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New Orleans Is Not a Libertarian Experiment
There's been a boomlet of blog posts and articles lately from conservatives and libertarians professing the idea that the small-scale successes in New Orleans' recovery are good evidence not just for the ideals of self reliance and bottom-up initiative (which they certainly are), but for the idea that all you need to rebuild the city is elbow grease. Get the government (and unions) out of the way, and watch wonderful things happen -- proving that government is the problem.
The most compelling of these is a piece in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. It's filled with examples of how, given the fumbling redevelopment efforts of the city government, most of the reconstruction has been accomplished by residents and NGOs. Their creative efforts, accomplished in the face of endless red tape and wrongheaded urban planning, are indeed a bright spot, a good harbinger for the city's future. For example:
Architect Byron Mouton is finding that his middle-class and affluent clients are doing the different in pursuit of the practical. In Gentilly, a neighborhood of mostly twentieth-century homes that took seven feet of water, one client, an artist, wanted a new flood-resistant house like the one his neighbor is building, with a bottom floor raised at least a story off the ground, but couldn't afford the $30,000 to $40,000 extra charge. The architect's solution: a "disposable" first floor that the client will use for nonessential purposes. In Mouton's design, the second floor contains the kitchen, art studio, and living space, as well as an ample porch so that the artist won't be cut off from the outdoors. In other twentieth-century neighborhoods, some homeowners are similarly designing ground floors as "floodable" car garages or children's play spaces.
There are lessons here on the nature of post-disaster recovery and the role of government: Sometimes it's better for the planners to get out of the way. (This Gambit post gets into some of that.) Unfortunately, the piece way overreaches; it becomes a tendentious attempt to impose a libertarian ideal on a place that no amount of individual effort or entrepreneurship alone will fix. Here's the piece's framing paragraph:
New Orleanians have achieved much of this success by doing what New Yorkers couldn't do after 9/11: ignoring the potentates and eggheads hankering to turn devastation into conceptual art. They've been building and rebuilding on their own or with small-scale help, rather than under top-down decree--and, in the process, showing that thousands of individual planners are better than one master.
Yes, government at all levels has failed New Orleans. And individuals have done their best to make up for it, often with minimal government support and a great deal of government interference. But that doesn't mean those people wouldn't be a lot better off with a government that actually was working to help them.
The basic predicament of New Orleans -- its siting, mostly below sea level, on an eroding, hurricane-prone river delta -- is extraordinary and requires a sustained national, i.e., federal, commitment. Without one, the city may not even be there in 100 years. But it's not getting it. (Even the 17th Street canal floodwalls are still, ominously, leaking.) Any long-term planning for the city should be looking at ways to tie flood control structures into a single system, and integrate that with the urban landscape, with neighborhoods and homes. This includes things like the drainage canals running along backyards, evacuation routes, and emergency planning. In other words, New Orleans must be seen as a whole, part of a larger environment. If that's going to happen, it desperately needs more competent government and better urban planning -- not less. Personal initiative is great, but it only gets you so far in an age of global warming.
The author attacks urban planners for paternalistic social engineering, but then falls into the same trap, treating New Orleans as a kind of grand libertarian experiment, the the proverbial clean slate in which all social structures are literally washed away and people start fresh. This is a romantic but wrongheaded notion. New Orleans is indeed a grand, improvised experiment. But it does the city and its people a disservice to pat them on the back and say, hey, great job you're doing all on your own -- let's keep it that way.
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" those people wouldn't be a lot better off with a government that actually was working to help them."
Sure they would. But where do you find a government like that?
By design, government isn't really built for helping. It is not a charity, it is the authorization of power. Great for fighting wars, and enforcing laws, not so good at the social architecture. Those who rise to Government office are not always the noble caring types, they tend to be power-hungry little dictators.
It's why the levees failed in the first place, officeholders had a lot better places to spend the moneys allocated for levee reconstruction. So the funds disappeared into a maze of patronage, and corruption. The people in New Orleans and Louisiana governments were more intent on keeping their cushy jobs, than actually working for the people.
That's usually what happens. "Working for the people" is more a campaign promise, than an actual moral code. An Altruistic Government is a really nice concept, but it rarely exists outside of the theoretical.
Libertarians understand that. They don't pretend that politicians are good decent people, and hope that only the good ones get elected, and pray they won't squander their trust, Libertarians assume that every single human is an evil greedy tyrant, and the ones in office are not the best people, just the most successful tyrants.
Rather than ignore that reality, they prefer to hobble the government., and harness the energy of greed.
Slagle, you love to hear your self talk. The levees in Holland work very well, for example. There are countless examples of good government. It is only the far right who constantly demonizes government because they want to abolish as much of it as they can. It is because funds disappear with corruption why we need regulation and oversight bodies. Bush has waged an experiment to be so incompetent in office as to make people disdain government as much as he. It will not work. The local and other authorities involved will help people rebuild.
How will greed manage those assets which do not lend themselves to individual or corporate ownership?
There was a special on television on what city government accomplished in Bogota, Columbia. The city created many open spaces where people could walk and meet and closed roads to cars on the weekend to allow people to congregate. Bogota put a good deal of money into modernizing its overcrowed bus system and making it more comfortable and efficient. The mayor said because of these initiatives the city really was beautified and crime was down a good deal. He explained as people could meet and get to know their neighbors again that crime declined. It was a great look at what a solid, effective government could accomplish. Of course, the libertarians who hate unions and government will not see the benefits of a local government that works.
"The basic predicament of New Orleans -- its siting, mostly below sea level, on an eroding, hurricane-prone river delta -- is extraordinary and requires a sustained national, i.e., federal, commitment". DA-DA! The Army Corp of Engineers to the rescue! (Ops, wait a minute -- wasn't it this collection of engineering bureaucrats that messed up the natural flow of the Mississippi River, then set up dikes, then put in a lot of unworkable piping under a city which was artificially maintained and then when the river expectedly flooded into the bowl, you conclude that need MORE government? How can the government do any worse than it has already done? Well, I guess if they are given a chance they will show us how.
What about if the Army Corp of Engineers did what it was contracted to do, and actually built levees to the specifications of the design?
Hard to blame government generally for the failings of the Corp to perform its duties under the terms of its contract. The levees failed because they were built badly.
Look all over Iraq for examples of private enterprise at work to discover that apart from pocketing zillions, the private sector is at least as incapable of doing anything right as anybody in government.
Nearly every year, a hurricane races up the length of Florida and knocks over a quantity of housing, which is then built right back without much complaint from anybody except insurers, who have largely bailed from the region. Now the Feds offer insurance, and pays when the inevitable happens yet again. Where is the groundswell in the public discourse for the redesign of Florida? Where are all the learned experts who say we'd be better off letting the coast of the state revert to wetlands, given the likelihood of future disasters? Why then, in contrast, does New Orleans seem so attractive to the tinkerers and planners? Because the sub-theme of so much commentary on this subject is the spurious trope of Black incompetence and irresponsibility, from which the mostly white commentators would like to save the nation from having to witness again, even if it means depriving a population of its habitat for reasons they never seem interested to apply elsewhere.
someone please tell me where libertarian economic ideas work. sent an email to ron paul with same question and got no response.
russia tried some form of pure capitalism and all it did was create a few billionaires.
americans were sold a bill of goods with reagan's trickle down theory and deregulation and it will wipe out the middle class.
Okay, it's convention nowadays to refer to those who (as a relatively recent and American phenomenon) advocate free-market capitalism as "Libertarians" (with an uppercase L); traditionally "libertarians" do not advocate what are seen as authoritarian philosophies such as capitalism.
Carry on.
Half of Holland is below sea level.
Ask yourself: Would anything like Katrina have even been a problem for the Dutch levees?
And if somehow the dikes were breached, how long would it take them to decide to repair the damage?
You look at New Orleans - even today - and you realize we are more like Burma than the Netherlands.
Anybody see the NOW episode on how corporations set up worker recruitment operations in Mexico to bring in illegal immigrants to work on reconstruction in NO.
I think it still might be posted at their website.
Hartmann has also spoken about these recruitment operations. They openly explain to the illegals that they don't have to worry about US law cause they will supply transportation and the rest of their needs.
Hey they are good businessmen right ?
New Orleans = White Elephant
It is simply a large social project used to funnel tax dollars to special interests under the cloak of "helping the poor people" Over 50 years ago, the Core of Engineers knew New Orleans is not sustainable, nor the current course of the river. Congress in their wisdom ordered the Core to stop nature and keep the river in place. You know mother nature will win in the end. She always does.
The real Libertarian experiment would be to see if people would really choose to spend their own money to live below sea level, in the path of hurricanes, on a river that wants to move elsewhere.
Sure. I agree with you, and also in the same vein, those same people would under Libertarian philosophy, be getting a MUCH bigger cut of the federal oil and gas revenues that lie off their shores and under their feet, for which their coastline and coastal communities have taken a huge hit. Also, the same folks put up with lots of inconvenience and danger just to make sure a huge portion of the nation's grain, coal, and bulk chemicals get to where they're going (like, 1/4, 1/3, or even 1/2?), and, those same folks operate the nation's largest (by far) natural fishery, bringing you a large portion of the nation's domestic blue crabs, oysters, shrimp, and marine fish.
You think 5$ a gallon gas is high? You think bread is high? You think seafood is expensive? Let's all go Libertarian, why don't we, and see just how high prices can go!
The conditions and treatment of New Orleans was criminal before Katrina hit.
New Orleans was neglected and forgotten for decades by this government.
High crime and murder rates, deep poverty and a crumbling education system and economy existed before the storm.
How dare we allow such things to exist in America?
Driven by politics, racism, economics and history we have always allowed New Orleans to exist in a state of disrepair.
Shame on America for not demanding more for our citizens.
Shame on all of us for not speaking out.
I was there this year and very little has been accomplished. The city is dry and recovering but there should be an swarm of federal engineers, funding and assistance in the city. There is not.
Instead we are planning on spending $3,000,000,000,000.00 in Iraq after destroying that society instead of investing in our own.
The war is illegal and immoral. Those who choose to contribute to it and profit by it are immoral as well.
Stop the war. Do not support it. Speak out.
Build OUR country and help our people first.
Why should the Federal government not neglect and forget New Orleans, when it was neglected and forgotten by it's city and State governments? Is the Federal government, somehow, supposed to supplant those local governments? The things you decry are their fault, not the fault of the Federal government.
Semper fi
And yet, after the huge devastation of a hurricane that hit in the late '60's, that's exactly what happened. The federal government, at the invitation of state and local government, took over responsibilty and maintenance of the levee system of both the lake and river, and the conservation and uses of the islands at the mouth of the Mississippi. And the Feds, in the form of the Army Corp of Engineers, built under-spec and overbudget boondoggles which failed in the storm to do what they were designed to do, despite local protest and requests for input, more funding and oversight from Congress.
Before Katrina hit, New Orleans was a city controlled for years by a liberal, democratic government. It was and is a welfare city with high unemployment, high crime, and rampant corruption. Mayor Nagin was much more interested in the ethnic make-up of the city than developing and implementing a disaster plan. His lack of planning resulted directly in the deaths of his constituents. And without fail the MSM, the liberal blogs and Washington Democrats chose to lay all blame on FEMA, Bush, and every Republican in close proximity.
And how about the brave congressman from New Orleans, William Jefferson? His selfish, corrupt actions may have led to the deaths of many as he diverted National Guard resources to save his precious, frozen $90,000. If the Federal Prosecutors don’t nail him, surly God will when his time comes. Meanwhile, you liberals continue to blame Bush for the disaster while ignoring the true villains of this national tragedy. Shame on all of you!
mack20 before Katrina NOLA wasn't much different than any big city..Memphis, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami. Some people are so crippled in their thought process that they do not even bother with the fact that a city's history, folklore or legend should have nothing to do with the national emergency response to a uprecedented disaster. A disaster that not only happened to New Orleans but includes other se Louisiana towns & communities devastated by a massive storm along w/ Ms. Compounded when the federally built , federally maintained floodwall levee system failed in over 50 locations in & around New Orleans flooding 80% of the city & surrounding communities. In total a disaster impacting 90,000 square miles. By your logic no place would qualify for emergency response ever. As to your idiotic 'liberal Democratic' Louisiana mumblings please make a note that reports show that Nagin contributed to this Rep. president in 2000 & 2004 and supported (R) Jindal against (D) Blanco in 2004 & 2008. So I wouldn't hold Nagin up as a 'lib Democratic' poster child. Gov Blanco (D) became Gov in 2004, (katrina hit in 2005) the Governor for 8 yrs before was Mike Foster (REPUBLICAN) before that was Edwards (D) for 4 yrs & before that was Roemer (REP) for 4 yrs. Also, if you would check your facts, Louisiana followed required state and federal emergency procedures. Your 'liberal media' was too busy repeating inaccurate prejudicial talking points to bother checking facts.
There is nothing "liberal" about the Democrats in New Orleans or anywhere else in Louisiana. They are just Republicans running against one another.
I moved to N.O about a month before Katrina. It had always been a place of solace for me. I thought it was the one place in this country where gentrification was not possible. It just didn't make economic sense to gentrify the area. Unlike the rest of the country that has been shutting down housing projects and building "executive" housing in its place, the landscape of New Orleans and the structure of the parish made it almost impossible to gentrify. Instead of developing a pro-active plan for stimulating the local economy it was decided that it would be best to neglect federal funding for the levee's. Why would government officials allow an obsolete landmark of a pre-global economy to continue to function? There is no Santa and as was said centuries ago THOSE WHO WISH TO LEAD ARE THE LEAST QUALIFIED TO DO SO.. From a federal perspective there would be great benefits in a new, clean city, built upon the ruins of the poor. Why would the local politicians who have the indecency to spend millions of dollars campaigning when local schools are failing care about a place where the majority of the population live well below the poverty line, out of touch out of class with their "leaders". Eventually the rubble will be cleared away and the town will look as if Disney World and Las Vegas had a child.
I'm upset with my love, New Orleans. I now know two young college graduates with degrees in Urban planning who can't get a job here because they are "outsiders". As long as we continue to be the provincials we've always been, afraid of outsiders, we'll keep putting the same, on-the-dole or uneducated idiots, back in powerful positions. Of course, they will continue to perform inadequately, and we'll continue to be at risk.
Your exactly right you have many fine young professors and students from surrounding universities who could become an integral part of the rebuilding efforts. They have so much talent and would love to participate in these efforts. Reach out New Orleans !!
South Louisiana Separatist League!
The federal government has abandoned us, lets get rid of them and keep our oil profits.
if first you don't seceded, try, try again!
And keep that worthless mayor who utterly failed his citizens. Poor people without means were left to die as scores of school buses were ignored and unused. Weeks later the same citizens that remaind re-elected the pathetic jackass. Only in a liberal controlled city.
mack20 anyone with a 'lick' of common sense would realize that the 'poor people w/o means & left to die' were the ones among the 10's of thousands that were evacuated out of the city to points unknown for several months (years), unable to return because their homes were destroyed. Thereby they probably were not the ones that 're-elected the pathetic jackass', weeks later. I forget was the election before the evacuations for Hurricane Rita or after it had already hit sw Louisiana, 3 and a half weeks after Katrina? As to the 'scores of school buses'. The 'talking heads' shiny example of Katrina's panacea. Of course, 50-100 school buses standing in 7 foot of water would have saved the 10's of thousands of stranded citizens...not. I just wonder how they missed taking photos of the 10's of thousands of vehicles in the flooded car lots throughout the city and area? Once again, common sense, if a vehicle is sitting in 7 foot of flood water for any period of time....they don't work.
This is just coded racist crap... It's also VERY ill informed. He is referring to the Mayor who is black. It has nothing to do with the destruction of New Orleans. Local official had and have no control over the levees that collapsed. He will not talk about that... and he never will.
Garbage. Nagin was a Republican who was recruited by the Republican, New Orleans power-holders to run as a Democrat because they thought a black Democrat could win. Nagin agreed and look what happened.
The original template for the New Orleans "disaster recovery" plan was Iraq, complete with Blackwater for security. See http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197 for Naomi Klein's Baghdad year zero:
Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia -- an essential bit of writing to understand the current oligarchs
Is not New Orleans a liberal utopia? A welfare city with a majority of its citizens dependent on the local government. Not to mention the highest per capita murder rate anywhere, rampant government corruption, and ZERO leadership.
The disaster in New Orleans was created by the Federal Government and The Army Corp Of Engineers who were responsible for the destruction of N.O..
But I know what you are getting at... and it's BESIDE THE POINT!
A "welfare city"? What do you mean by that, exactly?
I was in Europe a week after Katrina hit. A local asked me, "how come America is the first one to come to the aid of diaster victims around the world, but turns its back on its own citizens at home?"
My Aunt lived along the 17th canal in New Orleans. Everything she ever owned was lost. My Aunt at 92 is still going strong and living in New Orleans, but not along the 17th Street canal. She has reinvested in New Orleans, but in a high rise condo. The people of New Orleans have done their part because they love the place. The federal government is a total disgrace and New Orleans is not any more prepared for the next Hurricane than they were for Katrina. Bush stood in Jackson Square and made a bunch of promises that he will never deliver on. I have seen so much courage from the people of New Orleans, but the Federally built levees were and still are a disgrace to America. Unless coastal erosion is made a priority by the Fed's nothing will change. There is a lot of things for the private sector to do, but government is the key and the solution to fixing coastal erosion and building a levee SYSTEM that will protect the city. Sadly, New Orleans and the state are not the most progressive governments in the country.
GOD BLESS NEW ORLEANS.
Hate to break the news to Manhattan Institute's City Journal, but clever architects and innovative Libertarian homeowners didn't come up with the idea of a sacrificial first floor. That's a traditional Louisiana building style that has never completely been abandoned. It's not only been used by thousands of marsh and bayou camp structures, but by French colonists all the way back to the 1700's.
The only people I knew that did well in New Orleans lived in homes that had a "basement" which was really the first floor. The second floor was where they lived. Not that they did get damaged, but the fared much better than homes built on or near the ground. Lusoannagirl is quite correct about this type of design. If I were to rebuild I would follow this plan... the Federal Government has told New Orleans to go F@#k themselves and it's everyman for him or herself!
GeoK
The sacrificial first floor ("basement") of the house I grew up in flooded in the Great Flood of 1927, but its second story living quarters were untouched and unaffected. Too bad this design ever fell out of favor, but great that it's coming back! It's a wonderful way to live with nature instead of against her.
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