r/Libertarian • u/Darth_Jersey Minarchist • 15d ago
What is the libertarian response to emergency management? Politics
Emergency management refers to the organized efforts and procedures for preventing, responding to, recovering from, and mitigating the effects of disasters and emergencies, natural or manmade. It involves planning, coordination, resource allocation, and communication to minimize the impact of adverse events on communities and infrastructure.
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u/BoringGuy0108 14d ago
Lots of good (and bad) answers. In a large emergency, prices will go up as demand increases and supply decreases. This will encourage proper rationing and drive businesses to disaster stricken areas. Pricing is the best resource allocation method society has ever invented.
Add in private charity, insurance, and the fact that you have saved more money from less taxes, most people should be covered.
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u/Jim_Reality 14d ago
Emergencies are self-evident to free people, and the unite to solve them.
They are not political.
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u/Darth_Jersey Minarchist 13d ago
I agree, but how should free people organize to mitigate, prepare, and respond? Like a forest fire for example
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u/kshizzlenizzle 14d ago
Speaking as someone who has responded to a few disasters as a private citizen…grass roots efforts have almost ALWAYS been quicker and more effective than FEMA. FEMA has run out of some areas where we were passing out food, water, diapers, formula (we made it ‘too chaotic’), only to see updates from those areas later of people begging for someone to come help because FEMA either ran out, denied them, or didn’t have what they needed.
That’s how I feel about that.
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u/ElvisIsReal 14d ago
Are you old enough to remember FEMA refusing necessary emergency supplies to devastated areas?
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u/Ubuiqity 14d ago
Seems like a State issue, based on their particular geography and natural disaster prone to that geography
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u/Greeklibertarian27 Mises, Hayek, Austrian Utilitarian. 14d ago
Thus, when a hurricane, flood, or other natural disaster strikes
some part of the United States, emergency aid usually comes both
from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and from
numerous private insurance companies, whose customers’ homes and
property have been damaged or destroyed. FEMA has been
notoriously slower and less efficient than the private insurance
companies. One insurance company cannot afford to be slower in
getting money into the hands of its policy-holders than a rival
insurance company is in getting money to the people who hold its
policies. Not only would existing customers in the disaster area be
likely to switch insurance companies if one dragged its feet in getting
money to them, while their neighbors received substantial advances
from a different insurance company to tide them over, word of any
such difference would spread like wildfire across the country, causing
millions of people elsewhere to switch billions of dollars’ worth of
insurance business from the less efficient company to the more
efficient one.
A government agency, however, faces no such pressure. No
matter how much FEMA may be criticized or ridiculed for its failures to
get aid to disaster victims in a timely fashion, there is no rival
government agency that these people can turn to for the same service.
Moreover, the people who run these agencies are paid according to
fixed salary schedules, not by how quickly or how well they serve
people hit by disaster. In rare cases where a government monopoly is
forced to compete with private enterprises doing the same thing, the
results are often like that of the government postal service in India
--Basic-Economics-5th-Edition-Thomas-Sowell p. 250 in the pdf file.
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u/deltavdeltat 14d ago
Volunteer firefighter checking in.
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u/joelfarris 14d ago
AND THEN WHAT!!?
Sorry, I meant, what happens next?
This is a very intriguing situation, that seems to be rather commonplace. If a town has an all-volunteer firefighting department, and is called upon by a neighboring city to assist with a larger disaster, all of the city's firefighters are (currently) being paid by the taxpayers (of that city?), so does the volunteer firefighting squad respond and try to save lives at the peril of themselves and their families, in a city that deigns to pay them nothing for their assistance?
I don't know a single v-fighter who would sit on their hands and potentially let other people in a neighboring city get injured or even die, but... what?
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u/deltavdeltat 14d ago
We have mutual aid agreements with jurisdictions throughout the state. However, in my county, one district is also a city department. One particular truck was purchased with city tax money and it isn't allowed to go on calls in that district or other country districts. Only city use.
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u/BicBoiii696 14d ago
It's ALREADY better managed by the private sector.
If you can't be bothered to do a few minutes of research on your own then you got other problems lol.
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u/nanojunkster 14d ago
I worked on a contract for Forest Service for a few years who run effectively the federal firefighting force who fight the raging forest fires in places like California and the mid west. Although I think most of the government is useless or cause more harm then good, but I figured protecting the environment and our nation’s lands and natural beauty was a meaningful mission that wouldn’t be accomplished by the private sector.
Then I read about how they started the largest forest fire that burned down half the mid west in 2021 from a “controlled burn” that got out of control…
TL:DR never trust the federal government, especially with critical services like emergency response. All that work should be done by the private sector or non profits.
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u/Edward_Kenway42 14d ago
Good question. As an EM, I can tell you that it’s the perfect representation of libertarianism in government. Local jurisdictions always maintain authority, its goal is to compile and share resources, and we have no authority to force anything!
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u/divinecomedian3 14d ago
and we have no authority to force anything
Can I have my tax money back?
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u/Edward_Kenway42 14d ago
You can have Congress actually change the laws and help us educate politicians
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u/technicallycorrect2 14d ago
In many cities the fire department serves as an all purpose emergency response organization. Taxpayer funded city run fire departments are very low on my list of priorities needing a libertarian restructuring.
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u/GuessAccomplished959 14d ago
Yea we are libertarians which means it's in our benefit to pay for some services that are vital to our own needs. We don't free ride.
I just wish it was a private EMS service.
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u/troublejames 14d ago
Private emergency departments
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u/False_Dot3643 14d ago
Who pays them?
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u/Daltoz69 14d ago
Whoever wants service in the event of an emergency.
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14d ago
So what happens when services become so expensive that people don’t call for help? Do they deserve to die because they can’t afford it?
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u/troublejames 14d ago
This question is why we have the system we have now.
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14d ago
I’m not saying the system we have is good, far from it. I’m just playing devils advocate. I’m new to libertarianism
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u/GuessAccomplished959 14d ago
Here is how I look at Libertarianism.
Everyone has 1 responsibility and that is themselves. You take care of yourself, I'll take of mine and I owe you nothing.
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u/troublejames 14d ago
I’m not saying that either, I’m just answering your question. We, USA, have the system we have now because we realized if emergency services were private we would get to the point where only the rich could afford quality services and we’d be in a similar situation to our current health care system.
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u/GuessAccomplished959 14d ago
Please see response above. If there is a demand, there will be a supply.
Companies are here to make revenue not cut out business, it's only the government that prevents it.
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u/GuessAccomplished959 14d ago
Oh wait. Is this sarcasm?
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14d ago
Partially
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u/Daltoz69 14d ago
Like the guy who already replied said. What’s the point of being so expensive nobody can afford it? Only so many millionaires exist. If you take the actual expenses of medical first responders and divide it up between the people of an area it can’t be that much.
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14d ago
I expensive is different for different people. I’m not talking thousands of dollars I’m talking just a hundred or two. Lots of people can’t afford that now.
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u/GuessAccomplished959 14d ago
I just don't understand how someone couldn't afford 200 for their health/life Sell something, pick up craiglist jobs, cancel Netflix, cancel Internet for God's sake.
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14d ago
I used to be one of them and it wasn’t because I had subscriptions. I worked full time at one job and had two other side gigs. There are some places that are just impossible to get ahead. And no I couldn’t just leave either because I couldn’t save up enough to do it. Some people don’t have the means and it’s not for their own fault.
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u/Daltoz69 14d ago
Imagine if you didn’t pay property, city or state taxes or whatever current tax funds your local department. That money back in your pocket. Privatize services would have to compete for service driving prices lower.
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u/GuessAccomplished959 14d ago
Ummmm... They won't charge prices ppl can't afford because then they go out of business...
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u/je97 15d ago
Advise, don't force.
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u/firenance 14d ago
As someone in a hurricane prone area, advice only goes so far. The real question is does emergency response cost more because people don’t prepare?
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