[edited 9:25am 7-2-2007: Here is a nice story from today’s NYT about how “helpful” the government has been in rebuilding N.O.

As for Hitler, it is very, very safe to say that he wouldn’t have been able to do 1/100th of what he did, if it weren’t for the ability to control an institutionalized monopoly on the use of force: the very existence of States creates the opportunity for madmen to murder people on unimaginable scale.

Also, David, you didn’t answer the question.

What, if the world was full of libertarians, would have happened with Hitler? What would have cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina? As it looks in my mind, without government intervention NOTHING would have been done. There must be some piece I’m missing.

I believe that the Black Plague was due in part to the Little Ice Age that destroyed a large amount of to be destroyed. This helped spread the disease and I don’t think science was good enough to see it coming at that time.

The Great Depression is another example of the government refusing to tackle an issue until after it causes a train wreck. Reckless fiscal policy is putting it mildly. Interestingly enough, when the government decided to enact laws to help prevent a market crash of that magnitude, they hired one of the people who was most responsible and told him to create and enforce those laws. They figured that he knew how to cause it, he should know how to prevent it from happening again.

Governments have a habit of not dealing with an issue until it is too late. Once they finally get around to dealing with the problems, they have a habit of creating additional problems, ie Bin Laden and the spread of Communism after WW2. But part of it is due to an unwillingness of the people to deal with the problems also. Can you imagine what the reaction would be still today if the US had assassinated Hitler before he killed 6 million Jews?