Let Wal-Mart handle it

The Mises Institute has spoken about why government may not be the best entity to handle emergency relief. Now, here's a link to a column by NY Times reporter and columnist John Tierney. In it, he compares the government's response to hurricane Katrina with Wal-Mart's response.

Scott is the chief executive of Wal-Mart, one of the few institutions to improve its image here after Katrina sent a 15-foot wave across the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. If you mention the Red Cross or FEMA to people in Slidell, you hear rants about help that didn't arrive and phone lines that are always busy. If you mention state or national politicians, you hear obscenities.

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But if you visit the Wal-Mart and the Sam's Club stores here, you hear shoppers who have been without power for weeks marveling that there are still generators in stock (and priced at $304.04). You hear about the trucks that rolled in right after the hurricane and the stuff the stores gave away: chain saws and boots for rescue workers, sheets and clothes for shelters, water and ice for the public.

...there's even been talk of letting Wal-Mart take over FEMA's job. The company already has its own emergency operations center, where dozens of people began preparing for the hurricane the week before it hit by moving supplies and trucks into position.

Clinton looks back on the 1990's as FEMA's Age of Pericles. ''I think we did a good job of disaster management,'' he said on ABC's ''This Week.'' While criticizing the Bush administration for leaving poor people stranded in New Orleans, he said that he and his FEMA director, James Lee Witt, had been especially sensitive to the needs of poor people because of their own backgrounds.

But if they cared so much, why didn't New Orleans ever work out a feasible way to evacuate poor people? FEMA had a golden opportunity to plan it during the 1990's. The threat of nuclear war had receded and terrorism wasn't yet a priority, so the agency's biggest concerns should have been an earthquake in California and a flood in New Orleans.

In 1997, Congress gave FEMA $500,000 and ordered it to develop a comprehensive plan to evacuate New Orleans. The agency passed on the money to Louisiana, which used it instead to study building a new bridge. As Rita Beamish of The Associated Press reported on Sunday, FEMA didn't bother making sure a plan was drawn up – an aide to Witt said its job had just been to pass on the money.

How often do you suppose someone at Wal-Mart headquarters dispenses $500,000 and doesn't bother keeping track of it? The company can tell you the precise location of every thumbtack in its inventory. It's legendary for tracking every transaction and pinching every penny.

Thing is, a business can't force people to use it, nor can it threaten deadly force to get its way.

One comment on the notion of private entities being better than government at distributing aid brought up Enron and Tyco. In my reply, I pointed out that executives at both companies were convicted of breaking laws, and were in prison. Who's going to prison from FEMA?