Here's an interesting thought in the dawn of a new era of government oversight: how much of a role did all of our 'first-responders' play in the Flight 1549 saga in the Hudson river? Turns out the answer is somewhere between "none" and "they actually got in the way." Butler Shaffer explains:
Upon landing in the river, and with the fate of 160 people in the balance, rescue efforts immediately began. Officials of the FAA, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, New York Mayor Bloomberg, and Senator Hillary Clinton, all descended on the scene to begin helping passengers to safety. No? It didn’t work out that way? But it must have been so. Is it not an integral part of our thinking that social order can be fostered and sustained only by a political system that can plan for responses to troublesome events? Wasn’t this the logic upon which federal, state and city governments acted in New Orleans, following hurricane Katrina? Do we not elect politicians who, in turn, create bureaucracies to make our lives secure?
Initially, the only seen presence of government at the site of the U.S. Airways emergency landing involved police helicopters interfering with rescue efforts by keeping the water around the plane churned up. These helicopters were of value to the state, of course, as a visual symbol of its superintending presence above a scene in which its practical role was nonexistent. Like a president or state governor flying over an area hit by a tornado or flooding, such an aerial presence reinforces the vertically-structured mindset upon which political authority depends. After rescue efforts were substantially completed – with no loss of life – New York and New Jersey police officials arrived (those whom the New Jersey governor incorrectly described as the "first responders").
The real work of rescuing passengers and crew members was left to the sources from which the only genuine social order arises: the spontaneous responses of individuals who began their day with no expectation of participating in the events that will henceforth be high-water marks in their lives. After the airliner came to a stop, one private ferry-boat operator, sensing the danger of the plane’s tail submerging, began pushing up on the tail in an effort to keep it elevated. Other private ferry-boat operators – whose ordinary work involved transporting people between New York and New Jersey – came to the scene in what became a spontaneously organized rescue under the direction of no one in particular. Photos of the area show the plane surrounded by ferryboats on all sides.
[via reason magazine]
A few interesting notes from the comment section:
ReplyDelete"And if they hadn't been there, we'd be hearing how incompetent the civil authorities are. To an anarchist, no government is the best government. We get it."
Bingo. This is the most irritating thing about a priori, retributivist anarchists. To give joe some credit, it's the "one drop rule" that appeals to some libertarian religionists.
So:
1. Had the police not been there, some folks would bitch.
2. If the police are there and they do they make mistakes, people will bitch.
3. If the police are there are do their jobs perfectly, we wouldn't be talking about this.
Not to go all Pollyanna "you never report the good news!"...but reason (and I don't blame them) has an incentive to make hay after every little police error.
So, when Shaffer says that the police were interfering with private rescue efforts, what is his source for that? I saw no footnotes and one link in the article (to another LRC article).
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Imagine how much better the response would have been if everyone involved -- airline pilot, ferry captains, police -- were cheap at-will employees barred from having a union, and were fresh out of whatever training (or lack thererof) the airline deemed necessary and had maybe 3 months' applicable experience between them?
If for instance Capt. Sullenberger didn't have to meet all those gubmint and union regs that pretty much force airlines to hire and retain -- at great cost -- virtually nothing but experienced ex-military pilots with massive numbers of hours logged piloting smaller commercial aircraft, I'm sure this would have turned out much better.
Point made about the self-organized nature of the successful rescue operation, but maybe it's best not to look at it as a binary choice between top-down regulation and bottom-up cooperativism. Maybe sometimes [ahem] the right formula is one of the infinite ways the two kinds of forces combine.
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My only thing to add was that his whole piece needed a giant [citation needed] next to it as he seemed to be talking out of his rear the whole time. And this gem was a little over the top...
"One of the more telling distinctions between informal and formal responses to problems was seen in Capt. Sullenberger’s being the last person to leave the plane but, before exiting, making two trips through the aircraft to be certain that everyone on board, for whom he felt responsible, had gotten off. No government officials would likely have deigned to exhibit such a personal sense of responsibility: they would have been too busy conducting press conferences!"
Yeah. Right.
Oh, and I need an excuse to be devil's advocate ever since you left me on the 2nd floor so what you get now are snarky blog comments! Hooray internets!
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