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Houston: A Socialist Response

It seems some people think that if you go next door to get a cup of sugar from your neighbor–something common when I was growing up, in a less paranoid, less hostile age–this is socialism.  It is socialism if the church has a bake sale to help pay someone’s medical bills.  It is socialism if large numbers of people contribute money to help their fellow Americans.  This is stupidity.  It is an abuse of language and thought made possible by the idiotic thought central to the whole idea psychologically, which is if that people come together voluntarily, that is community, so logically forcing people to come together–as mediated by a vast and powerful bureaucracy–is likewise community.  This is sociologically and psychologically indefensible.

No, Socialism would have been, among other things, to make sure that every boat in the “Cajun Navy” first got an inspection and a safety certificate before they were allowed to conduct rescues.  Committees would have been formed to make sure that they went into all neighborhoods evenly, such that no one neighborhood got a disproportionate number of boats.

There would have needed to have been an enormous number of bureaucrats to oversee this operation, and they themselves would have needed to be fed and housed, out of the money which might otherwise have gone to survivors.  They would have maintained an aura of moral hauteur, at the good they were doing in the world.

And, of course, as has been seen the world over, no small number of them would not have been averse to receiving bribes and favors to make sure certain people were exempted from equality, and they certainly would have taken care of their own family and friends first.

As things happened, though, the free energy of free people was mobilized, to great effect.  This is an excellent analogy of free markets.  There is no need for top down management.  People are not fucking idiots, and in general and in aggregate if they are decent human beings, everything works out.  Houston is a formally complex system, and using anything but local knowledge would have been imbecilic; as indeed it is with regard to all economic issues.