Mickey Kaus over at Slate says the concept of federalism is to blame for the poor response by government:
Federalism Strikes Again: As long as we're apportioning blame in the Katrina fiasco, here's another culprit: federalism, by which I mean a) the U.S.'s interpolation of an unnecessary level of government (states) between cities and the national government and b) the non-hierarchical, "sovereign" nature of this unnecessary level, so that the national government can't just give its Louisiana subdivision orders the way, say, General Motors can give its Pontiac division orders.
and Kaus concludes:
Wouldn't it be better to have a system with one chain of command? Or is it desirable to have officials working through the night, not to provide help but to defend their turf?
What if the nature of government itself is incapable of dealing with disasters? Monopoly and hierarchy aren't very nimble in a very quick moving situation.
Lew Rockwell makes the case(which you will not see in the MSM) that government "property" and decision making itself is the culprit:
Only the public sector can preside over a situation this precarious and display utter and complete inertia. What do these people have to lose? They are not real owners. There are no profits or losses at stake. They do not have to answer to risk-obsessed insurance companies who insist on premiums matching even the most remote contingencies. So long as it seems to work, they are glad to go about their business in the soporific style famous to all public sectors everywhere.
And failure of one structure has highlighted the failures of other structures. The levees could not be repaired in a timely manner because roads and bridges built and maintained by government could not withstand the pressure from the flood. They broke down.
Government is a God that fails because coercion isn't a decent operating system.It's difficult to see how centralizing more decision making power could provide a
better outcome.
How does centralizing decision making prevent bad decision makers ? Via Josh Marshall
