The Edge of a Hurricane's Cutlass
by Heidi C. Lange
I swore I wouldn’t write about this. Everyone on God’s Green Earth wrote about Katrina and I swore I wouldn’t go there. But you have to admit that seeing two of these things in a row is pretty impressive. I mean, it even has me (sort of) paying attention to the news.
Hwæt, another hurricane. It’s a bad thing. At least, I think so. Personally, I always think death and destruction is a bad thing. Very bad, actually.
Somehow, though, I know that with this hurricane, just like with Katrina, just like with every national disaster in the history of civilization, there will be a Mr. X. Mr. X won’t agree with me; he thinks that the hurricane is providing jobs. He thinks there is a good side to death and destruction.
What is there to say? I certainly don’t think I can explain this concept any better than Bastiat or Hazlitt did. Somehow, people continue to argue that disasters provide jobs. They don’t. They just don’t. If they did, it would be productive to walk around downtown Chicago and smash BMW windshields with a baseball bat. Hey, you’d be providing jobs, right? And who can complain about that?
Actually, I think that the whole broken-window fallacy is pretty closely aligned with the outsourcing argument. I’m almost certain that if I could convince someone that hurricanes do not create jobs (at least, that they don’t make us better off than we were before), then I could convince him that it’s good to get someone who’s more productive than I am to do my job.
But the truth is, I won’t convince him. There will always be that same percentage of citizens who raise the post-disaster cry. There will always be those factory workers who -- unwilling to innovate and make themselves more marketable -- complain when someone else can do their jobs better than they can, and sit at home watching DirecTV they pay for with their unemployment check.
I’m starting to think the answer is to work on the side of death and destruction. Maybe I should turn to piracy; intelligence certainly isn’t winning out. I mean, to hear these guys talk, they’re grateful to Katrina and Rita. Perhaps they’d be grateful to have a pirate fleet in the Gulf Coast.
Besides, I’m handy with a cutlass, and I think I’d look good in a red striped shirt and eyepatch. I know I’d look good in boots.
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