ejmoosa

A Tale of Two Communities

Whether or not you recognize it, we each live in two communities, one know as the public(governmentally controlled) and the private(controlled by business owners and stake holders).

To see the the success and failures available to each, we have been given New Orleans as a live case study.

Business owners reduced their risk exposure as best they could by closing business locations down and getting people out of town. The local government? They left their best assets for evacuation in areas that would surely flood, leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars in trasportation assets to be lost.

And when it was time to start looking to get things back under control, the local and state politicians got in front of the cameras and begged for help. The business people started helping themselves and that is why today the private enterprises that are so critical for the city to bounce back are coming on line faster than any of the so called disaster experts had forecast.

There is such a night and day difference between the two approaches. How many more times must we be shown that government does nothing very good and most things very poorly? How many more lives will be lost by convincing people to rely on government and then having government fail miserably, and then play the blame game? How many investigative committees will be formed, with none of them actually identifying the main culprit.

Government is meant to be there to protect rights. Government is not meant to run enterprises. If we learn anything at all, it would be nice if we could learn this once and for all.

posted by EJ @ 2:03 PM