Hurricane Katrina disaster shows the failure of the profit system

[Karmadillo]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/stat-s06.shtml

The devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina will forever change the way broad masses of American working people look upon their government and society. The shock of the storm and the subsequent inundation of New Orleans have exposed the rottenness of the existing social order. It was not only the levees that failed, but the social and political institutions on which millions of people rely.

It is now being reported that as many as ten thousand human beings, fellow citizens, or even more, may have perished during the past week. They are dead because of the incompetence, negligence, and indifference of the government. They are dead because the United States is a country in which millions of people live in or on the brink of poverty. They are dead because this is a capitalistic society where the accumulation of vast personal wealth for a small percentage of the population is deemed more important than the welfare of the people as a whole.

With the full dimensions of the hurricane disaster still unclear, the Bush administration and the various state and local governments are engaged in an exercise in mutual finger-pointing, seeking to affix blame for the catastrophe. From the standpoint of the working class, however, they are all guilty: the Republican president, the Democratic governor and mayor, the legislators of both parties at every level. All of them uphold the profit system which is the root cause of the disaster.

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Mankind has entered the 21st century with science and technology that are continuously being revolutionized, and which carry with them the potential for abolishing poverty, hunger, disease and all other social ills. But this is impossible so long as society is constrained within an economic framework and class structure that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries: the private ownership of the productive assets of society by a small minority of capitalists, whose sole concern is their individual profits.

The choice before the American people is to cling to an anti-social and egotistical individualism, obsessed with the gluttonous accumulation of personal wealth, or to form a new political movement based on the struggle for social equality and the commonweal.

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[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. The profit system has not failed. Republican Party Government failed

Republicans and George Bush failed.

Surely you aren't a Communist? You can be if you want to be.

[Karmadillo]

2. The profit system has not failed?

I wish you had given a more in depth response as to why it hasn't failed. Otherwise, weak minds might be swayed by arguments like this from the article I posted:

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American society is organized on the basis of the profit motive. In no other country are the economy, the political structure and the entire culture so completely subordinated to the principle that personal accumulation of wealth is the highest goal. The destruction of New Orleans, by a disaster that was predictable and came with ample warning, demonstrates that the principle of private accumulation is incompatible with a rational and humane society.

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I'm not sure simply ascribing all evil to Republicans fits the facts, but I'm counting on you to show us it is.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. The Rescue effort was not run on a profit basis.

The levees were not repaired because of the Republican party and Bush, not profit.

FEMA cut phone lines, blocked doctors, and stopped trucks of water because of Bush and his appointees, not profit.

Bush ate cake with McCain because of the Republican party, not profit.

If you want to throw out profit then you want pure Communism. You are welcome to advocate that, but I laugh at you if you do.

[Karmadillo]

5. I thought the failure to restore Louisiana's wetlands

to prevent the totally predictable storm surge that destroyed New Orleans happened under the watch of both Republican and Democratic Presidents. Am I mistaken? Why allow people to accumulate huge amounts of wealth while failing to take basic measures to prevent a catastrophe that would affect millions of poor and middle class Americans? Why bipartisan support for tax cuts for the wealthy and bipartisan ignoring of the genuine needs of less wealthy Americans?

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Agreed. Social Democracy is the way to go

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Save the Gulf, then save the nation!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Social Democracy does not mean discard the Profit system. Duh.

[malaise]

7. Neo-liberal policies failed

In this instance it is the Republican government, but since the World Bank and IMF have influenced these policies on governments across the globe, this is systemic. For those of us watching from outside of the US, New Orleans is ten times more shocking because few can believe that a country with so much wealth could neglect its citizens in this manner. The bottom line is that when social policies are deliberately destroyed at the altar of free market capitalism, this is the result.
Yet again the social contract has been exposed as a myth. The social contract is an alliance of rich white men.

The existence of an alternative system in the Soviet era forced them to deliver social policies, but now we have the worst example of what happens when raw, nakes capitalism displaces any notion of government's so called raison d'etre - social responsibility and humanity.
New Orleans is the logical consequence of neo-liberal policies.

That America and the rest of the world has watched this live is beyond irony. That Fidel Castro can move a million plus people before a hurricane hits part of Cuba shows that after all the propaganda and spin about his country, he, unlike the neo-cons, puts people first.
At the end of the day, it is not property or wealth or accumulating trinkets and screaming about how powerful you are that counts; it is how you treat human beings. Many Americans have ignored how their government has treated people outside of their borders, but they cannot ignore this because they now know that they will be treated the same way.

As time passes, we will see that the army and national guard who have been poisoned with hate in Iraq cannot now automatically change their modus operandi overnight and will not differentiate between American citizens and Iraqis. Even as I type they are violating people's rights in New Orleans.

We know the world's so called leaders have no soul, no humanity, but we didn't know they would be exposed in this way to the entire world and then attempt to spin their indifference and neglect. The laws of nature show that you reap what you sow, so here we are watching the chicken hawks and their anti-social policies come home to roost.
Katrina was nature's way of exposing this bullshit for what it really is - and Bush and Rove cannot escape the wrath of this woman.

Hopefully out of this chaos will come new leaders and a new more humane paradigm.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Fidel moves a million people because he is a dictator. You forgot?

[Karmadillo]

10. Fidel moves them? He must be awfully strong. Here's an Oxfam report on

Cuba's hurricane preparedness. Better for thousands to die and hundreds of thousands to suffer than admit other nations might do things better, right?

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/emergencies/asian_floods_2004/background/cubalessons

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Oxfam America recently studied the experience of Cuba in its development of disaster prevention and mitigation programs. Situated in the Caribbean Sea, Cuba frequently stands in the way of serious hurricanes. While its neighbors are battered, losing lives and property, Cuba is unusually good at withstanding these calamities, and suffers much fewer dead.

Oxfam’s report, entitled Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction in Cuba cites a number of attributes of Cuba’s risk reduction program that can be applied by other countries. Three in particular are transferable to Asia and other regions:

*Disaster Preparedness: Cuba was especially good at mobilizing entire communities to develop their own disaster preparations. This involves mapping out vulnerable areas of the community, creating emergency plans, and actually simulating emergencies so people can practice evacuations and other measures designed to save lives. When disaster strikes, people know what to do.

*Commitment of Resources: Cuba’s strong central government prioritizes resources for its civil defense department. This helps the country to build up a common understanding of the importance of saving lives, and the citizens trust that their contributions to the government are well used for this purpose. Their collaboration on developing emergency plans helped build confidence in the government, so people trust in the plan they helped develop.

*Communications: The communications system for emergencies in Cuba builds on local resources. Using local radio stations and other media to issue warnings on potential hazards also reinforces the disaster preparations. Since the local population is already involved in mapping risks and creating emergency plans, they are more inclined to act on emergency bulletins. Good communications, packaged simply, and built on existing, commonly used resources, is another way to build trust in disaster preparations.

Cuba is a unique example. There is a strong central government committed to protecting all its citizens, even the poorest and most isolated who are typically the most at risk. The most common natural disaster in Cuba is a hurricane, a threat visible for days and even weeks in advance. Yet building a culture of disaster preparedness, and involving local communities in mitigating risks, are strategies that can be applied in many other places, regardless of how rich or poor a country might be.

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[Karmadillo]

11. And here's an excellent link to truthout.org re: Cuba and hurricanes

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtml

The Two Americas
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Saturday 03 September 2005

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

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[malaise]

12. Uncomplicated and community

oriented. It's easy when governments put people first.

Here's an article from Gramna today on Katrina

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/septiembre/mart6/37consec-i.html

AS the true horror of the social disaster in the Gulf Coast left in Katrina’s wake becomes more evident with each passing day, two questions are being asked: Was the flooding inevitable? Why did the government fail to prevent so much suffering? Unfortunately, the answers are not surprising for a society where profits come before human lives, and where working-class people – especially the most vulnerable – are expected to bear the brunt of the resulting consequences.

LACK OF PREPARATION: "I SUPPOSE THAT’S THE PRICE WE PAY"

Commentators on all sides are now debating whether or not the deadly flooding in New Orleans could have been prevented. A September 1 AP article notes that scientists had predicted the worst: "experts repeatedly cautioned that the protective system was unlikely to prevail if a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane like Katrina hit the city." Despite the 2004 hurricane season being the worst in decades, however, the federal government made the biggest cuts in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history, preventing millions of dollars’ worth of necessary work from being completed, according to a September 2 Editor & Publisher article: "On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: ‘It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay.’"

The idea that there was no money to make the city safe because of the imperialist occupation of Iraq is absurd. It’s not that the funds were being used elsewhere; it’s that the potential threat to Gulf Coast residents simply was not a priority. The real priority for the imperialist rulers is ensuring their resources and markets throughout the world at gunpoint, not protecting workers and farmers and their homes and livelihoods, at home or abroad.
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[chicagiana]

8. Why would a privatized FEMA EVER help ...

Why would a privatized FEMA EVER make us safer? Reconstruction contracts would ALWAYS be more lucrative than preventive protection contracts.

[yvr girl]

13. Profit is not bad

And capitalism isn't failed. They key is to balance it with social concern. Some things are better run by private enterprise and others are best left to government.

The US is way behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to social programs.