more on NYT op-ed: Waiting for a Leader

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Russell Nelson <nelson () crynwr com>
Date: September 7, 2005 4:24:54 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: jean_camp <jean_camp () harvard edu>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on NYT op-ed: Waiting for a Leader


For IP if you wish.



> From: jean_camp <jean_camp () harvard edu>
> Date: September 4, 2005 9:06:05 PM EDT
>
> It's not the president, its the policies and the philosophies. If you
> don't want government to plan, to invest in science, to build policy
> on the basis of fact,  to repair levies, to maintain contacts, to
> have resources, then how do you expect government to respond?

You're in good company, Jean: almost nobody understands the American
system of government.  It's truly scary.  We don't have one
government.  We have 50 separate governments, and one federal
government to help them interoperate.  Unfortunately, this
understanding has been totally lost, so everyone seeks to solve every
problem at the federal level.

The problem with government is getting it right.  How do you know how
much money government should spend on all these things you want?  You
need to have a feedback mechanism that operates more often than every
two, four, or six years.  Voting is at best an emergency brake.  For
too many years people have not voted *for* anybody, but instead been
voting *against* people.  An emergency brake.  You've seen this in the
last two Presidential elections, where people have been desperately
pulling on the brake and nothing happens.

Everybody who has ever driven in a hilly area knows that you don't
rely on your emergency brakes, or even your regular brakes to go down
a hill.  You have to downshift.  In the context of this email,
downshifting means "doing less at the federal level and more at the
state level."  You can ignore this principle when things are going
well.  When the shit hits the Superdome, you'll regret having not
followed it.

I'm a libertarian.  I'm not against big government.  I'm against
*monopoly* big government.  It may very well be that health care is
best paid for by government.  How will we ever know unless we try it?
Should we run one big experiment on the entire country?  No!  We
should allow some state to establish universal health care with a
residency requirement.  If that state does well, then other states
will see that and adopt their program.

Thank our founders for having the vision.  Condemn them for not having
implemented it to last the duration.

Lots of people are searching for reasons why New Orleans has proven to
be such a disaster.  In part it's a low probability event, and you
can't prepare for everything.  In part it's just New Orleans -- other
localities are hurt but recovering.  And in part it's state and local
officials who thought that they didn't have to plan because FEMA would
take over, and FEMA didn't realize that they were going to have to be
a first responder (that's not their mission).

-- --my blog is at     blog.russnelson.com         | with some  
experience
Crynwr sells support for free software  | PGPok |     you know what  
to do.
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241       | with more experience
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  |                       |     you know what  
not to do.



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