Spencer Lives - and He Teaches at Harvard

Three points:

1. There is an obvious case for building something in New Orleans, because the Mississippi doesn't really join the Gulf of Mexico anywhere else.

2. New Orleans was not below sea level when it was built; the levees were built in order to protect an existing capital asset. They would not have been constructed all at once, but every incremental piece of construction made sense at the time; this is a good example of the sunk cost (oh ha ha ha) fallacy.

3. Good luck trying to make this argument in the Netherlands. The fact that under Jeff Miron's argument fifty percent of a large OECD country, including its main industrial and trading centres, makes "no economic sense", suggests strongly that there is something wrong with his argument.

Per dsquared's points, I would also add that a plausible argument is that not that levees were a waste (after all, New Orleans got several decades of economic use from them), but that *additional* investment in their upgrade/maintenance was probably warranted. Or rather, actually using the already disbursed maintenance monies in a reasonable way, rather than the criminal waste that actually occurred.

Another good use of funds would have been an evacuation plan that stood a decent chance of working, rather than the feel-good (but untested) fantasy that was tragically approved at all levels of government.

Of course, the Libertarian position may be that the 'criminal waste' and 'tragically approved' evac plan were all an inevitable part of government, but I disagree.

Buried within is a great quote: "without this intervention, people would not have been living"

I think that pretty well summarizes the extreme libertarian perspective on a lot of issues.

Perhaps taken out of context, but accurate all the same.

Hope for the day when social security and medicare are no more, so the elderly won't have to live as long: "without this intervention, people would not have been living"

Oh for the days before sanitation standards when the survival rate of children was so much lower, ensuring the proper winnowing of the lower classes: "without this intervention, people would not have been living"

And I pine for the days before polution standards when companies could send any possible effluent into our rivers and streams, poisoning those reliant upon these waters downstream. Because you know: "without this intervention, people would not have been living"

The good old days.

T.R. Elliot: without that intervention, the elderly, sick, etc. would have lived a lot longer due to better technology and cheaper services.

"Those who do not know their opponents' arguments don't really understand their own."

"There is an obvious case for building something in New Orleans, because the Mississippi doesn't really join the Gulf of Mexico anywhere else."

Well that opens up a whole can of worms. The only reason that the Mississippi joins the Gulf of Mexico there and not near Morgan city is because the US Army Corps of Engineers has spent one of the most expensive and dangerous water projects making it so. After New Orleans was so seriously damaged it would have been wise to look at that again, but we foolishly did not.

Buried within is a great quote: "without this intervention, people would not have been living"

Liar.

The full sentence is "without this intervention, people would not have been living in areas well-below sea level". The term "living" in that instance means "residing". By enticing people to reside in a dangerous area, the government recklessly endangered many lives. Congratulations for inverting the meaning of the quote.

I have to admit that my eyes sometimes glaze over in confusion when I see some similar-sounding names of some famous thinkers from 50-100 years ago. Here are some biographical links that may help sort it out if you have the same problem:

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

Biographical Foreword, by Eric Mack, to The Man Versus the State
Herbert Spencer and classical liberalism. Tibor R. Machan, intro to Spencer's The Principles of Ethics.

They are all quite different. The ironic moral might be: don't give your child a common name lest the name be conflated after the fact.