Paul M. Jones

I never want to hear another word about Wal-Mart is "evil."

Walmart's preparedness system helped the company emerge as a hero after Katrina, says Steve Horwitz, an economist at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., who studied the company's response.

"They know exactly what people want after a hurricane," he says. "One of my favorite stories from Katrina is that the most popular food item after a major storm like this is strawberry Pop-Tarts."

Katrina showed that Wal-Mart was willing to let its employees improvise when they encountered something no computer could predict, Horwitz says.

In Waveland, Miss., where a Walmart was badly damaged, "they sort of pushed all this stuff into the parking lot and basically gave it away to the community," he says. "In other places, they broke into their own pharmacy to get drugs for local hospitals."

Since Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has begun studying ways to work with the private sector during emergencies. And the state of Florida has actually hired Bryan Koon, Walmart's former emergency manager, to run its Division of Emergency Management.

"What I learned at Walmart helps me here to be able to make sure that we are putting those retailers in the best possible position to be successful in a situation like this," Koon says.

If most people can get what they need from stores after a hurricane, Koon says, agencies like his can focus on the less fortunate victims.

Read the whole thing: Big-Box Stores' Hurricane Prep Starts Early : NPR. If you know what to look for, you see Adam Smith's invisible hand, the Hayekian knowledge problem, and arguments against protecting consumers from "price gouging."

A note to all my friends and anyone else who reads this blog: the recent earthquake on the US east coast shows that the unexpected event will eventually occur. Prepare now while it's cheap to do so, both in time and money.

Have at least three days of food and water on hand for each person and pet in the house, more as you have storage for it. (You need at least a gallon of water per day per person.) Hell, throw in some comfort food stores too (liquor, candy, etc). The food should be suitable for long-term storage: canned meat, canned cheese and butter, rice, beans, freeze-dried foods, MREs, and the like. Remember that some foods need water for cooking, so factor that into your water stores.

Expect the power to be out. Flashlights, headlamps, candles, a camp stove, and some propane bottles will go a long way in the cold and dark.

A battery-powered radio or TV will help you keep connected to the world.

Keep an extra supply of your medicines on hand. The pharmacies may not be able to dispense or even order your meds when the power is out.

Keep some cash hidden away, so you can buy things in case the credit card networks are out with the power.

If you're inclined to firearms, have at least a pistol and a hundred rounds of ammunition. I carry a .40 Glock, but if I had it to do over again I'd go with a 9mm Glock. If you can, have a rifle and/or shotgun as well along with sufficient ammunition.

If you really want to get into the spirit of things, think of it as a game of preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse; it's amazing how well those scenarios translate into real-world disaster preparedness.

*Some* disaster is headed your way, whether its power outage from a storm, or an earthquake knocking out critical facilities. It will come as a surprise. You won't have enough lead time to get ready for it. Nobody will be there to help you in the first hours and days of the disaster. Look out for yourself first, so you can then look out for others.

PS. Here's a good roundup of links to help you get started: http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/008339.

I phoned all 84 doctors who were listed as practising within 10 kilometres of my home. Some of their receptionists were polite. Some were surly. All rejected me.

...

Then I found another Web-based service called HealthAware.ca. It allows you to search for doctors who are accepting patients. Skeptical, I gave it a try. Lo and behold, there was a doctor listed at a clinic called ExecHealth located right behind my office. Hallelujah!

When I called I was directed to their marketing department. And yes, said the man on the other end of the line, they would be glad to take me as a patient. For $3,000 a year. I actually gave it some thought before declining the offer.

File this under "Health *insurance* is not the same thing as health *care*." Also file under "unintended consequences", "perverse incentives," and "price ceilings cause shortages." Via Price Controls Cause Doctor Shortage in Canada, David Henderson | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

Most of us opponents of a wall have focused on the idea that the wall is meant to "wall out" immigrants. But we just observed the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, a wall that was meant to, and did, "wall in" residents. I think I remember co-blogger Bryan worrying that a wall on the border with Mexico might wall us in. I think this is a serious worry. If, 20 years ago, you had asked me if a U.S. president would try to persuade the head of a totalitarian country to reinstitute restrictions on residents leaving that country, I would have said "No way." Yet three years later that's exactly what President Clinton persuaded Fidel Castro to do.

via Robert Frost and Michele Bachmann on Walls, David Henderson | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

I don't think anyone really knows how to help everyone. I don't even know what's best for me. Take my uncertainty about what's best for me and multiply that by every combination of the over 300 million people in the United States and I have no idea what the government should do.

President Obama sure looks and acts way smarter than me, but no one is 2 to the 300 millionth power times smarter than me. No one is even 2 to the 300 millionth times smarter than a squirrel. I sure don't know what to do about an AA+ rating and if we should live beyond our means and about compromise and sacrifice. I have no idea. I'm scared to death of being in debt. I was a street juggler and carny trash -- I couldn't get my debt limit raised, I couldn't even get a debt limit -- my only choice was to live within my means. That's all I understand from my experience, and that's not much.

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.

People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we're compassionate we'll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.

via I don't know, so I'm an atheist libertarian - CNN.com.

... [The] glee and impunity with which rioters torched and looted large sections of London are an indictment of two beloved projects of British and other European elites: a disarmed citizenry and an all-encompassing, cradle-to-grave welfare state.

It’s hard to imagine riots of these size going on for days on end in the American South or Midwest simply because so many armed, law-abiding citizens would stand ready to defend their lives, liberty and property. Once you’ve shot a few rioters dead, it does rather tend to put a damper on the festive mood of the others. An armed shop owner in Texas or Ohio wouldn’t have to stand idly by while his life work burned, waiting vainly for police that never come.

But London shopkeepers and home-owners never had that choice. As Instapundit noted, “Unlike L.A., there are no Korean shopkeepers with AR-15s to help contain the looting.” Since handguns were banned in the UK in 1997 (tightening already restrictive firearm laws), their per capita crime rate has skyrocketed compared to ours.

Cf. "An armed society is a polite society." Via A Disarmed Society is a Violent Society « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog.

Gary Johnson’s philosophy is easily summarized. He thinks the state is far too big. He wants to balance the federal budget – not 20 years from now, but immediately – and has identified the requisite spending cuts. He understands that an adventurist foreign policy, as well as being expensive, diminishes domestic liberty: that there is a contradiction, in Russell Kirk’s phrase, between an American Republic and an American Empire. Accordingly, he was against the attacks on Iraq and Libya and, though he supported the overthrow of the Taliban, he opposed the elaboration and prolongation of the US mission in Afghanistan.

Gary Johnson is a libertarian on social issues, grasping that the American constitution rests tacitly on tolerance, privacy and equality before the law (see above clip). He was unusual among Republicans in strenuously resisting the various erosions of civil liberties carried out under the guise of anti-terrorism legislation. He sees the “war on drugs” as a misapplication of state power. In short, he believes in personal freedom, states’ rights and the US Constitution.

... Gary Johnson was elected on precisely such a manifesto in the swing state of New Mexico, and promptly set about putting his beliefs into practice. He took the view that there should be as few laws as possible, and vetoed more legislation during his term than the other 49 state governors put together. He cut taxes 14 times and never raised them once. Result? A budget surplus and an economic boom. During Gary Johnson’s gubernatorial term, 1,200 state jobs were axed, but 20,000 private sector jobs were created. And here’s the best bit: he was handsomely re-elected, despite a two-to-one Democrat majority.

via Meet Gary Johnson, the most libertarian candidate ever to seek the US presidency – Telegraph Blogs.

Now that S&P has downgraded Federal debt, watch for state and municipal debt to be downgraded as well. Then watch state and municipal pensions get raided (where they still exist at all). Then all hell breaks loose. Cf. the Pension Tsunami.

The ruckus that nearly paralysed the US economy last week, and led to the loss of its AAA rating from Standard & Poor’s, arose from a confrontation over the most basic principles of American life.

...

The Tea Party faction within the Republican party was demanding that, before any further steps were taken, there must be a debate about where all this was going. They had seen the future toward which they were being pushed, and it didn’t work. ...

... contrary to prevailing wisdom, their view is not naive and parochial: it is corroborated by the European experience. By rights, it should be Europe that is immersed in this debate, but its leaders are so steeped in the sacred texts of social democracy that they cannot admit the force of the contradictions which they are now hopelessly trying to evade.

...

Also collapsing before our eyes is the lodestone of the Christian Socialist doctrine that has underpinned the EU’s political philosophy: the idea that a capitalist economy can support an ever-expanding socialist welfare state.

...

We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc.

Emphasis added. Via If we are to survive the looming catastrophe, we need to face the truth - Telegraph.

<snark>Obama keeps saying he inherited the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the bad economic situation, etc., the implication being there's not much he can do about those things. You know what else he inherited? A triple-A credit rating from the S&P.</snark> (Shamelessly stolen from Jeff Underwood.)