Who's talking about socialism?
There are a few things government does best such as national defense, public infrastructure, disaster relief, etc., or do want to privatize them, too?
Yes, calamities are rare. Their lack of everydayness is inherent in the sense of the word. Each is sui generis as the response should be.
About those dockworkers...I got a kick out of your comment. Ports, like anything else which is market driven, are competitive. The things you suggest will raise costs and drive cargo elsewhere. You might find the history of the banana trade instructive. Hint: NO no longer discharges Central American bananas.
You don't see the public interest argument?
Ever hear of LOOP?
The SPR?
The tremendous oil infrastructure in So. La?
The shipbuilding, much of it for military purposes.....send it elsewhere, hope the skilled workers follow.
I suppose we'll have to bus all the workers who make oil work, too. Actually, a lot of the workers who make GOM oil work live elsewhere, but a great many don't.
The history? Ooops, sorry, that is in the past and preserving it serves no useful purpose.
Let's not forget the families who live in NO.....ship 'em out to Cleveland. Let the fabric of generations become atomized, strewn to the winds. No public interest there, I suppose, unless you are displaced.
The public interest in rebuilding NO is as plain as the nose on your face. I'm really surprised that you don't see it, but I do detect a whiff of peevishness in your argument, so perhaps you are purposefully ignoring it.
Bush was exactly right, these kinds of calamities are affordable. It was I am sure hideously expensive to build SF after 1906, Chicago after the fire, and we all know about the cost of 9/11, which included the cost of getting rid of the Taliban.
Bush was exactly right, too, when he said that an America without NO was unimaginable.
I see the arguments against rebuilding below sea level, which is perfectly doable, and I fear something else is at work, something Puritanical, cold. I think it may have to do with a disapproval of the joyful way we live, that we are somehow not deserving of reconstruction because we don't toe the line like the rest of America would like us to, that, in fact, we are not America, but Catholic, African, Creole, French, not like the rest of you and therefore disposable. We are a bit of an embarrasssment, and deserve harsher treatment. I think there's more than a nugget of truth in that, but no one, and certainly not anyone here, will ever admit it.
Reconstruction from a calamity typically involves an attempt to fix the reason why it happened in the first place. If levees able to withstand a cat. 4 hurricane are built, why not build below sea level? What we had before served us well for a very long time; an improved system is likely to do the same. |
