more on NYT op-ed: Waiting for a Leader

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Scott Alexander <salex () dsl cis upenn edu>
Date: September 7, 2005 11:55:36 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on NYT op-ed: Waiting for a Leader


On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 16:40 -0400, David Farber wrote:


> 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



> 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.

Of course, the New Deal undermined this approach.  I pay more in taxes
to the federal government than to my state and local governments
combined even given that I live in NJ, decidedly not a low tax state.
If we assume that it is not reasonable for people to pay more taxes, we
have to assume that the federal government is going to provide more than
an oversight role.  Of course, whoever is out of power at the federal
level screams about how states rights are being undermined until they
get into power....

[...]


> 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.

This approach works well on unsettled questions.  However, I don't
believe there is a deep question about rescuing people off their roofs
when there is a flood.  (There are excellent questions to be asked about
how they came to find themselves in that situation, but pretty
consistently, Americans have been willing to risk more people than will
be rescued to rescue those in crisis.)

Certainly by the time there is consensus on such an issue, redundancy
should be considered.  Should Mobile, New Orleans, Miami, Fort
Lauderdale, Tampa, Clearwater, Pensacola and every other municipality in
the path of hurricanes maintain a separate infrastructure for rescuing
people from rooftops?  How about low lying areas of NJ where we see a
hurricane that produces significant flooding every 20-50 years?  Even if
we push this up to the state level, there is a significant amount of
equipment that will need to be maintained and have personnel available
to use it even though most of it will likely be unused for this purpose
for years at a time.

However, by going to the federal level, particularly to the extent that
the equipment can be dual-use (military or rescue; park service or
rescue; heck I wouldn't mind if some of those helicopters buzzing around
with politicians dropped them off in the center of the catastrophe and
then evacuated some locals instead), we reduce costs.

Best,
Scott Alexander





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