Oh (Big) Brother

As the East Coast cleans up after Sandy, the usual suspects, such as The New York Times, now argue a big storm requires big government to clean up. This isn’t true, as I explain over at Forbes.com today. In fact, most of the response to a disaster is private and doesn’t require a mastermind to oversee it. Government can actually get in the way by enforcing rules that slow or prevent the recovery process. The Institute for Humane Studies has compiled a page of videos from its Learn Liberty series that provides a quick introduction to what free market economics says about natural disasters. I highly recommended it.