Antilibertarianism

The recent financial crisis delivered a death blow to the ideology of free market capitalism that reigned for the last 25 years. But are we thinking seriously enough about what dismissing it means? There are wider implications than regulatory reform.

In the Reaganite positioning, big government was bad. Supplying social services was called "tax and spend," which was equated with waste and corruption. That was just spin of course: a major function of government is necessarily the provisioning of social services. On a micro level we could think of a condominium building: if the condo association decided to collect no condo fees and provide no services, then the snow wouldn't be plowed from the driveway and the hallways wouldn't be vacuumed; the leak in the roof wouldn't get fixed; the legal requirements of the association wouldn't be met.

Throughout the last 25 years we have had a trend of government cut-backs that have been not only harmful to our well-being, but also inefficient and costly. We need to rethink government's role in providing services: ideally, we need a new philosophy for the role of the state. It's not a trivial activity and presents some major challenges. I'm not just thinking of the need for prioritizing, but also the need to rethink the government's relationship with civil service unions; devise a public credo that provides for a more equitable sense of government handouts; figure out how to handle the retiring baby boom generation; and so on. We need to change the debate to a more realistic understanding than the old neo-con slash approach: use cost-benefit analysis to show the real cost of not spending money in some cases, such as reducing money for preventative health care or the training of doctors. And so on: I don't think I've probably even skimmed the main issues.

The US has a visionary president now, but Canada can't rely on him to create a conceptual approach to this post-Libertarian era because the US has a much more limited view of social services than Canadians do. Stephen Harper is obviously not going to provide that kind of vision: he's an old-order neo-con. But Michael Ignatieff might be the perfect person for the job, with the intellectual depth and the visionary perspective necessary to forge something new and appropriate for Canada.

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Report from New Orleans

It has been 21 months since Katrina struck New Orleans, but big chunks of the city are still uninhabitable. Something like 200,000 of the displaced people are still unable to go home. Beyond the damage to the culture, the ongoing human suffering overwhelmed me: people paying mortgages and taxes on their destroyed homes while they are stuck in shelters in other states - two years after the disaster - trying to clean up and rebuild their lives, but being prevented from doing so.

In the days I spent there last week, I could almost believe there was a conspiracy to keep residents from coming home. Things preventing people from rebuilding their homes include:

- Promised government funding that hasn't come through.
- Inadequate compensation by government (I saw a house that was purchased for $200,000 just before Katrina; the house was destroyed by a nearby faulty levee, so the government must compensate the owners, except the government will only pay $70,000 for the house and land, which is less than the mortgage).
- Government incompetence. FEMA paid contractors $44/ton to remove debris. The contractors subcontracted for $34/ton. The subcontractors hired locals at $9/ton to do the work.
- Insurance companies refusing to compensate people even though most people had flood insurance as well as regular home insurance.
- Water, sanitation, electricity and other infrastructure that are still unavailable in some areas.
- Lots of confusion around new building regulations.
- Levees that are still not safe - and won't be safe even after they're rebuilt, because of restrictions on government disaster funds that allows only replacement and prevents improvements.
- No progress in getting rid of "Mister Go" (the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet), a useless canal that was the cause of much of the flooding.
- Unsolved, ongoing problems with pumps and with flood prevention procedures.

Out in the affected neighborhoods I saw thousands of empty, wrecked houses, some still furnished but made toxic by mold; a boat stuck in a house roof; a car floating in the lake; ruined roads; piles of debris; block after deserted block.

The residents have done a ton to get their city back on track. Locals drive out to the City Park with their own lawn mowers and try to keep the grass cut. People have set up soup kitchens and public washing facilities. People are still rescuing pets. One school is being manned by teachers who live in a makeshift trailer park across the street. Locals also seem extremely well-informed in what needs to be done to protect the city, and have become very politicized - necessarily, after being treated with criminal indifference by their government.

The French Quarter is as lovely as ever, but the problems show. All those great music halls and restaurants were made possible by the people who are the local culture, and many of those people aren't there anymore. One restaurant I went to has managed to hire 7 people, but they had 27 employees before Katrina struck. They get by with a reduced menu and hours. One of the joys of New Orleans is the food, drink, music and architecture of fine old establishments like Antoine's and Arnaud's. Those establishments are hanging on, but I can't imagine they'll last much longer.

The Disneyfication of New Orleans seems to be well under way, with more tourist glitz on top of less authentic culture, but the seedy side is also greatly on the rise. Bourbon Street is worse than ever, a place for drunk college boys looking for the sleaziest of strip clubs. The murder rate has skyrocketed, making New Orleans the murder capital of the US. Until two weeks ago there wasn't even a forensic lab in the city after Katrina. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "wide open city."

Locals insist that the events of August 2005 were not a natural disaster. Katrina passed the city with very little damage. The disaster was a canal to the gulf (the MR GO) that brought a storm surge; levees that were so inadequate that they were breached from below; the entire Mississippi River system being mismanaged (which resulted in the marshes dying south of NO, which in past hurricanes had cushioned the blow); and negligence during the aftermath.

The country was so outraged about government negligence and incompetence after Katrina and was so vocal about it that afterwards we all believed we had been heard and that government (federal, state and municipal) would take this disaster seriously and handle it responsibly. In fact, the government response to New Orleans has only got worse and worse. It's mind-boggling.

See also my collection of emails sent by locals during Katrina: Voices From Katrina

102 Official Languages?

According to CBC Radio's The House this week, the Canadian Senate is looking into providing translation services for their speeches. The translators will cover a number of aboriginal languages so that aboriginal senators can speak in their native tongue in the senate.

The House interviewed a Liberal Senator from New Brunswick who is pushing the idea. When The House asked about the high cost of such a service, the senator said that these are living languages that we should preserve, and compared to the cost of digging up dinosaurs and building museums, this will not cost much.

That, of course, begs the question of how speaking in the senate will help preserve a language.

More importantly, it shows remarkable short-sightedness. We have two official languages, French and English. Will we now add a hundred-odd aboriginal languages to our list of official languages? When asked whether this will set a precedent that the House of Commons will also have to meet, the senator said, "Of course. It will be difficult for anyone to back away from that practice once it is accepted."

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Why People Deny Global Warming

Opposition to environmental protection comes, in large part, from proponents of small government who see the environmental issue as a threat to their attempt to reduce taxes, reduce regulations, and reduce government spending.

(If the threat to our country came in the form of a military threat, I'm positive that those same people would be willing to raise taxes, increase regulations, and increase government spending. Just look at recent events in the US.)

The troubling thing is that the opponents of large government do not phrase the environmental debate in terms of how we should respond to global warming; they deny the existence of global warming. Thus we have wasted years arguing about whether there is a problem, and are not making progress on how to address it.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been clear for some time that our pollution is causing global climate change. The most recent IPPC report states that this is "unequivocal". This isn't just a small committee. Wikipedia says, "The report was produced by around 600 authors from 40 countries, and reviewed by over 620 experts and governments. Before being accepted, the summary was reviewed line-by-line by representatives from 113 governments". I challenge anyone who doesn't believe the IPCC to say that they support big government; I don't think any such person exists.

There is a place in the environmental debate for people who are wary of big government. In fact, Canada's Green Party takes a very small-c conservative (even a big-C Conservative) approach to the environment by calling for a new tax structure that taxes waste and pollution. (I think the idea is crazy, as I have said before, on two grounds: (1) the tax system tosses out out the foundation of our current system, that people should pay proportionally more as their income rises, and so will have all sorts of unintended and negative social side effects; (2) their proposed tax system has no hope of being adopted in Canada, so the Green Party is wasting our time having this as the center of their environmental policy when they should be talking about more pragmatic, possible policy.) But the strategy is working for the Green Party - they are picking up right-wing voters.

In Europe, where big government is not such an anathema, environmental issues have been acknowledged and addressed much more effectively than in North America. And, gee willikers, the environmental initiatives haven't created behemoth public corporations, high levels of taxation or crushing regulatory bureaucracy. The free market isn't destroyed by wind power, tighter car emission standards, better urban planning, or better public transit infrastructure. It's nothing new... it's just smarter.

Germany, which is leading the way in environmental initiatives, now produces one-third of the world's wind power. It has the highest targets for cutting greenhouse gases in the EU, and is ahead of schedule. It has pioneered energy-sufficient towns and carless towns. It is the world leader in development of solar power. As one blogger writes, "Bad choices aren't banned outright (you can still buy a Hummer in Germany if you really want one), but better choices are encouraged. Discouragements: $6 a gallon gas, and special taxes on extremely inefficient vehicles. Encouragements: An efficient public-transport system, and compact, diverse neighborhoods." That kind of encouragement is no different from the Canadian government encouraging us to drive cars by paying for hiways but not for rail transit, or by zoning so much low density housing.

Germany is showing us all how to meet environmental targets. It has made huge environmental improvements without curtailing freedom in any way. An example: only one-third of German hiways have a speed limit. Argue that one if you like, but Germans like to drive fast, and they do.

Me, I'm a proponent both of free markets and of big government. In fact, I don't think markets work without a lot of government "interference". Take financial markets as an example - stock exchanges are arguably the most tightly regulated markets going, and that's what keeps them humming. If you lose investor confidence you lose investors. Hence the biggest proponent of free markets - the US - has the most tightly regulated financial sector.

I love government regulation, and I want more regulation and more enforcement throughout society. But I can see that not everyone agrees with me, and I respect that. So let's get down to work here and find a way to address the environmental issue that we can all live with, as Germany has done. Otherwise we're heading for a fall.

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