FEMA Spends More Preparing for Terrorism Than Hurricanes(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
FEMA Spends More Preparing for Terrorism Than Hurricanes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-27/hurricane-laura-fema-grants-aren-t-focused-on-climate-change
127 comments
> The potential attack surface for terrorism is huge, and there is a lot of potential for damage (both loss of life and economic damage).
I have heard quite a few strong arguments for how different pieces of vital infrastructure require extra protection from terrorism and also for military defence (power, hospitals, water treatment, banking, data centres, etc.). However, from my albeit limited experience, I feel like the vast majority of terrorism is very low tech and unambitious.
A quick look at Wikipedia shows that in US in the last 20 years, the vast majority of terrorist attacks are shootings, followed by starting fires and bombs. What can you realistically do with a grant to prevent these from happening?
> $14 million has been sought for law enforcement communication, SWAT training, and bomb detection [in Florida 2019-2020].
This is just one example from the article, but my gut instinct is that you could save many more lives and much more infrastructure spending that on preparing for natural disasters rather than terrorism - especially in a state that had tens of billions of damage a year earlier. Both are important, but I think public budgets should be carefully scruntinised - this smells of corruption and/or "defence theatre".
I have heard quite a few strong arguments for how different pieces of vital infrastructure require extra protection from terrorism and also for military defence (power, hospitals, water treatment, banking, data centres, etc.). However, from my albeit limited experience, I feel like the vast majority of terrorism is very low tech and unambitious.
A quick look at Wikipedia shows that in US in the last 20 years, the vast majority of terrorist attacks are shootings, followed by starting fires and bombs. What can you realistically do with a grant to prevent these from happening?
> $14 million has been sought for law enforcement communication, SWAT training, and bomb detection [in Florida 2019-2020].
This is just one example from the article, but my gut instinct is that you could save many more lives and much more infrastructure spending that on preparing for natural disasters rather than terrorism - especially in a state that had tens of billions of damage a year earlier. Both are important, but I think public budgets should be carefully scruntinised - this smells of corruption and/or "defence theatre".
The most fearsome terrorist attack, in my mind, is the "VRA" Vehicle Ramming Attack.
A vehicle is such a high energy, dangerous piece of equipment. Our whole society, at least in North America, is built on the idea that people treasure their vehicles and will never act in a way that damages them.
To my eyes, that is the type of assumption that makes an ass out of everyone. The gun control debate pales in comparison to what would happen if people decide their terroristic point is worth their life, and they have a car. And even kids have cars. We've got no protection against it. Only the shared cooperation of our society- and for whatever reason, people of late seem to be working to tear apart that cooperative fabric of life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-ramming_attack
A vehicle is such a high energy, dangerous piece of equipment. Our whole society, at least in North America, is built on the idea that people treasure their vehicles and will never act in a way that damages them.
To my eyes, that is the type of assumption that makes an ass out of everyone. The gun control debate pales in comparison to what would happen if people decide their terroristic point is worth their life, and they have a car. And even kids have cars. We've got no protection against it. Only the shared cooperation of our society- and for whatever reason, people of late seem to be working to tear apart that cooperative fabric of life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-ramming_attack
I think that this is actually one of the more compelling arguments that the threat of terrorism is overblown - there is literally 0 barrier to someone committing/attempting to commit these attacks - and yet they happen incredibly infrequently...which might mean there aren’t very many terrorists floating around...
A friend told me a story once about someone being crazy with a car (e.g. driving onto a playground or something like that), so someone else in a giant lifted truck just ran over the hood of the car to stop them. I guess in the US, it makes sense that the answer to car attacks would be bigger cars to stop them.
Some say that the best antidote to a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun. I guess that thinking could apply to cars too?
Agreed, and I think VRAs sum up the futility of trying to prepare for terrorism. Yes we now have a few concrete blocks around a few specific areas in a few city centres to make everyone feel better, but that article lists 28 notable VRA attacks in the last 10 years in the _whole world_. The attack surface is impossibly large, and no amount of "law enforcement communication, SWAT training, and bomb detection" is going to reduce it.
Not justifying mass surveillance but this is where the argument for mass surveillance comes in. Though I would argue about its effectiveness. I remember the recent British incidents claiming the suspect was under watch, but they failed to prevent those. Maybe they are not talking about the ones they prevented, but there are certainly examples where they failed even with info about it.
You can be under surveillance but unless the government is able to jail you on a thoughtcrime or take away your ability to use a vehicle (if you're ok ramming into a crowd you'll probably be ok carjacking somebody to get the required equipment), there's very little that can be done to prevent it.
Definitely not effective, unless you go full 1986. Softer forms of surveillance may prevent some attacks, but still carry huge potential for abuse which is not even close to worth it IMO. We have to remember terrorism barely kills anyone in relative terms.
> in relative terms.
In US certainly, some parts of the world definitely have it worse.
But I think the fear and divide it generates between ethnicities/religions/countries is definitely higher.
In US certainly, some parts of the world definitely have it worse.
But I think the fear and divide it generates between ethnicities/religions/countries is definitely higher.
It's impossible to say how much potential "highly ambitious" terrorism has been deterred by these measures, but reasonable to assume at least some amount.
A terrorist attack also has a much wider chilling effect for psychological reasons - it represents an existential threat, unlike a natural disaster.
A terrorist attack also has a much wider chilling effect for psychological reasons - it represents an existential threat, unlike a natural disaster.
The article is about one-off preparedness grants, which are probably unlikely to have any impact on "highly ambitious" terrorism. But you're right, we'll never know.
As a child, I was very aware of the psychological effect of terrorism - the IRA set off a bomb very close to my home and it was covered extensively in all the media of the time: TV, radio, newspapers.
However, I would argue that putting security theatre into public life has an equally profound psychological effect - it confirms that you are constantly at risk. As a child, seeing more police officers with submachines guns (very unusual at the time) and the removal of rubbish bins and the closing of some roads to cars around where I lived only increased anxiety. As an adult, I'm aware that this too has a chilling effect, but with little benefit gained.
I'll have to politely disagree on natural disasters not being an equivalent existential threat in a world where climate change is increasing their frequency and potency.
As a child, I was very aware of the psychological effect of terrorism - the IRA set off a bomb very close to my home and it was covered extensively in all the media of the time: TV, radio, newspapers.
However, I would argue that putting security theatre into public life has an equally profound psychological effect - it confirms that you are constantly at risk. As a child, seeing more police officers with submachines guns (very unusual at the time) and the removal of rubbish bins and the closing of some roads to cars around where I lived only increased anxiety. As an adult, I'm aware that this too has a chilling effect, but with little benefit gained.
I'll have to politely disagree on natural disasters not being an equivalent existential threat in a world where climate change is increasing their frequency and potency.
I had the same reaction.
Hurricanes are not only well understood, they are also something that every single citizen living in a coastal city knows is inevitable and frequent enough that they take the precautions personally for dealing with them.
They also strike with anticipation, so after you've secured your personal property and made sure you haven't built in a flood plain like a responsible citizen, you have plenty of time to evacuate if/when one is going to make landfall where you live.
Terrorism can strike without warning and the same preparations for terrorism would help in disasters like the blast in Beirut.
Hurricanes are not only well understood, they are also something that every single citizen living in a coastal city knows is inevitable and frequent enough that they take the precautions personally for dealing with them.
They also strike with anticipation, so after you've secured your personal property and made sure you haven't built in a flood plain like a responsible citizen, you have plenty of time to evacuate if/when one is going to make landfall where you live.
Terrorism can strike without warning and the same preparations for terrorism would help in disasters like the blast in Beirut.
> they are also something that every single citizen living in a coastal city knows is inevitable and frequent enough that they take the precautions personally for dealing with them
>Terrorism can strike without warning and the same preparations for terrorism would help in disasters like the blast in Beirut.
If you live in the US you live in a war-faring nation, that is in constant conflict, at home or abroad. To say it can strike at anytime unexpectedly is hard to believe when we instigate it perpetually.
>Terrorism can strike without warning and the same preparations for terrorism would help in disasters like the blast in Beirut.
If you live in the US you live in a war-faring nation, that is in constant conflict, at home or abroad. To say it can strike at anytime unexpectedly is hard to believe when we instigate it perpetually.
I was just about to post a snide comment "Well not every coastal citizen needs to worry about them at least up to now. Seattle doesn't have...". But darn Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Pacific_Northwest_hurri...
Preparedness for tsunami and earthquake risk is adequate for hurricane risk. The only phenomena not accounted for is high winds and the only form of preparation I can think of there is housing code that requires roofs to be tied down to supporting walls. Having been through many hurricanes including two category 5 hurricanes that downgraded to 4 by the time they reached me, I can't imagine that after a hurricane crosses the olympic peninsula it would still be much of a concern for roofing. For those on the coast the calculus may be different.
You propose that people should look after themselves, and their belonings. Presumably some of the things people need to do in preparation for a hurricane benefit from economies of scale. Temporary shelter, preparing for rescue operations, structural engineering, stocking of supplies. People would probably be well advised to band together in some sort of emergency management cooperative to share expenses and increase efficiency.
I don't think anybody was arguing otherwise.
The point is that hurricanes are arguably a less difficult emergency to manage – they are predictable, understood and come with plenty of notice, to the point that individual preparation is both possible and effective.
This doesn't mean that centrally-coordinated emergency response isn't still useful – merely that it's not unreasonable for it to cost more to prepare for a rare and unpredictable emergency than a more frequent but predictable one.
The point is that hurricanes are arguably a less difficult emergency to manage – they are predictable, understood and come with plenty of notice, to the point that individual preparation is both possible and effective.
This doesn't mean that centrally-coordinated emergency response isn't still useful – merely that it's not unreasonable for it to cost more to prepare for a rare and unpredictable emergency than a more frequent but predictable one.
Built? Have you ever been to southern central Louisiana? What are thousands of impoverished people in manufactured houses supposed to do? And hurricanes are not well understood. The amount of uncertainty in the cone even two-days out leads to a stunningly difficult financial decision for some of the poorest people in the country.
Spoiler: FEMA does not do a good job at managing hurricane emergencies.
As someone living in hurricane country, the joke around here is that FEMA stands for "Futilely Expecting Meaningful Aid". But really, their job is coordination, and usually will only contribute relief supplies if the state or county/parish is overwhelmed. They have a problem with people expecting too much from them - they are not going to show up in a convoy of trucks with food & water the very next day. But Wal-Mart, HEB, and Waffle House do a fantastic job of post-storm logistics, once the roads & bridges are open.
Anyone who has lived here more than a few years knows that they should prepare for the season and have important papers ready to carry with you, 2 weeks of water & food on hand, etc. but human nature being what it is, many don't. A good site that can help you prepare is https://www.ready.gov/ Check with your relatives and neighbors to make sure they've got the supplies they need or a way to evacuate ahead of the storm.
Anyone who has lived here more than a few years knows that they should prepare for the season and have important papers ready to carry with you, 2 weeks of water & food on hand, etc. but human nature being what it is, many don't. A good site that can help you prepare is https://www.ready.gov/ Check with your relatives and neighbors to make sure they've got the supplies they need or a way to evacuate ahead of the storm.
Spoiler: Many (but not all) people who live in the path of hurricanes do not do a good job at preparing for inevitable hurricane emergencies.
It's a witty reply, but it essentially boils down to "just be less poor." Is this really the argument you want to make?
GP does not mention money, wealth, or differences in populations due to either. I don’t understand how you landed on “just be less poor” as the thrust of his argument?
Preparing for a hurricane in Florida means building a house entirely out of concrete, moving, or accepting you will lose a lot of your stuff at some point. All of those options cost a lot of money.
You don't need to build out of concrete. In fact concrete isn't a great material to build from, it just happens that the mass needed to work around its limits also stand up to hurricane winds. Conventional stick framed houses do fine in hurricanes when engineered to modern building codes. You see it once in a while when modern houses are near old ones in a hurricane.
True, there are people who can't afford to prepare, but if few do it even among those that could afford it, then the point still stands.
It's unstated but very obvious, because people who aren't able to evacuate, or move away permanently, are those who are too poor to do so.
There are a lot of other reasons for not being able to move away even if you could afford it.
I think we learn more about the assumptions of the complainer rather than who wrote the "witty reply". That and the spoiler can be applied to any number of people in government agencies who are meant to be taking precautions and setting up contingencies.
abduhl is correct.
Those who are not poor within a community should be prepared to help others in their community.
As someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to?
If you are not prepared yourself when you have the financial means and technical capacity to do so, you're taking away resources from those that actually need that support in the event of a disaster.
Those who are not poor within a community should be prepared to help others in their community.
As someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to?
If you are not prepared yourself when you have the financial means and technical capacity to do so, you're taking away resources from those that actually need that support in the event of a disaster.
You're missing or ignoring a long history of extreme poverty in the American South, and deliberate policy decisions to under-invest in those communities in order to maintain the status quo.
Nobody in this thread is proposing that FEMA help idiots in their multi-million dollar Florida oceanfront mansions that regularly get decimated by hurricanes. Those people can and regularly do bail out and return to their other homes in California or Nevada at the first sign of trouble. Your stated position is not based on reality -- most rich people do very little to help their communities.
But even ignoring this fact -- random towns along the Mississippi coast don't have a lot of lawyers or doctors or directors of engineering with overflowing bags of money to graciously spend on their community, even if such philanthropy was common (which, again -- it isn't). Everyone in those communities is poor, and struggles to get by during good times. That's what FEMA is supposed to be for.
And under-investment in FEMA's hurricane preparedness is yet another deliberate policy decision to throw these poorer communities under the bus, in favor of the wealthier communities where terrorists seeking visibility are expected to focus their efforts.
Nobody in this thread is proposing that FEMA help idiots in their multi-million dollar Florida oceanfront mansions that regularly get decimated by hurricanes. Those people can and regularly do bail out and return to their other homes in California or Nevada at the first sign of trouble. Your stated position is not based on reality -- most rich people do very little to help their communities.
But even ignoring this fact -- random towns along the Mississippi coast don't have a lot of lawyers or doctors or directors of engineering with overflowing bags of money to graciously spend on their community, even if such philanthropy was common (which, again -- it isn't). Everyone in those communities is poor, and struggles to get by during good times. That's what FEMA is supposed to be for.
And under-investment in FEMA's hurricane preparedness is yet another deliberate policy decision to throw these poorer communities under the bus, in favor of the wealthier communities where terrorists seeking visibility are expected to focus their efforts.
> Your stated position is not based on reality -- most rich people do very little to help their communities.
I'm pretty sure that is their stated position, actually.
I'm pretty sure that is their stated position, actually.
> deliberate policy decisions to under-invest in those communities
You're missing or ignoring the fact that government is funded by economic activity. The government invests in protecting the revenues streams that allows it to continue to operate with surplus and those communities that don't provide much if any revenue benefit disproportionately relative to how much they contribute to funding the government they rely on for help.
What you're proposing is to divert dollars from activity that creates the very surplus that affords the government the budget to help those that can't help themselves.
Pretty much all countries cannot provide even a fraction of the support the US is able to provide to its disadvantaged communities. This is largely due to the fact that our government makes the smart decision to protect its cash cows. We have so much surplus that we're actually able to provide to many disadvantaged and advantaged communities beyond our own borders.
We can of course debate the particulars of how much goes to protect the cash cows and how much goes to the communities less capable of contributing, but what's not up for debate is that the optimal solution we should both be solving for is the one that creates the greatest surplus.
Many of these poorer communities are often better prepared than the cities where well off people are. During Katrina, much of the support rendered came from people outside the city that are self-reliant. They even had a name for these people, the Cajun Navy and they did far more to help the poor people in New Orleans than the rich people in New Orleans.
So I ask you again, as someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to?
You're missing or ignoring the fact that government is funded by economic activity. The government invests in protecting the revenues streams that allows it to continue to operate with surplus and those communities that don't provide much if any revenue benefit disproportionately relative to how much they contribute to funding the government they rely on for help.
What you're proposing is to divert dollars from activity that creates the very surplus that affords the government the budget to help those that can't help themselves.
Pretty much all countries cannot provide even a fraction of the support the US is able to provide to its disadvantaged communities. This is largely due to the fact that our government makes the smart decision to protect its cash cows. We have so much surplus that we're actually able to provide to many disadvantaged and advantaged communities beyond our own borders.
We can of course debate the particulars of how much goes to protect the cash cows and how much goes to the communities less capable of contributing, but what's not up for debate is that the optimal solution we should both be solving for is the one that creates the greatest surplus.
Many of these poorer communities are often better prepared than the cities where well off people are. During Katrina, much of the support rendered came from people outside the city that are self-reliant. They even had a name for these people, the Cajun Navy and they did far more to help the poor people in New Orleans than the rich people in New Orleans.
So I ask you again, as someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to?
It's not a zero sum game.
When governments invest in their poor communities, they get the following, in order:
1) Stability
At a minimum, a community needs to receive enough investment that it doesn't get destroyed at regular intervals. Or if disasters occasionally happen, this level of investment should help bring about a speedy recovery. This is the level at which FEMA is supposed to operate. Terry Pratchett's Boots parable fits into this category nicely. [1]
2) Opportunity
Beyond that, you can invest by paying to deliberately bring opportunities to a community that wouldn't normally be available. This can include education, public works projects, financial incentives for companies to operate in poorer areas where they otherwise wouldn't, etc.
If you pay to educate people, they'll be able to do higher quality work for an employer (presumably bringing more value to the employer than unskilled labor), and those people will be able to receive better wages for their work in order to save, support their families, and spend at other businesses in their community (supporting those businesses).
If you improve public infrastructure, you make it easier for people to get to work, and make it easier for companies to access members of the community in order to sell their services.
If you provide incentives for companies to move in, they can provide both education / training and better paying jobs, which allows community members to begin to prosper and can eventually encourage other businesses to move in on their own in order to tap some of the newly created talent, or sell to a community with newly disposable income.
3) Prosperity
Go through (2) enough times, and it will eventually become self-sustaining. The community will be able to grow and produce new economic opportunities on its own.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...
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Since apparently your dig was at me personally, I'll give you the honest answer that I guess you thought I'd find too shameful to share, but really just highlights the point I was making earlier. I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city. I have resources that I can provide to my family, and I have family in other areas that can provide resources for me, should the need arise. I don't expect to rely on FEMA personally.
But who do you consider to be part of my community? Is it close friends that I work with or went to school with and know well? Or is it the working poor a few blocks closer to the freeway? Because while I'm more than happy to provide similar levels of support to my close friends -- they're all rich techies like me, who also have their own resources.
What have I done for the working poor? Other than tipping well back when restaurants were still a thing, I've done jack shit for them, and 99% of the rich techies living here have similarly done squat. The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA. People will look after themselves, and will help close allies where support is expected to yield long-term benefits, but beyond that, we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought. Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way.
When governments invest in their poor communities, they get the following, in order:
1) Stability
At a minimum, a community needs to receive enough investment that it doesn't get destroyed at regular intervals. Or if disasters occasionally happen, this level of investment should help bring about a speedy recovery. This is the level at which FEMA is supposed to operate. Terry Pratchett's Boots parable fits into this category nicely. [1]
2) Opportunity
Beyond that, you can invest by paying to deliberately bring opportunities to a community that wouldn't normally be available. This can include education, public works projects, financial incentives for companies to operate in poorer areas where they otherwise wouldn't, etc.
If you pay to educate people, they'll be able to do higher quality work for an employer (presumably bringing more value to the employer than unskilled labor), and those people will be able to receive better wages for their work in order to save, support their families, and spend at other businesses in their community (supporting those businesses).
If you improve public infrastructure, you make it easier for people to get to work, and make it easier for companies to access members of the community in order to sell their services.
If you provide incentives for companies to move in, they can provide both education / training and better paying jobs, which allows community members to begin to prosper and can eventually encourage other businesses to move in on their own in order to tap some of the newly created talent, or sell to a community with newly disposable income.
3) Prosperity
Go through (2) enough times, and it will eventually become self-sustaining. The community will be able to grow and produce new economic opportunities on its own.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...
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Since apparently your dig was at me personally, I'll give you the honest answer that I guess you thought I'd find too shameful to share, but really just highlights the point I was making earlier. I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city. I have resources that I can provide to my family, and I have family in other areas that can provide resources for me, should the need arise. I don't expect to rely on FEMA personally.
But who do you consider to be part of my community? Is it close friends that I work with or went to school with and know well? Or is it the working poor a few blocks closer to the freeway? Because while I'm more than happy to provide similar levels of support to my close friends -- they're all rich techies like me, who also have their own resources.
What have I done for the working poor? Other than tipping well back when restaurants were still a thing, I've done jack shit for them, and 99% of the rich techies living here have similarly done squat. The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA. People will look after themselves, and will help close allies where support is expected to yield long-term benefits, but beyond that, we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought. Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way.
You have a completely fantasy idea of how successful communities are established, grown and sustained.
They are not unlike startups and other businesses.
There's first group of settlers who found a settlement. There are others who come later and grow a settlement into a town. Still more join later to grow a town into city, so on and so forth. Every step of the way, people come and join the community chasing social and economic reasons to join the community. The economic and social reasons are provided by those already in the community by way of their contributions to that community in the form of establishing economic activity and contributing to sustainable growth.
Like startups and businesses, outside capital and support can help, but alone will not lead to their sustainability and growth. Until we solve some fundamental limiters like limitless free energy, there will always be more demand for support and aid than there will be support and aid available. This means that those providing aid and support, just like venture capital and private equity, need to pick and choose where to provide support to maximize the utility from that support.
Some communities just don't have the core nugget of what is necessary to make it worth rendering aid and support beyond the minimum. For those communities, it's best to allow those within the unsustainable community to move to other communities with sustainable opportunities.
Every successful community from town to city, is successful because its members inherently provides for its own sustainability. Those communities that are not sustainable are doomed to peter out. Any support beyond helping the members of unsustainable communities to sustainable ones is just throwing good money after bad.
Outside support alone will never magically turn any community into a prosperous community. That kind of thinking is what produces businesses like WeWork.
> I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city.
I'm curious how? Just evacuating yourself to other areas that can provide resources? What about people near you that may need help being evacuated well before FEMA can render aid such as with wildfires?
> I have resources that I can provide to my family
Are we only discussing money and a vehicle? Is the tank always full?
> But who do you consider to be part of my community?
In a major disaster, all communities are local. These are very real people that you're going to personally see that will need urgent assistance to avoid injury or death.
If something happens to your "preparations", you could find yourself in the position where you or your family needs urgent assistance to avoid injury or death.
> The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA.
They really aren't. You've just never experienced a local community that does more to provide for one another. It's not uncommon for city dwellers to have this attitude.
FEMA is a federal organization whose effectiveness is bounded by local response. They are not a wholesale replacement for local response.
Every FEMA failure that's happened in my life began as a failure of local response.
> we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought.
Speak for yourself. This attitude is exactly why local responses fail.
> Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way.
The Cajun Navy is exactly the opposite of that and was far more effective during Hurricane Katrina.
In many disasters, it's amateur HAM radio operators that provide critical communications infrastructure to aid federal responses.
It's local SAR volunteers that provide help such as swiftwater rescue.
In a disaster, most urgent first aid is rendered by amateurs until someone can be brought to a medical facility because EMTs and other first responders are overwhelmed.
They are not unlike startups and other businesses.
There's first group of settlers who found a settlement. There are others who come later and grow a settlement into a town. Still more join later to grow a town into city, so on and so forth. Every step of the way, people come and join the community chasing social and economic reasons to join the community. The economic and social reasons are provided by those already in the community by way of their contributions to that community in the form of establishing economic activity and contributing to sustainable growth.
Like startups and businesses, outside capital and support can help, but alone will not lead to their sustainability and growth. Until we solve some fundamental limiters like limitless free energy, there will always be more demand for support and aid than there will be support and aid available. This means that those providing aid and support, just like venture capital and private equity, need to pick and choose where to provide support to maximize the utility from that support.
Some communities just don't have the core nugget of what is necessary to make it worth rendering aid and support beyond the minimum. For those communities, it's best to allow those within the unsustainable community to move to other communities with sustainable opportunities.
Every successful community from town to city, is successful because its members inherently provides for its own sustainability. Those communities that are not sustainable are doomed to peter out. Any support beyond helping the members of unsustainable communities to sustainable ones is just throwing good money after bad.
Outside support alone will never magically turn any community into a prosperous community. That kind of thinking is what produces businesses like WeWork.
> I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city.
I'm curious how? Just evacuating yourself to other areas that can provide resources? What about people near you that may need help being evacuated well before FEMA can render aid such as with wildfires?
> I have resources that I can provide to my family
Are we only discussing money and a vehicle? Is the tank always full?
> But who do you consider to be part of my community?
In a major disaster, all communities are local. These are very real people that you're going to personally see that will need urgent assistance to avoid injury or death.
If something happens to your "preparations", you could find yourself in the position where you or your family needs urgent assistance to avoid injury or death.
> The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA.
They really aren't. You've just never experienced a local community that does more to provide for one another. It's not uncommon for city dwellers to have this attitude.
FEMA is a federal organization whose effectiveness is bounded by local response. They are not a wholesale replacement for local response.
Every FEMA failure that's happened in my life began as a failure of local response.
> we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought.
Speak for yourself. This attitude is exactly why local responses fail.
> Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way.
The Cajun Navy is exactly the opposite of that and was far more effective during Hurricane Katrina.
In many disasters, it's amateur HAM radio operators that provide critical communications infrastructure to aid federal responses.
It's local SAR volunteers that provide help such as swiftwater rescue.
In a disaster, most urgent first aid is rendered by amateurs until someone can be brought to a medical facility because EMTs and other first responders are overwhelmed.
> Until we solve some fundamental limiters like limitless free energy, there will always be more demand for support and aid than there will be support and aid available. This means that those providing aid and support, just like venture capital and private equity, need to pick and choose where to provide support to maximize the utility from that support.
This is a ridiculous statement.
We literally helped rebuild Europe and Japan after WWII while growing our economy. Are you saying there are less energy and resources available 70 years later? Or that we would have been better off letting Europe fall into another post-war depression?
The sad irony is that practically every economy that we helped rebuild in that time now provides meaningful services for all of their citizens, including education, housing, healthcare, infrastructure, food, and protection from natural disasters. America has enough to provide basic services to everyone, but chooses not to based on deeply flawed morality excused with insane economic theory: socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everyone else.
This is a ridiculous statement.
We literally helped rebuild Europe and Japan after WWII while growing our economy. Are you saying there are less energy and resources available 70 years later? Or that we would have been better off letting Europe fall into another post-war depression?
The sad irony is that practically every economy that we helped rebuild in that time now provides meaningful services for all of their citizens, including education, housing, healthcare, infrastructure, food, and protection from natural disasters. America has enough to provide basic services to everyone, but chooses not to based on deeply flawed morality excused with insane economic theory: socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everyone else.
> Speak for yourself. This attitude is exactly why local responses fail.
So in one breath you criticize me for being a cynic, and in the next you admit that my cynical attitude is prevalent enough to be the root cause of the bad things I said would happen as a result?
I never claimed it was a good attitude, I claimed that it was the dominant one. Most people can be relied on to be selfish in stressful situations. Are there instances where we all come together during trying times and help each other and do the whole inspirational humanity thing? Sure. But these situations are inspirational because they're not the norm. We should expect people to exhibit the typical attitude rather than the ideal one when designing our national disaster response policy.
> outside capital and support can help, but alone will not lead to their sustainability and growth.
This is plainly false. There are hundreds of counter examples all over the world, both today and throughout history. China, in spite of their other faults, has been doing this with multiple cities a year since the 90s, dragging tens of millions of people out of poverty in the process.
For these investments to work, they need to be sustained -- you can't turn the spigot on and off every four years. They need to be real investments, and sized appropriately -- lip service doesn't work. And it usually takes the better part of a generation for the improvements to materialize.
> Every step of the way, people come and join the community chasing social and economic reasons to join the community.
Now this is fantasy. Are you not aware of how many of the black communities in the South came to be, or why they ended up so impoverished? It didn't go anything like this. First we dragged people here against their will on slave ships. This lasted for 300 years. Then we ended slavery, but the slavers and their descendants were bitter about losing the war and had deeply held ideas about race, so they worked diligently to prevent the black community from prospering as a matter of policy via violence, Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, redlining, unbalanced enforcement, etc. plenty of which continues to this day.
This is not lack of investment or lack of personal motivation, this is active sabotage. These communities are poor because they started out with nothing, and we've been curbstomping them for over a century.
> Some communities just don't have the core nugget of what is necessary to make it worth rendering aid
This is such a ridiculous take. These communities don't have what it takes? They weren't given the chance. Every time something good happened there, we came in and took it away.
The main issue I have with your original comment is that you're basically telling people in these communities -- people who can barely afford to keep a roof over their head, let alone save for hurricane preparations or for a big move -- "Gee, you should have planned better for this hurricane," "Gee, if you can't plan better, maybe you should get up and move," "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, mate."
The majority of the communities at the receiving end of the now annual hurricane are black and poor, and we are the reason they've been too poor to do any of that. Your comment is a tone-deaf slap in the face, and you are being rightly excoriated for it.
So in one breath you criticize me for being a cynic, and in the next you admit that my cynical attitude is prevalent enough to be the root cause of the bad things I said would happen as a result?
I never claimed it was a good attitude, I claimed that it was the dominant one. Most people can be relied on to be selfish in stressful situations. Are there instances where we all come together during trying times and help each other and do the whole inspirational humanity thing? Sure. But these situations are inspirational because they're not the norm. We should expect people to exhibit the typical attitude rather than the ideal one when designing our national disaster response policy.
> outside capital and support can help, but alone will not lead to their sustainability and growth.
This is plainly false. There are hundreds of counter examples all over the world, both today and throughout history. China, in spite of their other faults, has been doing this with multiple cities a year since the 90s, dragging tens of millions of people out of poverty in the process.
For these investments to work, they need to be sustained -- you can't turn the spigot on and off every four years. They need to be real investments, and sized appropriately -- lip service doesn't work. And it usually takes the better part of a generation for the improvements to materialize.
> Every step of the way, people come and join the community chasing social and economic reasons to join the community.
Now this is fantasy. Are you not aware of how many of the black communities in the South came to be, or why they ended up so impoverished? It didn't go anything like this. First we dragged people here against their will on slave ships. This lasted for 300 years. Then we ended slavery, but the slavers and their descendants were bitter about losing the war and had deeply held ideas about race, so they worked diligently to prevent the black community from prospering as a matter of policy via violence, Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, redlining, unbalanced enforcement, etc. plenty of which continues to this day.
This is not lack of investment or lack of personal motivation, this is active sabotage. These communities are poor because they started out with nothing, and we've been curbstomping them for over a century.
> Some communities just don't have the core nugget of what is necessary to make it worth rendering aid
This is such a ridiculous take. These communities don't have what it takes? They weren't given the chance. Every time something good happened there, we came in and took it away.
The main issue I have with your original comment is that you're basically telling people in these communities -- people who can barely afford to keep a roof over their head, let alone save for hurricane preparations or for a big move -- "Gee, you should have planned better for this hurricane," "Gee, if you can't plan better, maybe you should get up and move," "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, mate."
The majority of the communities at the receiving end of the now annual hurricane are black and poor, and we are the reason they've been too poor to do any of that. Your comment is a tone-deaf slap in the face, and you are being rightly excoriated for it.
Stated another way; Many (but not all) people who live in the path of hurricanes need more support from FEMA.
Many people need to take more responsibility. I live in a place on the Pacific Rim with tsunami, earthquake and volcano risk. I have a massive mobile first aid kit, equipment/training for swiftwater rescue, baofeng radios, etc. When things go sideways, members of the community need to be prepared. The justification for community preparedness goes up as the frequency of the concern goes up, such as with hurricanes.
It's a shame that we've strayed so far from "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country". Replace country with neighborhood, community, town, city, county, so on and so forth.
FEMA is a great extra layer of safety, but it's no replacement for community preparedness. FEMA's effectiveness is proportional to the preparedness of the community it is called in to help. FEMA is also a SPOF.
Everyone should operate under "No one is coming. It's up to us". When you assume the opposite, you create the conditions that greatly reduce the likelihood of a positive outcome in the event of disaster. You also consume resources that could have gone to people that do not have the means to prepare such as the poor, the elderly and the infirm.
It's a shame that we've strayed so far from "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country". Replace country with neighborhood, community, town, city, county, so on and so forth.
FEMA is a great extra layer of safety, but it's no replacement for community preparedness. FEMA's effectiveness is proportional to the preparedness of the community it is called in to help. FEMA is also a SPOF.
Everyone should operate under "No one is coming. It's up to us". When you assume the opposite, you create the conditions that greatly reduce the likelihood of a positive outcome in the event of disaster. You also consume resources that could have gone to people that do not have the means to prepare such as the poor, the elderly and the infirm.
>When things go sideways, members of the community need to be prepared. The justification for community preparedness goes up as the frequency of the concern goes up, such as with hurricanes.
That's a government: a community that pools resources, creates plans, and executes those plans to benefit the community members. I agree it would help for individuals to have emergency kits and some training. Why can't FEMA help with that?
That's a government: a community that pools resources, creates plans, and executes those plans to benefit the community members. I agree it would help for individuals to have emergency kits and some training. Why can't FEMA help with that?
> I agree it would help for individuals to have emergency kits and some training.
You have it reversed. FEMA is the help. You and your neighbors are the first line of response in any real emergency.
In the event of a tsunami hitting the Pacific Northwest, it's expected that many communities may be unreachable for a week or longer.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...
"In the Pacific Northwest, the area of impact will cover some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America, outside of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which killed upward of a hundred thousand people. By comparison, roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million."
No federal response will ever be capable of effectively responding to such a disaster without serious local support.
You have it reversed. FEMA is the help. You and your neighbors are the first line of response in any real emergency.
In the event of a tsunami hitting the Pacific Northwest, it's expected that many communities may be unreachable for a week or longer.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...
"In the Pacific Northwest, the area of impact will cover some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America, outside of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which killed upward of a hundred thousand people. By comparison, roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million."
No federal response will ever be capable of effectively responding to such a disaster without serious local support.
FEMA isn’t supposed to be a nationwide front-line disaster management agency. It’s supposed to be a backstop for when state governments, who have the primary responsibility for disaster relief, become overwhelmed. (Put differently, nobody voted for the whole country to subsidize hurricane prone states through FEMA.) It makes total sense for FEMA to focus on disasters that could happen anywhere rather than ones that happen routinely in certain hurricane prone stages.
Are there any real examples of where the money is going for counter terrorism? In the entire article there's only one example, copied below. And it's of $14 million out of billions.
>A review of FEMA grant requests made by the latter state for 2019 through 2020 shows that a large chunk of the nearly $14 million has been sought for law enforcement communication, SWAT training, and bomb detection.
I'm also not sure what more FEMA money would do. As mentioned in the article, they're not worried about running out of money during the initial response to any disaster. If it's serious enough (like Katrina was), I don't doubt more money will be made available. FEMA primarily responds to disasters, and while some money goes to preventive measures, they are not in charge of preventing hurricane damage along the entire coast.
>A review of FEMA grant requests made by the latter state for 2019 through 2020 shows that a large chunk of the nearly $14 million has been sought for law enforcement communication, SWAT training, and bomb detection.
I'm also not sure what more FEMA money would do. As mentioned in the article, they're not worried about running out of money during the initial response to any disaster. If it's serious enough (like Katrina was), I don't doubt more money will be made available. FEMA primarily responds to disasters, and while some money goes to preventive measures, they are not in charge of preventing hurricane damage along the entire coast.
Maybe part of this is a branding and messaging problem.
I think of FEMA as a response-oriented agency: They aren't there to prevent disasters from occurring, they're intended to pick up the pieces afterwards.
If you approach it with that perspective, then you'd surely expect them to be devoted predominantly to hurricanes and similar natural disasters, as they can be anticipated and planned for.
If their true role is to be proactive about some specific disaster functions, maybe this needs to be better communicated to the public. Otherwise you end up with the poor guy who gets a job with the Secret Service and his family is "OMG do you jump in front of a bullet for the President" when he's going to spend his career squinting at bogus $5 notes.
I think of FEMA as a response-oriented agency: They aren't there to prevent disasters from occurring, they're intended to pick up the pieces afterwards.
If you approach it with that perspective, then you'd surely expect them to be devoted predominantly to hurricanes and similar natural disasters, as they can be anticipated and planned for.
If their true role is to be proactive about some specific disaster functions, maybe this needs to be better communicated to the public. Otherwise you end up with the poor guy who gets a job with the Secret Service and his family is "OMG do you jump in front of a bullet for the President" when he's going to spend his career squinting at bogus $5 notes.
They should be focussing on their capacity to quickly move in mobile hospitals, potable water, emergency accomodation, etc and have adequate stockpiles of essentials ready to go.
How quickly and effectively you can help those impacted will reduce total fatalities regardless of whether a terrorist attack, natural disaster or something like the Beirut explosion.
How quickly and effectively you can help those impacted will reduce total fatalities regardless of whether a terrorist attack, natural disaster or something like the Beirut explosion.
To me it's obvious and logical that they spend more resources on preparing for terrorism.
Hurricanes don't threaten government credibility the way successful terrorist attacks do. We might not like it but it makes perfect sense that a government agency prioritizes threats to the government.
This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest.
It really shouldn’t be the FEMAs job to weigh disasters based on political impact; that’s not their mandate. Their job is to help with disasters, and with hurricanes being so common they should focus their efforts there.
It really shouldn’t be the FEMAs job to weigh disasters based on political impact; that’s not their mandate. Their job is to help with disasters, and with hurricanes being so common they should focus their efforts there.
> This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest.
It reminds me of a quote by Milton Friedman: "Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"
It reminds me of a quote by Milton Friedman: "Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"
It's undeniably true when political power is distributed to the masses, and less and less true when it concentrates. Basically, the more democratic the political system, the truer it is. Which hints at the fundamental nature of political self-interest versus economic self-intrest - economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating while political self-interest conforms to both material and immaterial goals.
> It's undeniably true when political power is distributed to the masses, and less and less true when it concentrates.
In other words, it's only "undeniably true" in a direct democracy, where the people vote to decide on everything. Otherwise, you have the same centralization of power (a representative by definition has more power than their constituent), and you have to hope that they will act in the public good. I'm not sure that you can reasonably claim that every person in Congress today is virtuous.
> economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating
That's for sure a popular claim, but it's not really backed by any evidence other than the way a handful of people feel. And that's largely driven by ideology rather than mass empirical evidence. The entire developed/industrialized world largely operates on economic self-interest, and life in the 21st century is, by pretty much all measures, better than life at any other time in the past.
In other words, it's only "undeniably true" in a direct democracy, where the people vote to decide on everything. Otherwise, you have the same centralization of power (a representative by definition has more power than their constituent), and you have to hope that they will act in the public good. I'm not sure that you can reasonably claim that every person in Congress today is virtuous.
> economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating
That's for sure a popular claim, but it's not really backed by any evidence other than the way a handful of people feel. And that's largely driven by ideology rather than mass empirical evidence. The entire developed/industrialized world largely operates on economic self-interest, and life in the 21st century is, by pretty much all measures, better than life at any other time in the past.
>n other words, it's only "undeniably true" in a direct democracy, where the people vote to decide on everything. Otherwise, you have the same centralization of power (a representative by definition has more power than their constituent), and you have to hope that they will act in the public good. I'm not sure that you can reasonably claim that every person in Congress today is virtuous.
Direct democracy doesn't mean that everyone votes on everything, and I never claimed that the US is democratic enough to fulfill that criteria. The US is at the very best a flawed democracy, and there can be as well as are much better system.
>That's for sure a popular claim, but it's not really backed by any evidence other than the way a handful of people feel. And that's largely driven by ideology rather than mass empirical evidence. The entire developed/industrialized world largely operates on economic self-interest, and life in the 21st century is, by pretty much all measures, better than life at any other time in the past.
The entire point of the claim is how people feel, because that's literally how you measure alienation and well being. There is no point living in a society with amazing material plenitude if the rest prevents your well-being. How good life is is measured solely through subjective and social measures, not by the quantity of consumption, which is almost irrelevant. There is tons of data behind this, the marginal happiness brought by greater material wealth goes to almost zero after you hit a ccertain threshold, and that threshold largely corresponds to ensuring baseline needs, then material security and finally freedom and social status related to material consumption in our society. Nowhere is there any study that seems to indicate that happiness and well-being are related beyond basic needs to absolute (and not relative) economic output.
Therefore, your argument bears no solid relation to your claim. Furthermore, there have been tons of analysis and studies of why economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating, and it boils down to the fact that in a competitive system pursuance of economic self-interest necessarily requires loss of agency.
Direct democracy doesn't mean that everyone votes on everything, and I never claimed that the US is democratic enough to fulfill that criteria. The US is at the very best a flawed democracy, and there can be as well as are much better system.
>That's for sure a popular claim, but it's not really backed by any evidence other than the way a handful of people feel. And that's largely driven by ideology rather than mass empirical evidence. The entire developed/industrialized world largely operates on economic self-interest, and life in the 21st century is, by pretty much all measures, better than life at any other time in the past.
The entire point of the claim is how people feel, because that's literally how you measure alienation and well being. There is no point living in a society with amazing material plenitude if the rest prevents your well-being. How good life is is measured solely through subjective and social measures, not by the quantity of consumption, which is almost irrelevant. There is tons of data behind this, the marginal happiness brought by greater material wealth goes to almost zero after you hit a ccertain threshold, and that threshold largely corresponds to ensuring baseline needs, then material security and finally freedom and social status related to material consumption in our society. Nowhere is there any study that seems to indicate that happiness and well-being are related beyond basic needs to absolute (and not relative) economic output.
Therefore, your argument bears no solid relation to your claim. Furthermore, there have been tons of analysis and studies of why economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating, and it boils down to the fact that in a competitive system pursuance of economic self-interest necessarily requires loss of agency.
> I never claimed that the US is democratic enough to fulfill that criteria.
I’m not just talking about the US. I called out every single developed/industrialized nation
> The entire point of the claim is how people feel
Sure, and the majority of people in the world just don’t feel that way. It’s just a small group of Marxist ideologues.
Your point about measures of happiness and freedom and social status and security etc etc are well and good...except the countries that rank the highest on those metrics are the ones that enjoy the greatest economic freedom. They are overwhelmingly societies which run on economic self-interest, per my earlier point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_...
I’m not just talking about the US. I called out every single developed/industrialized nation
> The entire point of the claim is how people feel
Sure, and the majority of people in the world just don’t feel that way. It’s just a small group of Marxist ideologues.
Your point about measures of happiness and freedom and social status and security etc etc are well and good...except the countries that rank the highest on those metrics are the ones that enjoy the greatest economic freedom. They are overwhelmingly societies which run on economic self-interest, per my earlier point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_...
Sure, and time wise we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing and material wealth while happiness decreases. The data doesn't support your claim, almost every study done on the subject doesn't support your claims.
As for the the vast majority of people not thinking that well-being and quality of life depends on your subjective experience and feelings, I think you have a wildly distorted idea of how people think. As in, completely ridiculous and disconnected with reality. Go and talk with people in real life, ask them what makes them happy and what is the cause of their sorrows, and you'll find that unless their name is "Scrooge McDuck" their answer won't be material wealth. And calling that Marxism is the most absurd thing I've heard all day. Apparently mentally well-adjusted people are all Marxists now, let's unfurl the red banners!
Relative wealth has an effect on well-being, for obvious social reasons, which is why you can see that correlation in the link you sent. There is absolutely no data indicating that marginal absolute wealth does anything for well-being.
Finally,
>I’m not just talking about the US. I called out every single developed/industrialized nation
You're going to have to back up that claim. Specifically, find data so that every industrialized nation has a political system that diverges significantly from the will of the common man (moreso than average will weighted by dollar of wealth), and that this is in no case due to the economic self-interest of some. Good luck!
As for the the vast majority of people not thinking that well-being and quality of life depends on your subjective experience and feelings, I think you have a wildly distorted idea of how people think. As in, completely ridiculous and disconnected with reality. Go and talk with people in real life, ask them what makes them happy and what is the cause of their sorrows, and you'll find that unless their name is "Scrooge McDuck" their answer won't be material wealth. And calling that Marxism is the most absurd thing I've heard all day. Apparently mentally well-adjusted people are all Marxists now, let's unfurl the red banners!
Relative wealth has an effect on well-being, for obvious social reasons, which is why you can see that correlation in the link you sent. There is absolutely no data indicating that marginal absolute wealth does anything for well-being.
Finally,
>I’m not just talking about the US. I called out every single developed/industrialized nation
You're going to have to back up that claim. Specifically, find data so that every industrialized nation has a political system that diverges significantly from the will of the common man (moreso than average will weighted by dollar of wealth), and that this is in no case due to the economic self-interest of some. Good luck!
> Sure, and time wise we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing and material wealth while happiness decreases. The data doesn’t support your claim, almost every study on the subject doesn’t support your claim.
You can’t just declare “the data doesn’t support your claim” without providing any. Repeating it again and again doesn’t make it true.
On my part, I literally just provided you with a list of the most economically free countries. They include (in order): Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands, among many others. They correlate strongly with most accepted lists of so-called “happiest countries”. This directly refutes your claim that “we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing while happiness decreases”. If you’d like it directly spelled out for you, here’s the research that not only observes the same correlation, but attempts to even prove the causation.
https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2016/06...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9770-9
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/coep.12190
https://www.yorktonthisweek.com/2.5111/people-in-countries-w...
> You’re going to have to back up that claim
I already did, multiple times. Every single liberal industrialized nation is structured around economic markets, where the means of production are privately owned. By definition this means that the majority of the industrialized world is driven by economic self interest. There are of course variations here and there: you have the Anglo-Saxon model[1], the German Model[2] the Rhine model[3], etc. All just slightly varying accoutrements sprinkled over the same fundamental structure: how best to channel economic self-interest for the public good.
It is, in fact, you who needs to back up your claims. “Good luck!”
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_model
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
You can’t just declare “the data doesn’t support your claim” without providing any. Repeating it again and again doesn’t make it true.
On my part, I literally just provided you with a list of the most economically free countries. They include (in order): Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands, among many others. They correlate strongly with most accepted lists of so-called “happiest countries”. This directly refutes your claim that “we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing while happiness decreases”. If you’d like it directly spelled out for you, here’s the research that not only observes the same correlation, but attempts to even prove the causation.
https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2016/06...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9770-9
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/coep.12190
https://www.yorktonthisweek.com/2.5111/people-in-countries-w...
> You’re going to have to back up that claim
I already did, multiple times. Every single liberal industrialized nation is structured around economic markets, where the means of production are privately owned. By definition this means that the majority of the industrialized world is driven by economic self interest. There are of course variations here and there: you have the Anglo-Saxon model[1], the German Model[2] the Rhine model[3], etc. All just slightly varying accoutrements sprinkled over the same fundamental structure: how best to channel economic self-interest for the public good.
It is, in fact, you who needs to back up your claims. “Good luck!”
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_model
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
> already did, multiple times. Every single liberal industrialized nation is structured around economic markets, where the means of production are privately owned. By definition this means that the majority of the industrialized world is driven by economic self interest. There are of course variations here and there: you have the Anglo-Saxon model[1], the German Model[2] the Rhine model[3], etc. All just slightly varying accoutrements sprinkled over the same fundamental structure: how best to channel economic self-interest for the public good.
That is almost entirely orthogonal to your claim that there are no truly democratic industrialized nations.
>On my part, I literally just provided you with a list of the most economically free countries. They include (in order): Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands, among many others. They correlate strongly with most accepted lists of so-called “happiest countries”. This directly refutes your claim that “we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing while happiness decreases”. If you’d like it directly spelled out for you, here’s the research that not only observes the same correlation, but attempts to even prove the causation.
I have not made claims about economic freedom, but material wealth. The best example is the US, where economic output has grown but happiness and life-satisfaction has decreased. As I said, this must be analyzed over a time series, your comparisons are useless for hundreds of reasons. So is your equivocation of economic output and economic freedom. There have been many cases in time-series of economic freedom increasing and happiness/life satisfaction decreasing, too. In fact, one of your studies even points that out, if you've read them in their entirety: hat is, shrinking the size of the government (i.e., reducing the tax burden on citizens) seems to be negatively related to subjective well-being.
Furthermore, it is trivially true that economic output and happiness are not causative, for the simple reason that in the last 30 years or so happiness and well-being have been decreasing while economic output has been skyrocketing.
It is also trivially true that aggregate economic freedom can increase while economic output can decrease.
Finally, I've never even made the claim that we should reduce economic freedom, or that markets are bad, or anything like that. I've made two claims - that the political self-interest of the masses is essentially different from their economic self-interest in that it can suit the goals of the individual better, and that well-being and happiness is only tangentially correlated to material wealth. From these premises I draw the conclusion that we should only pursue material wealth insofar as it actually benefits our well-being, and that government involvement in the economy can be good as long as the government is actually following the will of the people and that it is the best way to do so. So far you've been attacking a bizarre strawman, and have failed to back up your claims.
That is almost entirely orthogonal to your claim that there are no truly democratic industrialized nations.
>On my part, I literally just provided you with a list of the most economically free countries. They include (in order): Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands, among many others. They correlate strongly with most accepted lists of so-called “happiest countries”. This directly refutes your claim that “we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing while happiness decreases”. If you’d like it directly spelled out for you, here’s the research that not only observes the same correlation, but attempts to even prove the causation.
I have not made claims about economic freedom, but material wealth. The best example is the US, where economic output has grown but happiness and life-satisfaction has decreased. As I said, this must be analyzed over a time series, your comparisons are useless for hundreds of reasons. So is your equivocation of economic output and economic freedom. There have been many cases in time-series of economic freedom increasing and happiness/life satisfaction decreasing, too. In fact, one of your studies even points that out, if you've read them in their entirety: hat is, shrinking the size of the government (i.e., reducing the tax burden on citizens) seems to be negatively related to subjective well-being.
Furthermore, it is trivially true that economic output and happiness are not causative, for the simple reason that in the last 30 years or so happiness and well-being have been decreasing while economic output has been skyrocketing.
It is also trivially true that aggregate economic freedom can increase while economic output can decrease.
Finally, I've never even made the claim that we should reduce economic freedom, or that markets are bad, or anything like that. I've made two claims - that the political self-interest of the masses is essentially different from their economic self-interest in that it can suit the goals of the individual better, and that well-being and happiness is only tangentially correlated to material wealth. From these premises I draw the conclusion that we should only pursue material wealth insofar as it actually benefits our well-being, and that government involvement in the economy can be good as long as the government is actually following the will of the people and that it is the best way to do so. So far you've been attacking a bizarre strawman, and have failed to back up your claims.
> That is almost entirely orthogonal to your claim that there are no truly democratic industrialized nations.
No, my original claim was that political self-interest isn't any nobler than economic self-interest. Your original claim was that "economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating", but there's very little evidence to back that up, and as I showed, there is ample evidence to the contrary.
> I have not made claims about economic freedom, but material wealth
This is your own quote:
"Sure, and time wise we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing and material wealth while happiness decreases. The data doesn't support your claim, almost every study done on the subject doesn't support your claims."
It is demonstrably incorrect.
> So is your equivocation of economic output and economic freedom.
I'm happy to play that game too. If economic freedom is an inadequate proxy, and your point appears to be that economic output doesn't correlate with happiness, then why is it that the nations with the highest GDP (PPP) per capita (modulo oil kingdoms) are also the happiest? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...
> The best example is the US, where economic output has grown but happiness and life-satisfaction has decreased.
The US is only one data-point. It's not "the best example", it's the "only example". Economic output has grown around the entire western (and increasingly East Asian[1]) world. Happiness and life-satisfaction has not decreased around the economically liberalized world, as I showed you in the numerous linked research. You're trying to extrapolate off of just one data point. In fact, to use this single data point as an example to make the case that economic self-interest is "fundamentally alienating", would be like me pointing to the USSR or Cuba or North Korea to make the case that political self-interest is "fundamentally alienating". It's simplistic and reductive, and ignores like 30 other dependent variables.
If you want to play the "let's cite the best single data point" game, then I can just as easily point to Switzerland, which is top 3 GDP per capita (economic output), top 3 economic freedom, top 3 median wealth per adult (material wealth), among the lowest taxes in the developed world, among the lowest government spending as a % of GDP among OECD countries, and yet is...top 5 by "happiness index".
Also, it's debatable if it even makes sense to consider the US one datapoint, because it's in reality a collection of 50 data points, since each State has its own socioeconomic policies, and happiness levels. You'll find that there's considerable variance in happiness among the States: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings, and a large handful of States are among the happiest in the world.
The US is also an odd data-point to cite, because the size of its government has been increasing over time, not decreasing. Inflation adjusted federal spending is the highest it's ever been, and federal receipts as a percentage of GDP have been basically flat since WW2: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
In just about every way, it's not the best mascot for your case.
> From these premises I draw the conclusion that we should only pursue material wealth insofar as it actually benefits our well-being, and that government involvement in the economy can be good as long as the government is actually following the will of the people and that it is the best way to do so.
But this is tautological. Nobody actually disagrees with this, that's not where the contention lies.
The contention is 1) whether "government involvement in the economy" necessarily follows the "will of the people" and 2) whether economic incentives do not. The debate is that government involvement does not always do that, especially given a heterogenous polity where you can pit factions against each other. A similar debate is that economic incentives not only do not ignore the will of the people, the two are often positively correlated, because you need to make consumers happy to win their business. There are obviously exceptions to both the former and the latter, but on average, the world's societies have largely converged around systems that maximize economic self-interest and only incorporating political self-interest insofar as economic self-interest yields sub-optimal outcomes, and in fact using political self-interest to channel economic self-interest in socially optimal ways.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_model_of_capitalism
No, my original claim was that political self-interest isn't any nobler than economic self-interest. Your original claim was that "economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating", but there's very little evidence to back that up, and as I showed, there is ample evidence to the contrary.
> I have not made claims about economic freedom, but material wealth
This is your own quote:
"Sure, and time wise we can witness countless examples of economic freedom increasing and material wealth while happiness decreases. The data doesn't support your claim, almost every study done on the subject doesn't support your claims."
It is demonstrably incorrect.
> So is your equivocation of economic output and economic freedom.
I'm happy to play that game too. If economic freedom is an inadequate proxy, and your point appears to be that economic output doesn't correlate with happiness, then why is it that the nations with the highest GDP (PPP) per capita (modulo oil kingdoms) are also the happiest? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...
> The best example is the US, where economic output has grown but happiness and life-satisfaction has decreased.
The US is only one data-point. It's not "the best example", it's the "only example". Economic output has grown around the entire western (and increasingly East Asian[1]) world. Happiness and life-satisfaction has not decreased around the economically liberalized world, as I showed you in the numerous linked research. You're trying to extrapolate off of just one data point. In fact, to use this single data point as an example to make the case that economic self-interest is "fundamentally alienating", would be like me pointing to the USSR or Cuba or North Korea to make the case that political self-interest is "fundamentally alienating". It's simplistic and reductive, and ignores like 30 other dependent variables.
If you want to play the "let's cite the best single data point" game, then I can just as easily point to Switzerland, which is top 3 GDP per capita (economic output), top 3 economic freedom, top 3 median wealth per adult (material wealth), among the lowest taxes in the developed world, among the lowest government spending as a % of GDP among OECD countries, and yet is...top 5 by "happiness index".
Also, it's debatable if it even makes sense to consider the US one datapoint, because it's in reality a collection of 50 data points, since each State has its own socioeconomic policies, and happiness levels. You'll find that there's considerable variance in happiness among the States: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings, and a large handful of States are among the happiest in the world.
The US is also an odd data-point to cite, because the size of its government has been increasing over time, not decreasing. Inflation adjusted federal spending is the highest it's ever been, and federal receipts as a percentage of GDP have been basically flat since WW2: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
In just about every way, it's not the best mascot for your case.
> From these premises I draw the conclusion that we should only pursue material wealth insofar as it actually benefits our well-being, and that government involvement in the economy can be good as long as the government is actually following the will of the people and that it is the best way to do so.
But this is tautological. Nobody actually disagrees with this, that's not where the contention lies.
The contention is 1) whether "government involvement in the economy" necessarily follows the "will of the people" and 2) whether economic incentives do not. The debate is that government involvement does not always do that, especially given a heterogenous polity where you can pit factions against each other. A similar debate is that economic incentives not only do not ignore the will of the people, the two are often positively correlated, because you need to make consumers happy to win their business. There are obviously exceptions to both the former and the latter, but on average, the world's societies have largely converged around systems that maximize economic self-interest and only incorporating political self-interest insofar as economic self-interest yields sub-optimal outcomes, and in fact using political self-interest to channel economic self-interest in socially optimal ways.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_model_of_capitalism
This isn't a people problem. It's a large organizations with diffuse responsibility problem.
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> It really shouldn’t be the FEMAs job to weigh disasters based on political impact; that’s not their mandate. Their job is to help with disasters, and with hurricanes being so common they should focus their efforts there.
And the moment a terrorist act happens that FEMA is unprepared for because they prioritized hurricanes, everyone at FEMA will be replaced with those that do prioritize terrorist attacks because at the end of the day people will demand that.
You can't just blame those in power when the general populace will demand the same decision.
And the moment a terrorist act happens that FEMA is unprepared for because they prioritized hurricanes, everyone at FEMA will be replaced with those that do prioritize terrorist attacks because at the end of the day people will demand that.
You can't just blame those in power when the general populace will demand the same decision.
> the general populace will demand the same decision
That's debatable.
That's debatable.
I would much more expect that a terrorist attack would result on a lot more pressure on DHS and other agencies tasked with anti-terrorism responsibilities, rather than FEMA.
anti-terrorism activities is complementary to terrorist act response. One is prevention and the other is treatment. The treatment for an act of terror is not dissimilar to the treatment for an act of god. There's a lot of overlap.
> This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest
This is a nonsense statement. Power is an inherently valuable resource. It is axiomatic. If you're a leaf in the wind you dont do anyone any good, or do anything at all by definition. Everything ever done in any capacity was done by someone with power.
The problem is also not self-interest, although its closer - the problem is alignment of incentives. Public agencies like FEMA do not receive feedback from the systems they manage (apartments dont tweet when they are saved from hurricanes) and they do not get rewarded for doing a good job. Public agencies result in a lowest-common-denominator of everyone doing what they can to not get yelled at and fired. A natural thought for such an agency would be to ignore/minimize the public's power so the employees are free to do good, but this obviously frees them to do not-good as well.
I have been ruminating on this paradox of democracy. How do we stop ourselves from ruining ourselves if thats what we want? (Representative) democracy is clearly not universally appropriate, but it is pretty good. Free markets dont serve well where people arent actively involved to properly create the market need, so thats probably out.
Can i interest anyone in a politics as a service think tank?
This is a nonsense statement. Power is an inherently valuable resource. It is axiomatic. If you're a leaf in the wind you dont do anyone any good, or do anything at all by definition. Everything ever done in any capacity was done by someone with power.
The problem is also not self-interest, although its closer - the problem is alignment of incentives. Public agencies like FEMA do not receive feedback from the systems they manage (apartments dont tweet when they are saved from hurricanes) and they do not get rewarded for doing a good job. Public agencies result in a lowest-common-denominator of everyone doing what they can to not get yelled at and fired. A natural thought for such an agency would be to ignore/minimize the public's power so the employees are free to do good, but this obviously frees them to do not-good as well.
I have been ruminating on this paradox of democracy. How do we stop ourselves from ruining ourselves if thats what we want? (Representative) democracy is clearly not universally appropriate, but it is pretty good. Free markets dont serve well where people arent actively involved to properly create the market need, so thats probably out.
Can i interest anyone in a politics as a service think tank?
May be down to many aspects and insurance certainly would be a factor in gauging risk/costs for the number crunchers when creating budgets. Given hurricanes tend to fall into the act of God clauses and Terrorism tends to fall into its own special category of exceptions/coverage extra's.
That along with overall impact upon society and fiscal impact. Does get down to hurricanes you can't prevent, only clean-up and terrorism you have a better chance of preventing - also when people die from the later - they are more inclined to place anger at the government/administration over hurricane victims.
Terrorism - case of dammed if nothing happened and you spend money, and dammed if something does happen irrespective of how much money spent.
Certainly - would people feel better if the government spent less on terrorism and just put it down to something people have to just accept could happen and part and parcel of living in a city! That won't traction well with many people I'd say. Yet the people have that mentality towards hurricanes - they accept they will happen, unlike terrorist acts and that kinda see's why budgets are the other way.
That along with overall impact upon society and fiscal impact. Does get down to hurricanes you can't prevent, only clean-up and terrorism you have a better chance of preventing - also when people die from the later - they are more inclined to place anger at the government/administration over hurricane victims.
Terrorism - case of dammed if nothing happened and you spend money, and dammed if something does happen irrespective of how much money spent.
Certainly - would people feel better if the government spent less on terrorism and just put it down to something people have to just accept could happen and part and parcel of living in a city! That won't traction well with many people I'd say. Yet the people have that mentality towards hurricanes - they accept they will happen, unlike terrorist acts and that kinda see's why budgets are the other way.
Our government threatens their credibility just fine by themselves.
How does that work? Does the US people give a monolithic credibility rating to the government? Whose credibility exactly is that?
I bet FEMA's credibility suffers more from a badly handled natural disaster.
I bet FEMA's credibility suffers more from a badly handled natural disaster.
Bungling of highly-visible things by agencies of the executive branch reflect affect the credibility of the president. As Truman said, "The buck stops here."
Katrina definitely did.
>Hurricanes don't threaten government credibility the way successful terrorist attacks do.
This is one of those claims where the only reasonable answer is... "do they?" Bad disaster responses can make administrations look pretty bad.
This is one of those claims where the only reasonable answer is... "do they?" Bad disaster responses can make administrations look pretty bad.
Both good and bad responses to successful terrorist attacks threaten government credibility, simply because they were successful. The key is for a government to prevent them from being successful in the first place.
Only bad disaster responses make administrations look pretty bad.
Only bad disaster responses make administrations look pretty bad.
That would imply that it would only be worth trying to prepare for hurricanes, because work there would improve public reception, while terrorist attacks would go badly no matter what you did.
Unless you prevent them from being successful in the first place.
As a side note, I wonder if there's also a bias that human minds are more easily controlled than forces of nature. That may also come into play here.
As a side note, I wonder if there's also a bias that human minds are more easily controlled than forces of nature. That may also come into play here.
While this may be true, one is carried on a news cycle for a longer period of time. Weather events are a normal and predictable happening, so the "shock and awe" don't carry the ratings necessary for the news coverage, regardless of the human tragedy.
Unfortunately, our society's attention span for weather tragedy is short and it is very unlikely any federally funded memorials will be built for victims of wildfires, floodings or hurricanes.
Unfortunately, our society's attention span for weather tragedy is short and it is very unlikely any federally funded memorials will be built for victims of wildfires, floodings or hurricanes.
I don't know about that. Katrina was in the news for a long time, as a bunch of people were in the Superdome. Then there was news coverage of people trying to recover and rebuild. Katrina is still in the public consciousness, even today. (I mean, so is 9/11. My point is, I think the claim "one is carried on a news cycle for a longer period of time" is wrong.)
> Bad disaster responses can make administrations look pretty bad.
Whether disaster responses are considered good or bad depends largely on which narrative the media select.
Whether disaster responses are considered good or bad depends largely on which narrative the media select.
It doesn't last though.
Without doing the math with dates, do you intuitively remember what administration was in power during 9/11? How about Katrina? Benghazi? Hurricane Andrew?
Without doing the math with dates, do you intuitively remember what administration was in power during 9/11? How about Katrina? Benghazi? Hurricane Andrew?
actual guesses:
W Bush, Also W Bush, Obama, and...Clinton?
Pretty close on the last one. It was the end of HW Bush's term in '92.
W Bush, Also W Bush, Obama, and...Clinton?
Pretty close on the last one. It was the end of HW Bush's term in '92.
Does it though? Can you point me to a free, western style Liberal Democracy where a bad handling of COVID has resulted in an appreciable drop in popularity?
Even Donald Trump, though people polled think he handled the pandemic poorly, his 538 approval on Jan 1st was 42.6% and his approval now is 42.2%.
Even Donald Trump, though people polled think he handled the pandemic poorly, his 538 approval on Jan 1st was 42.6% and his approval now is 42.2%.
I don't think it's done much for the Boris Johnson government here in the UK:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/boris-johnson-...
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/boris-johnson-...
Note, though, that he went up to almost 46% which is the highest he has had since right after he took office, when COVID started becoming serious in the US and it briefly looked as if he might handle it somewhat competently.
But they often just blow over whereas terrorists can keep a lingering presence.
Katrina helped take the shine off the GW Bush administration.
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Did Maria have the same effect to the current administration? Maria devastated Puerto Rico, and the gov't response was embarrassing.
yes, all of the embarrassing/horrendous things the current admin is doing/has done...certainly embarrass them to a majority of the population. They really should be ashamed, but of course they aren't.
terrorism is scarier. it's unpredictable to the masses with no warning sign. it has people who commit. a person to put blame on and a theoretical ability to prevent it.
weather is just weather. we just blame God or "it happens" regardless of how bad it is. and most can be evacuated if we dont wait to the last minute to do it. we treat them like they're already mitigated.
weather is just weather. we just blame God or "it happens" regardless of how bad it is. and most can be evacuated if we dont wait to the last minute to do it. we treat them like they're already mitigated.
> weather is just weather. we just blame God or "it happens" regardless of how bad it is. and most can be evacuated if we dont wait to the last minute to do it. we treat them like they're already mitigated.
Kinda? The effects of extreme weather can be mitigated (eg: don't build on flood plains), but we're seeing increasing cases where mitigation efforts are ignored and the adverse effects of that (ie: Hurricane Harvey in 2017, where neighborhoods in Houston that had been built on top of flood plains were inundated by storm surge). Mitigation is almost always cheaper than recovery.
While you can definitely mitigate some elements of terrorism (eg: remove cases where radicalization is likely), you can't mitigate it anywhere near as well as weather effects.
Kinda? The effects of extreme weather can be mitigated (eg: don't build on flood plains), but we're seeing increasing cases where mitigation efforts are ignored and the adverse effects of that (ie: Hurricane Harvey in 2017, where neighborhoods in Houston that had been built on top of flood plains were inundated by storm surge). Mitigation is almost always cheaper than recovery.
While you can definitely mitigate some elements of terrorism (eg: remove cases where radicalization is likely), you can't mitigate it anywhere near as well as weather effects.
FEMA is also not responsible for the civil engineering of Houston (or New Orleans, for that matter). They’re in charge of managing emergencies, not preventing them.
yes but this is isnt actually about disaster response, it's about politics and governing, which unfortunately means its emotional and not logical.
I don't know if it's relevant or not, but FEMA is the agency that took over the Civil Defense role. (Think fallout shelters and that kind of thing.) While it later took on responsibility for natural disasters, I don't believe that was the priority for it.
We have a pretty good idea of how to identify and respond to hurricanes.. not so much for terrorism.
Hurricanes don’t impact much of the US. Nebraska for example has zero hurricane risks, and while low it’s has some terrorism risks. Also, in terms of preparation that can have positive returns it’s not clear FEMA actually needs to spend that much on Hurricanes per year. 10 year old flood maps still work just fine etc.
So, this may actually be completely reasonable behavior based on FEMA’s mandates.
So, this may actually be completely reasonable behavior based on FEMA’s mandates.
You know, there are other kinds of natural disasters. Remember a few weeks ago when something called a "derecho" tore across Middle America - starting from Nebraska? https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/10/weather/derecho-forecast-chic...
Ever hear of something called an "earthquake"? Strikes with absolutely no warning, most of the US's tech hotspots are either right on top of a fault line, or in the path of a tsunami caused by one out in the ocean.
I'm sure you will be completely fine with the government continuing to earmark most FEMA funds for "counter-terrorism" when you're affected by one of these. Especially if it's in a year where the President has just drained most of the non-terror funds by swiping them for something else, like he did this year:
The Trump administration recently ordered FEMA to divert $44 billion from the agency’s disaster-relief fund to pay for federal unemployment benefits. The measure was a stopgap after Congress failed to enact another Covid-19 stimulus package. - the article at hand
Ever hear of something called an "earthquake"? Strikes with absolutely no warning, most of the US's tech hotspots are either right on top of a fault line, or in the path of a tsunami caused by one out in the ocean.
I'm sure you will be completely fine with the government continuing to earmark most FEMA funds for "counter-terrorism" when you're affected by one of these. Especially if it's in a year where the President has just drained most of the non-terror funds by swiping them for something else, like he did this year:
The Trump administration recently ordered FEMA to divert $44 billion from the agency’s disaster-relief fund to pay for federal unemployment benefits. The measure was a stopgap after Congress failed to enact another Covid-19 stimulus package. - the article at hand
Atlantic hurricanes have cost $400 billion of damage in the last 5 years alone.
The total damage caused by all terrorist attacks, worldwide, in the 21st century probably amounts to the damage caused by an average year of Atlantic hurricanes. Add in the Pacific hurricane season, which is generally worse, and it's clear that hurricanes cause far more damage than terrorism does.
The total damage caused by all terrorist attacks, worldwide, in the 21st century probably amounts to the damage caused by an average year of Atlantic hurricanes. Add in the Pacific hurricane season, which is generally worse, and it's clear that hurricanes cause far more damage than terrorism does.
It’s not FEMA’s job to reduce physical damage. That’s what building codes etc are for. FEMA’s job is to coordinate responses to save lives in the short term and rebuild infrastructure in the long term. Hurricanes do a lot of damage, but rarely kill people in the US.
There are new FEMA grant programs for 2020 that will disburse $660 million in funding for what the agency calls “pre-disaster mitigation,” focusing on resiliency against flooding and the relocation of vulnerable communities. Last year, however, approximately 75% of FEMA’s total preparedness grants went to the programs with counter-terrorism links, according to the GAO report.
-the article at hand
-the article at hand
Tell that to the people who died in New Orleans in Katrina due to ACOE's terrible levees.
Just because people have died in a natural disaster doesn’t make it FEMAs job to prevent building damage. Not sure what you’re getting at
I believe that coldcode is pushing back on Retric's statement that hurricanes rarely kill people in the US. But, OK, coldcode found a counterexample. That doesn't make "rarely" untrue, no matter how much we all remember the counterexample.
Rarity is relative to the comparison, is it rare compared to terror deaths?
Hurricane Florence alone killed more people in the US than any terrorist attack since 9/11. All hurricane deaths in Trump's term alone (predominantly Florence, Harvey, Irma), excluding Maria, have killed more people than all terrorism attacks since 9/11 combined. Hurricane Maria killed more than 9/11.
If you’re looking at the excess deaths after Maria then you need to do the same thing for 9/11. By one estimate 221 policemen died as a result of medical issues from 9/11 which don’t make the official figures based on initial deaths. Dust inhalation etc very much killed people only indirectly involved on 9/11. Thus, any kind of apples to apples comparison of either direct or direct + indirect deaths put 9/11 as a significantly more deadly event.
PS: Also that extrapolation on death rates for Maria is extremely questionable as it’s been rising in Porto Rico for years. The increase from 2013 to 2014 is larger than the increase for 2016 to either 2017 or 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/580903/death-rate-in-pue... You can assume the only thing bad that happened was a hurricane, but the data really doesn’t support that.
PS: Also that extrapolation on death rates for Maria is extremely questionable as it’s been rising in Porto Rico for years. The increase from 2013 to 2014 is larger than the increase for 2016 to either 2017 or 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/580903/death-rate-in-pue... You can assume the only thing bad that happened was a hurricane, but the data really doesn’t support that.
You've lost sight of your own argument in the weeds of specific numbers here.
The broader point I'm making is this: hurricanes in the SE US and the Caribbean are, to a large degree "expected" disasters. As such they can be planned for, and damage can be minimized. And, I believe what you want to say is that they aren't all that "bad" anymore because of proper disaster preparation.
I would agree that hurricanes shouldn't be all that devastating in effect. But the data shows, quite convincingly IMHO, that we aren't doing as good as we could be doing in actually preparing for them.
The broader point I'm making is this: hurricanes in the SE US and the Caribbean are, to a large degree "expected" disasters. As such they can be planned for, and damage can be minimized. And, I believe what you want to say is that they aren't all that "bad" anymore because of proper disaster preparation.
I would agree that hurricanes shouldn't be all that devastating in effect. But the data shows, quite convincingly IMHO, that we aren't doing as good as we could be doing in actually preparing for them.
My point has nothing to do with what we should be doing just what FEMA should be doing. They have a very important but also very specific role. Other organizations are supposed to prevent levees from overtopping, keep buildings standing, etc. FEMA is there for redundancy so that such instances are mitigated after the fact.
When it comes to hurricanes that equates to selecting evacuation routes and locations to shelter the storm etc. If needed they may help create such shelters, but that stuff really seems to be working well. What happens after the storm is largely a question of how well other organizations have done their job. Aka what percentage of homes are habitable translates into how many people FEMA needs to find shelter for.
However, that last bit is a real question. Do we ramp up FEMA’s ability to build temerity houses or reduce the need for such temporary houses? I think it’s clear FEMA could do a much better job in disaster aftermath, but for hurricanes I think that’s largely solving the wrong problem.
When it comes to hurricanes that equates to selecting evacuation routes and locations to shelter the storm etc. If needed they may help create such shelters, but that stuff really seems to be working well. What happens after the storm is largely a question of how well other organizations have done their job. Aka what percentage of homes are habitable translates into how many people FEMA needs to find shelter for.
However, that last bit is a real question. Do we ramp up FEMA’s ability to build temerity houses or reduce the need for such temporary houses? I think it’s clear FEMA could do a much better job in disaster aftermath, but for hurricanes I think that’s largely solving the wrong problem.
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You act as if all that damage could be prevented by FEMA.
The point is there is only so much you CAN do to prevent damage from a hurricane but there is a lot you can do to prevent a terrorist attack.
The point is there is only so much you CAN do to prevent damage from a hurricane but there is a lot you can do to prevent a terrorist attack.
Terrorist attacks were responsible for at least one expensive war.
A lot of FEMA’s work is generalizable—set up emergency shelters, evacuate people from disaster areas, provide supplies to disaster areas. Most of that stuff is pretty similar for earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, or terrorist attacks. Having more terrorism-specific funding doesn’t mean terrorism is a higher priority or greater threat than hurricanes, just that it’s more expensive to deal with.
In FEMA speak, preparedness is different from hazard mitigation. FEMA has an entirely separate grant program for hazard mitigation, which is funded with ~$0.7bn for flood and infrastructure resiliency, for example.
Each of these is dwarfed in turn by the actual response budget which goes into the Disaster Relief Fund, something around $15bn this FY.
Each of these is dwarfed in turn by the actual response budget which goes into the Disaster Relief Fund, something around $15bn this FY.
FEMA is misguided in that is should be dispensing aid to states and cities in need and not instead doing the relief itself. Too often it actually steps in and blocks cities and states from properly administering aid to those in need. In effect, it should be handing out block grants and insuring that states don't conflict with each other, not be the source of conflict.
One major problem FEMA faces is not how it allocates its fund between disasters and terrorism it is instead the more of those funds land in states which have representation in Congress committees which exercise oversight on FEMA. Terrorism funding goes to police mostly and some to fire and related but the police and sheriffs of this country have outsized power in politics; related - the reason why defund the police was quickly dropped from political platforms
One major problem FEMA faces is not how it allocates its fund between disasters and terrorism it is instead the more of those funds land in states which have representation in Congress committees which exercise oversight on FEMA. Terrorism funding goes to police mostly and some to fire and related but the police and sheriffs of this country have outsized power in politics; related - the reason why defund the police was quickly dropped from political platforms
This would work great if every state and city government was competent and good at disaster relief. In general they're not, and FEMA already rely too much on having competent local government that they can co-operate with - in particular, I get the distinct impression that a lot of the disaster relief problems in Puerto Rico which were blamed on FEMA and the federal government were actually the result of the local government being completely and utterly useless (infamously so, even).
bob_page(1)
Hurricanes only kill people who can't afford to flee, while terrorism is something that even the wealthy are afraid of.
One thing I didn't see mentioned in the article is that Congress usually approves emergency funding after a major hurricane, which can be used to rebuild to prepare for the next hurricane.
It's not all that surprising that it may cost more to prepare for the huge and unknown variety of possible terrorist attacks as compared to the pretty well-known threat of hurricanes.
To me, the more important thing is that we make sure they have adequate resources to address both kinds of disaster (as well as others). I don't really care which one is more expensive.