Insurances never make anything more secure. They make the loss more bearable. At best.
Insurance makes many activities safer. See IIHS in the US for example. At my place of work, Fire regulations are rudimentary and almost laughable. But when the insurance inspector pays a visit, we snap to attention and clean up our act. They have far more stringent requirements for things like fire safety and business continuity planning, and there's money on the line if we don't follow their recommended best practices.
Being in a hurry gets me there faster when I beat the red light and the people I passed get stopped by it. No, they typically do not catch me at the next light, as much as they imagine that they will.
True, I only beat the light maybe 20% of the time, but my time is worth more to me than the cost of a little more gas. I still manage to pull off 40mpg in my 2003 prius with 170,000 miles on it.
Walking speed is, what. . 3mph? So you've walked just over 1.5 hours to get your 5 miles. Let's take the day off work - and spend the next 7 hours (1 hour for lunch): walking. Congratulations! We've covered over 20 miles. (were the suburbs completely flooded?) There were days of warning. My point is that people who found evacuation distastefully difficult and decided to rely on the government for their safety if things got really bad, were exercising a reckless disregard for personal responsibility.
I would expect that most people who actually took to "hoofin' it" out of town would have been picked up by someone else more fortunate. But even if they had to walk all day, they could have made it to another town of relative safety. So I maintain that the majority of the victims of Katrina were not stuck, stranded, or unable to evacuate because of their poverty.
If everyone who could have walked (or evacuate in any other manner of their choosing) DID, maybe the burden of evacuation for the truly less fortunate (elderly, disabled, very young children and their single mothers, etc) would have been much more manageable for the state.
I'm almost flattered to have been pegged a libertarian. I'm not. For the record, I'm a registered and active member of the Republican party. I looked into libertarianism, but most of it just didn't fit me. I fully agree that it is the government's role to assist and protect its citizenry in disasters (like Katrina) - but I don't believe each individual's personal safety is the responsibility of the government. That remains an individual (and family) responsibility. We can not, and should not, expect or even allow the government to take full responsibility for our lives in this respect.
As I stated in another response, I now feel the need to state that I did donate a small amount to the Salvation Army for Katrina disaster relief. I understand that people need and deserve help from others. But they should not depend and rely solely upon that help or the expectation of it! Whether it's from the government, or any other institution.
Our government's ever-expanding role in the personal lives of everyday americans is lulling many people into an alarming complacency concerning their own personal responsibility for themselves, and Katrina demonstrated some of the worst-case scenarios of how bad it can get when masses of people wait for the state to ride in on a white horse and save them.
I'm done.
And now out of curiosity if you're reading this Vicissidude, how is Libertarian prattle (or even action and policy-in-place) causing anarchy, lawlessness, death, and neglect?
I don't know how to quote the parent post as well you did. Hopefully readability doesn't suffer too much.
I don't know how far a person can walk in a few days, but I'd imagine pretty far. People used to do it all the time. Food and water would very likely have been available (at least to some degree) in nearby cities and towns that weren't constructed below sea level. I concede that realizing your home is below sea-level and doomed to disasterous flooding during a hurricane, is easier to do in hindsight.
Our livelihood depends to a large extent on the government's smooth functioning. I agree. *How large* an extent is where we likely differ, but I hope you won't disagree that we should not depend entirely upon the government -- or even mostly on the government! I strongly believe the poor, in general but especially in disasters like Katrina, surrender far too much responsibility for themselves.
And I was implying that the people dying because of the government's inability to care for them were dying in spite of their own abilities to care for themselves. They relied too heavily on the government instead of helping themselves, and some paid the ultimate price for it.
BTW, it's occured to me that I should mention, I have donated a small amount to the Salvation Army for Katrina relief. I understand that people in a disaster often NEED (and deserve) the support of others, and I gladly gave to help the victims. But I still strongly believe that they relied and depended far too heavily on "someone else" to save their skin.
While I agree with you that Poverty contributed tremendously to the severity of the disaster, I feel the need to express (in a reply, rather than with the mod points I've got right now) a couple thoughts on poverty.
First: People couldn't leave because they didn't have cars? If as a last resort people had to walk to safety, most people had ample warning to exercise that mode of transportation!
Society had better be careful that the measures we take to address the problem of poverty don't continue to further debilitate the poverty stricken by increasing their reliance and dependence on The State to run their lives for them. As an earlier poster asserted: much of the problems we face as a society boil down to a lack of personal responsibility. Many people who were fully capable of taking care (or at least better care) of themselves and those around them opted instead to thrust the full weight of responsibility for their survival, upon the government! And then complain bitterly (or, sadly -- die) when the state fails to handle the enormity of the burden placed on it.
This is getting off track, so I'll finish by stating that WE need to be careful of surrendering our liberties, freedoms, and responsibilities to a state that may or may not (as we've seen time and again) be qualified to take on those responsibilities.
Hehe. . yeah, I was there when you did that. The *point* was that people were putting up unsecured linux boxen and getting *hacked* (like you) and then your compromised box was used to launch further attacks from inside the "UCSB network", where UCSB admins would take all sorts of crap from the admin of whomever's machine was being attacked from a compromised student machine. See how it works?
And BTW, I did hiring for those jobs something like 4 years ago (maybe only 3) as part of a "peer review" type of process -- I was just a student -- and I remember recommending certain people not be hired because they spouted linux misinformation and thought they were bad-ass-bitchez because they pecked their way through the linux installer. So maybe I was the one who recommended you not be hired? Who knows, but the point is that running linux does not mean you have technical knowledge. Neither does setting multiple static IPs on your machine. Had you set 3 IPs (the hard limit was 2), your port would have been shut off.
So people (slashdotters in particular), don't confuse an admin _not_caring_ with not knowing. They know it's IIS, but they don't want to explain it to students who don't know that, and don't have the *time* to go trying to educate you on how to use your own *server* operating system! They're too busy helping peopole who drop hair-pins in their printers and can't figure out where the floppy drive is on their iMac.
Slashdot Mirror
Insurances never make anything more secure. They make the loss more bearable. At best.
Insurance makes many activities safer. See IIHS in the US for example.
At my place of work, Fire regulations are rudimentary and almost laughable. But when the insurance inspector pays a visit, we snap to attention and clean up our act. They have far more stringent requirements for things like fire safety and business continuity planning, and there's money on the line if we don't follow their recommended best practices.
Being in a hurry gets me there faster when I beat the red light and the people I passed get stopped by it. No, they typically do not catch me at the next light, as much as they imagine that they will.
True, I only beat the light maybe 20% of the time, but my time is worth more to me than the cost of a little more gas. I still manage to pull off 40mpg in my 2003 prius with 170,000 miles on it.
Walking speed is, what. . 3mph? So you've walked just over 1.5 hours to get your 5 miles. Let's take the day off work - and spend the next 7 hours (1 hour for lunch): walking. Congratulations! We've covered over 20 miles. (were the suburbs completely flooded?) There were days of warning. My point is that people who found evacuation distastefully difficult and decided to rely on the government for their safety if things got really bad, were exercising a reckless disregard for personal responsibility.
I would expect that most people who actually took to "hoofin' it" out of town would have been picked up by someone else more fortunate. But even if they had to walk all day, they could have made it to another town of relative safety. So I maintain that the majority of the victims of Katrina were not stuck, stranded, or unable to evacuate because of their poverty.
If everyone who could have walked (or evacuate in any other manner of their choosing) DID, maybe the burden of evacuation for the truly less fortunate (elderly, disabled, very young children and their single mothers, etc) would have been much more manageable for the state.
I'm almost flattered to have been pegged a libertarian. I'm not. For the record, I'm a registered and active member of the Republican party. I looked into libertarianism, but most of it just didn't fit me. I fully agree that it is the government's role to assist and protect its citizenry in disasters (like Katrina) - but I don't believe each individual's personal safety is the responsibility of the government. That remains an individual (and family) responsibility. We can not, and should not, expect or even allow the government to take full responsibility for our lives in this respect.
As I stated in another response, I now feel the need to state that I did donate a small amount to the Salvation Army for Katrina disaster relief. I understand that people need and deserve help from others. But they should not depend and rely solely upon that help or the expectation of it! Whether it's from the government, or any other institution.
Our government's ever-expanding role in the personal lives of everyday americans is lulling many people into an alarming complacency concerning their own personal responsibility for themselves, and Katrina demonstrated some of the worst-case scenarios of how bad it can get when masses of people wait for the state to ride in on a white horse and save them.
I'm done.
And now out of curiosity if you're reading this Vicissidude, how is Libertarian prattle (or even action and policy-in-place) causing anarchy, lawlessness, death, and neglect?
I don't know how to quote the parent post as well you did. Hopefully readability doesn't suffer too much.
I don't know how far a person can walk in a few days, but I'd imagine pretty far. People used to do it all the time. Food and water would very likely have been available (at least to some degree) in nearby cities and towns that weren't constructed below sea level. I concede that realizing your home is below sea-level and doomed to disasterous flooding during a hurricane, is easier to do in hindsight.
Our livelihood depends to a large extent on the government's smooth functioning. I agree. *How large* an extent is where we likely differ, but I hope you won't disagree that we should not depend entirely upon the government -- or even mostly on the government! I strongly believe the poor, in general but especially in disasters like Katrina, surrender far too much responsibility for themselves.
And I was implying that the people dying because of the government's inability to care for them were dying in spite of their own abilities to care for themselves. They relied too heavily on the government instead of helping themselves, and some paid the ultimate price for it.
BTW, it's occured to me that I should mention, I have donated a small amount to the Salvation Army for Katrina relief. I understand that people in a disaster often NEED (and deserve) the support of others, and I gladly gave to help the victims. But I still strongly believe that they relied and depended far too heavily on "someone else" to save their skin.
While I agree with you that Poverty contributed tremendously to the severity of the disaster, I feel the need to express (in a reply, rather than with the mod points I've got right now) a couple thoughts on poverty.
First: People couldn't leave because they didn't have cars? If as a last resort people had to walk to safety, most people had ample warning to exercise that mode of transportation!
Society had better be careful that the measures we take to address the problem of poverty don't continue to further debilitate the poverty stricken by increasing their reliance and dependence on The State to run their lives for them. As an earlier poster asserted: much of the problems we face as a society boil down to a lack of personal responsibility. Many people who were fully capable of taking care (or at least better care) of themselves and those around them opted instead to thrust the full weight of responsibility for their survival, upon the government! And then complain bitterly (or, sadly -- die) when the state fails to handle the enormity of the burden placed on it.
This is getting off track, so I'll finish by stating that WE need to be careful of surrendering our liberties, freedoms, and responsibilities to a state that may or may not (as we've seen time and again) be qualified to take on those responsibilities.
Hehe. . yeah, I was there when you did that. The *point* was that people were putting up unsecured linux boxen and getting *hacked* (like you) and then your compromised box was used to launch further attacks from inside the "UCSB network", where UCSB admins would take all sorts of crap from the admin of whomever's machine was being attacked from a compromised student machine. See how it works?
And BTW, I did hiring for those jobs something like 4 years ago (maybe only 3) as part of a "peer review" type of process -- I was just a student -- and I remember recommending certain people not be hired because they spouted linux misinformation and thought they were bad-ass-bitchez because they pecked their way through the linux installer. So maybe I was the one who recommended you not be hired? Who knows, but the point is that running linux does not mean you have technical knowledge. Neither does setting multiple static IPs on your machine. Had you set 3 IPs (the hard limit was 2), your port would have been shut off.
So people (slashdotters in particular), don't confuse an admin _not_caring_ with not knowing. They know it's IIS, but they don't want to explain it to students who don't know that, and don't have the *time* to go trying to educate you on how to use your own *server* operating system! They're too busy helping peopole who drop hair-pins in their printers and can't figure out where the floppy drive is on their iMac.
So does this make a FreeBSD port any easier? Or have the BSDs moved so far apart that porting it to one BSD doesn't really help the others any?