Doug Wolf, a prolific contributor here in the form of comments, has started a blog. Go check it out. Your homework assignment is to grasp the meaning of its title.

This hurricane disaster, relief response, and subsequent mass politicization of it did not pass my smell test, as I've already posted a number of times. But wada I know? K, then how 'bout VDH, America's smartest, most truly educated man?

Here: We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering. The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network. You cannot speed recovery and relief efforts up by prepositioning assets (in the affected areas) since the assets are endangered by the very storm which destroyed the region. No amount of yelling, crying and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above.

In comments to this entry at QandO Blog, David Sculer asks what Billy Beck characterizes as an enormous question: Yes, that idea occurred to me as well and I pitched it at a dozen or so econ-bloggers but didn’t get much reaction. A detail that probably should be considered in this regard is how such a thing could be privatized. The first alternative that occurred to me was insurance. But, of course, flood insurance is the province of the federal government, too, and the way it’s been explained to me is that the federal government does it because the private sector just won’t do it. It’s a market failure. I’d be interested in being corrected on this. Every other mechanism I could think of sounded pretty darned medieval like the castles on the Rhine collecting tolls. How do you see it being done? Now, read Billy's answer carefully; very carefully: Dave Schuler—You ask an enormous question. And the enormity of it goes to point out the fact of what I keep calling "The Endarkenment". What this is really about is learning all over again what values are, what production is, how it happens, and why. There is a huge complex...