Monday, September 26, 2005
Response to Tatem Bowers from 9/14/05
I can think of at least one normative framework in which this type of contribution would be justified, that framework is social justice. Social justice is based on the idea of equality and if suddenly a lot of people are no longer equal (or even have the ability to be equal) than the government's contribution is legitimate. Whether by equality we are referring to distributive equality or opportunity equality, when a city is destroyed the victims are no longer "equal" in either respect.
However, I also think that the government's contribution could be justified from a libertarian perspective as well. Government assistance to victims wouldn't be justified from a utopian idea of liberty, but from a constitutional idea of liberty I think it could be. Perhaps it wouldn't be legitimate the way that this specific contribution happened, but this type of monetary help could be justified if the large majority of people voted to help victims of natural disasters. Consent to tax for the specific purpose of helping victims of natural disasters is certainly consistent with liberty. I also believe that the majority of people would in fact vote for such a policy. (I don't know that for sure, but I think it's a possibility.) The utopian idea of liberty would lead us to believe that government isn't even necessary, but I think that most of us would agree that it is indeed necessary. Therefore, we have to compromise the strict sense of liberty at times and I believe that perhaps Katrina may be one of those circumstances. Again maybe not the way that the government stepped in in this specific case, but perhaps the government should consider putting a policy regarding monetary assistance in the event of a natural disaster on the ballot for people to decide.
Furthermore, living on this earth is risky no matter where you live. Of course some places have higher risk than others and some people are going to be more risk adverse than others. It would be unrealistic to expect people to live only in places with the lowest risk of natural disasters. Maybe a policy could be accepted that would include some kind of graded scale that would take into consideration the level of risk to determine the amount of assistance to give, although I'm not sure how that could be done.
However, I also think that the government's contribution could be justified from a libertarian perspective as well. Government assistance to victims wouldn't be justified from a utopian idea of liberty, but from a constitutional idea of liberty I think it could be. Perhaps it wouldn't be legitimate the way that this specific contribution happened, but this type of monetary help could be justified if the large majority of people voted to help victims of natural disasters. Consent to tax for the specific purpose of helping victims of natural disasters is certainly consistent with liberty. I also believe that the majority of people would in fact vote for such a policy. (I don't know that for sure, but I think it's a possibility.) The utopian idea of liberty would lead us to believe that government isn't even necessary, but I think that most of us would agree that it is indeed necessary. Therefore, we have to compromise the strict sense of liberty at times and I believe that perhaps Katrina may be one of those circumstances. Again maybe not the way that the government stepped in in this specific case, but perhaps the government should consider putting a policy regarding monetary assistance in the event of a natural disaster on the ballot for people to decide.
Furthermore, living on this earth is risky no matter where you live. Of course some places have higher risk than others and some people are going to be more risk adverse than others. It would be unrealistic to expect people to live only in places with the lowest risk of natural disasters. Maybe a policy could be accepted that would include some kind of graded scale that would take into consideration the level of risk to determine the amount of assistance to give, although I'm not sure how that could be done.
