A classic example of a government-created disaster

In my beautiful and long-suffering home state, the Army Corps of Engineers is preparing to open a spillway and flood 3,000 square miles in order to save Baton Rouge and New Orleans. All of the suffering this will cause, along with the choice we face between flooding two cities and flooding a large expanse of rural land, is the product of government policy.

New Orleans itself is a classic example of malinvestment brought about by government policy. The kernel of the city is actually above sea level, on a little knob of land rising above the surrounding river and swampland. It's a prime site for a city, especially from the perspective of the early 18th century- there's no way in or out of the city from the mainland save through a thick, impenetrable swamp, while the river is navigable to ocean-going vessels (and remains so as far north as Baton Rouge). The bend in the river that gives the Crescent City its name means any hostile vessels coming upriver are exposed to fire from the city's (long-gone) guns long before they are in a position to threaten the city, forcing any attacking force to land downriver and march along the river towards the city, and as anyone who has seen 300 or read about the Battle of New Orleans knows, a small force can block a much larger one across a narrow front.

While it's a prime site for a fortified port city, it's not a prime site for a sprawling conurbation. All around the little knob of land that today holds the city center was originally intermittently flooded swampland at or below sea level. But starting around 1900, the city government, aided by state and federal agencies, started trying to expand the city's geographical area. First A. Baldwin Wood's pumping scheme drained much of the surrounding swampland, then the Corps of Engineers started building the massive flood control apparatus that notoriously failed in September of 2005. Responding to the cheap land and believing official guarantees of safety, the city's residents spread out and the Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area was born. Ever since Katrina, we have faced the consequences of this state planning- one of our nation's major cities is in a completely untenable position, largely below sea level and sitting on the Gulf Coast.

In the aftermath of Katrina, we often heard supposedly "edgy" and "boundary-pushing" pundits and nitwits raising the "hard question" of how much responsibility New Orleanians bore for their suffering. After all, they had chosen to live below sea level on the coast. What fools! What rubes! How could the rest of the nation possibly owe these people anything? Well, perhaps because the United States Government had built an elaborate system of engineering wonders that it then explicitly guaranteed would protect the city from harm. The thought that a man is responsible for consequences of  the failure of his floodworks is a pretty old one:

53. If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined.

54. If he be not able to replace the corn, then he and his possessions shall be divided among the farmers whose corn he has flooded.

That's from the Code of Hammurabi. The United States Government was too lazy to keep its dam in proper condition and did not so keep it. The dam broke, and fields were flooded. The government must pay restitution.

But what about today's crisis? The government built an elaborate system of flood walls, levees and spillways all along the Mississippi in a foolish attempt to control the river, and all along the dynamic that played out in New Orleans was repeated. All the suffering caused by these floods is rightly laid at the feet of the state, for diverting society from its natural course through state efforts at diverting the river from its own natural course.