small, and we are very bad at estimating low probability events. I’m not sure what the right rational move would be, but it is unlikely that the average homeowner is going to calculate it correctly. What’s the expected cost of a disaster to the average homeowner? What is the cost of moving? I wouldn’t be surprised if the moving cost were much higher. > > Now insurance company execs are going to have to factor in the possibility that these storms are going to be more frequent. If I ran an insurance company I’d organize a bunch of fellow CEOs to march into the offices of the Republican deniers in the House and Senate and tell them that they had better start supporting some countermeasures or we were going to be pouring money into their opponents campaigns. No, but they were residing under sea level… ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/93 "2012-11-13T18:05:21Z")
> [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](#): > > So the problem just _can’t be_ with Libertarianism itself, huh? Wouldn’t such a great social and politic philosophy be able to overcome these obstacles - maybe not overnight, but eventually? Also- Wouldn’t such a great social and politic philosophy be reflected in at least one IRL government over recorded history?😛 ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/94 "2012-11-13T18:08:04Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > So how many thousands would you let die before you say the Feds with no profit motive handle disaster areas better? I’d like a number, afterwhich you would admit “Hey, we were wrong”, that is my problem with Libertarianism, they never say when they would be proven wrong, just hide behind “the market will solve all!” like a religious credo. How many billions of taxpayer dollars would you let the government spend subsidizing people who chose to live in disaster-prone areas before you say the market with no political motives handles risk-benefit analysis better? I’d like a number, afterwhich you would hey admit “Hey, we were wrong”, that is my problem with big-government types, they never say when they would be proven wrong, jut hide behind “the market will not solve all!” like a religious credo. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/95 "2012-11-13T18:14:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > This thread … > If the government had decided … > > A good example of this is … > > But you can’t see the path not taken… > > However, imagine … > > So we can’t see … > > If you were … I’m sorry **Sam** but either yours is an “If pigs could fly…” argument, or your point is trivially obvious. Yes, if things were different – then they’d be different. This does not illuminate the real question in the OP, which relates to how modern American libertarians (big or small “L”) address the real world issues of disaster response, given the belief that calls for the dismantling of FEMA seem to come from libertarian-leaning politicos (or perhaps politicos misidentified as libertarian leaning, if you wish to disavow such in their name). It seems appropriate to ask how this could possibly work, not to ask how something else might work if everything was different. The thread doesn’t start out to condemn libertarian philosophy in the abstract, but to discuss its application (or what is seen as its possible application) in the real world. Should risk-aware people have avoided settling in, then developing and making multi-billion dollar investments into, a bunch of soggy mud flats with an ocean on one side and the largest river in North America on the other side? Perhaps. And we might discuss this in the abstract, or as an “alternate history” novella plot. But instead we’re talking about how calls to dismantle FEMA will impact upon the enormous seaports, industrial infrastructure for oil development, tourist Mecca, and living accommodations for those associated with same that is today’s real world NOLA. Or any other place now deemed to be high risk. All such places have their own histories, and their own economic justification for being where and as they are. I really don’t think it’s useful to blame, say, residents of the port city of Baltimore for shortsightedly living in an exposed coastal location, or the people of most of California for residing in an earthquake zone. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/96 "2012-11-13T18:22:03Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > that is my problem with Libertarianism, they never say when they would be proven wrong, just hide behind “the market will solve all!” like a religious credo. There’s an unquestioned logical pitfall in much of modern libertarianism: that the kind of tyranny that is inexcusable in government or central authority is comparatively benign when exercised by private enterprise or local authority. Here’s [a rather long piece](http://c4ss.org/content/146) that posits a crypto-authoritarian streak in libertarian thought. The linchpin seems to be that the right to property, ungoverned, will always outstep its bounds and dominate individuals without property. ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/97 "2012-11-13T18:26:29Z")
> [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](#): > > So the problem just _can’t be_ with Libertarianism itself, huh? Wouldn’t such a great social and politic philosophy be able to overcome these obstacles - maybe not overnight, but eventually? The obstacle is that people have settled in places that are statistically unaffordable to live in because they are subject to an unusually high risk of devastation due to natural disasters. They cannot get affordable private insurance, yet these places have been developed because of the implicit or explicit subsidized insurance provided by the taypayers. Libertarianism does not have an easy solution to this problem. These people are now dependent on the government to subsidize their risk-taking. Most of them cannot afford to move on their own. If the US were to transition to libertarianism, these people would need to be “grandfathered in” in one way or another. This is not a problem or indicative of a flaw with libertarianism. Indeed, the magnitude of the problem just illustrates how much distortion the government’s involvement has produced. The US has allocated resources in an economically inefficient manner. Fixing this will be very expensive. There’s no way around that. We can have a discussion about how you would transition from the current system to libertarianism, but that is a totally separate question from how a purely libertarian system would function on it’s own. ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/98 "2012-11-13T18:35:05Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Here’s [a rather long piece](http://c4ss.org/content/146) that posits a crypto-authoritarian streak in libertarian thought. The linchpin seems to be that the right to property, ungoverned, will always outstep its bounds and dominate individuals without property. No, the linchpin is that he took a quote from one guy and cherry-picked some quotes from a bunch of wingnuts on a libertarian forum and found an authoritarian streak. I don’t find this at all surprising. I could use the same technique to write a similar article claiming to find a streak of jealousy and victimhood in “liberal thought”. It would be equally meaningless in a serious discussion. ---
**Author:** ![newcomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e5b9ba/32.png) [@newcomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcomer)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/99 "2012-11-13T18:36:54Z")
To the OP: I may be way off here but I’m not sure you understood Ron Paul’s comment from [http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/27/ron-paul-we-dont-need-fema/](http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/27/ron-paul-we-dont-need-fema/) I don’t see where you get the idea that if there is no FEMA that people will be left to die. The gist of his complaint is that FEMA is federal agency, costs a lot of money and, in essence, does not work well with locals due to many reasons including their inherent bureaucracy. As with other issues, this one revolves around centralization of decision making where ever small group of people holds control over ever more people in more and more aspects. You though you were free but if FEMA says you cannot go home that’s it – if you go you can be arrested. You seem to be presenting Ron Paul’s stand against FEMA as being against helping people in need. That is a quite an incendiary conflation, IMHO. And judging from a discussion, many people accepted it as a fact. ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758/100 "2012-11-13T18:41:21Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > There’s an unquestioned logical pitfall in much of modern libertarianism: that the kind of tyranny that is inexcusable in government or central authority is comparatively benign when exercised by private enterprise or local authority. I totally agree with the second half of this statement, but I disagree with your characterization of it. It’s not an “unquestioned logical pitfall”, it’s generally explicitly understood to be one of the key points of libertarianism. If the government tells me “You must do X or we’ll throw you in jail!”, I have no choice but to obey. If “private enterprise” tells me “You must do X or I’ll fire you”, I at least have some chance of quitting, finding another job, moving, etc. Both scenarios are unpleasant. But surely you agree the latter scenario is comparatively more benign? All it takes for the government to mandate “X” is the support of 51% of the population. However, if 51% of “private enterprise” wants me to do X, I can still seek employment with the remaining 49%. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-libertarians-think-should-happen-when-disasters-strike/640758.md?page=6)