With people picking up the pieces after Sandy, the usual suspects like the New York Times are arguing that a big storm requires big government to clean up. This isn’t true, as I argue over in Forbes today. In fact, most of the response to a disaster is private and doesn’t require a mastermind to oversee it. Government can, moreover, get in the way, by enforcing rules that slow or prevent the recovery process. The Institute for Humane Studies has also compiled a page of videos from its Learn Liberty series that provides a quick introduction to what free market economics says about natural disasters. Highly recommended.
