Fantastic Fox Follies File

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I need one place to keep my Fox bizarro posts.

Fox host: FEMA is unnecessary because Walmart will ‘spontaneously’ save us all in a disaster

Fox Business host John Stossel on Sunday asserted that most government was unnecessary because companies like Walmart would spontaneously provide assistance to disaster victims “in many more ways” than the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could.

“Ever feel like government makes too many plans that come to naught?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson told Stossel during a segment on Fox & Friends. “It’s kind of a bold idea. You’re saying that not every human activity needs to be planned from above. Some things spontaneously work themselves out pretty well.”

According to Stossel, Americans would be better off with less government and more “spontaneous order,” a term coined by economist Friedrich Hayek which states that order will naturally emerge from chaos.

“If you hadn’t seen a skating rink, you would say, ‘No, you need skating police, people go in this direction,’” Stossel observed. “Think of how much of life is spontaneous… Jazz, there’s no direction. So much of life is spontaneous, but our instinct is to say, ‘Government, give us a plan.’”

Continues.

 

[Trebuchet]

Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown apparently agreed.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

[Insert generic warning about becoming too reliant on government large corporations here.]

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Insert generic warning about becoming too reliant on government large corporations here.]

From same article.

The Week’s Damon Linker argued last year that “spontaneous order” was the “silliest and most harmful of all” libertarian ideas.

Linker said that the United States had conducted two experiments in “spontaneous order” in recent years by overthrowing governments in Iraq and Libya.

“In both cases, spontaneity brought the opposite of order. It produced anarchy and civil war, mass death and human suffering,” he wrote. “Order doesn’t just happen, and it isn’t the product of individual freedom.”

“The libertarian prophets of ‘spontaneous order’ get things exactly backward, sometimes with catastrophic real-world consequences. Which is why it’s a particularly bad idea,” Linker concluded.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Republican senator says restaurants should be able to opt-out of mandatory handwashing

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis is not so sure we need laws requiring food service employees to wash their hands:
Tillis made the declaration at to the Bipartisan Policy Center, at the end of a question and answer with the audience. He was relaying a 2010 anecdote about his “bias when it comes to regulatory reform.”

“I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,’” he said, “as long as they indicate through proper disclosure, through advertising, through employment literature, or whatever else.”

Restaurants can just opt-out and let the free market take care of business after word spreads of unsanitary conditions. Never mind that a lack of hand washing by food service employees accounts for the vast majority of food contamination:

The spread of germs from the hands of food workers to food is an important cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants. It accounts for 89% of outbreaks in which food was contaminated by food workers. Proper handwashing can reduce germs on workers’ hands and the spread of germs from hands to food and from food to other people.

Continues...

 

[steve s]

“Ever feel like government makes too many plans that come to naught?”

And if the government didn't have a plan and wasn't prepared to act, those same people would be screaming about how incompetent the government is.

Steve S

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And if the government didn't have a plan and wasn't prepared to act, those same people would be screaming about how incompetent the government is.

Steve S

Nah, they'd be living in a cave and fighting off the neighbors.

You know, the fabled land of Libertarianistan.

 

[Trebuchet]

Republican senator says restaurants should be able to opt-out of mandatory handwashing


Continues...

There's already a whole thread on that one.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There's already a whole thread on that one.

If it's US politics I wouldn't have seen it.

 

[Travis]

So when the giant hurricane hits Walmart will put up temporary bridges so that people can evacuate or Walmart provided ambulances can get to victims? Walmart will rebuild the levees and pump out all the water? Walmart will house the hundreds of thousands of homeless until the city is rebuilt....presumably with Walmart aide money? Do Libertarians and conservatives really believe this crap?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

So when the giant hurricane hits Walmart will put up temporary bridges so that people can evacuate or Walmart provided ambulances can get to victims? Walmart will rebuild the levees and pump out all the water? Walmart will house the hundreds of thousands of homeless until the city is rebuilt....presumably with Walmart aide money? Do Libertarians and conservatives really believe this crap?

How many days supplies for their area does Walmart stock? Seven? Eight? Then what?

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

So when the giant hurricane hits Walmart will put up temporary bridges so that people can evacuate or Walmart provided ambulances can get to victims? Walmart will rebuild the levees and pump out all the water? Walmart will house the hundreds of thousands of homeless until the city is rebuilt....presumably with Walmart aide money? Do Libertarians and conservatives really believe this crap?

I don't think Stossel was implying that Walmart alone would step up and handle the situation, but that people and businesses (but mostly businesses, those beacons of altruism and humanity) would self-organize and take up different aspects of the clean up and recovery.

The problem is, of course, that only the non-local businesses that are large enough to ship in aid from outside of the disaster area could possibly provide anything. Any local business is likely going to be significantly hampered by the disaster itself, with employees of those businesses busy attending to their own problems.

Stossel's basically advocating for the replacement of government with large, profit-driven corporations in a time of need.

That's f'ed up.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

So why didn't they do that during Katrina? (If they did the effort was inadequate.)

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

(The topic of this thread makes me want to watch Continuum again.)

So why didn't they do that during Katrina? (If they did the effort was inadequate.)

I'm sure one or more of our libertarian members will offer up some insightful commentary about how they really, really wanted to, but government overreach either made their desired course of action prohibitively expensive or blocked it outright.

Damn government. *shakes fist*

 

[Brainache]

I don't think Stossel was implying that Walmart alone would step up and handle the situation, but that people and businesses (but mostly businesses, those beacons of altruism and humanity) would self-organize and take up different aspects of the clean up and recovery.

The problem is, of course, that only the non-local businesses that are large enough to ship in aid from outside of the disaster area could possibly provide anything. Any local business is likely going to be significantly hampered by the disaster itself, with employees of those businesses busy attending to their own problems.

Stossel's basically advocating for the replacement of government with large, profit-driven corporations in a time of need.

That's f'ed up.

And of course any large corporation who supplied these things would be looking for compensation from the government. So the taxpayers would end up carrying the cost anyway and I sincerely doubt it would be any cheaper.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And of course any large corporation who supplied these things would be looking for compensation from the government. So the taxpayers would end up carrying the cost anyway and I sincerely doubt it would be any cheaper.

So, in essence, the libertarians are working to increase the tax debt on the country?

 

[Jim_MDP]

So, in essence, the libertarians are working to increase the tax debt on the country?

Paying for it retail after the fact might actually be cheaper than keeping the bureaucracy in place, but... I'd never trust the private sector to step up and handle a modern mass emergency.

They'd not only need a plan ahead of time (uh, isn't that what FEMA does?) but as mentioned, the majority of the local employees would be rather busy, so most everything and everyone would have to be shipped in.

Sure, I can see that happening.

Whatever... stupid, stupid idea.

Plus... for better or worse, the gov't personnel have the authority in those circumstances. Is anyone really going to listen to the Wal-Mart greeter when he tells you when and where to evacuate to? Ha!

 

[turingtest]

From the link in the OP:

The Fox Business host said that one example of government over-planning was natural disasters.

“After Katrina, Walmart and private charities helped people in many more ways than FEMA did,” Stossel opined. “Because FEMA is incompetent because government tends to be. But also Walmart everyday needs to know what people need, and they were ready. They had more weather forecasters than some of the local governments do.”

I'd like to say that folks who talk crap like Stossel does ought to at least have a little personal experience of what they're blabbering on about; but Stossel has that experience. How much help from WalMart (as opposed to FEMA) do you suppose he got when his house was damaged by storms? I can tell you from my personal experience that, after Katrina hit here (on the MS Gulf Coast), WalMart didn't "help" any more than they do on any other given day- that is to say, exactly as much as they were paid for and could take profit from.

 

[Travis]

Walmart handed out some bottled water. Which is nothing compared to the task FEMA had.

FEMA had to come up with evacuation plans. Not just for regular people but for entire hospitals. They had to figure out where to put temporary shelters. How to get power and water to those shelters. They had to prioritize which levees to fix first. How to get rid of the standing water. Which roads to repair and how to do it. FEMA had to come up with a plan to clear and demolish buildings for safety.

But I guess all that is exactly the same as handing out bottled water.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

FOX's file

This scorecard shows the ratings for statements made on air by Fox, Fox News and Fox Business personalities and their pundit guests. Rulings do not include statements made on air by politicians or paid spokespeople.