Monday, September 28, 2009

Short thought....

I wrote a paper on the inefficient government action of Katrina's disaster in New Orleans and here is a short thought on the government:

"What I do understand, or think I understand, is that people relied on the federal government to help them. With all of the social safety nets and social programs they were justified to rely on the government and that is the problem. When people are justified to rely on the government it creates huge problems. Risks that shouldn’t be taken are taken, people act without thinking, lives are lost, and progress is halted. This crude example puts it into perspective. If you manage assets for a “too big to fail” company and you earn a commission on profits what incentive do you have to minimize risk? If you make big bets and you are right, you make millions. If you are wrong you normally would put the company at risk to going bankrupt but in our current environment you would just get a bailout for almost no interest and make your money back in a few years. You might get fired but you get unemployment/welfare until you get your next job. Without risk of failure we have risk of collapse. Risk is a good thing; without it we have people taking riskless risks at the expense of the system (which we all pay for unless you take the risk, then you’re rewarded). My point is to get rid of social safety nets because then innovation and progress will happen. Do you think that the people of New Orleans would have ignored the problem if they knew they were the only ones to fix it? More power needs to be in the state and city level then the federal level because the federal government and their programs are a joke."

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