Lahaina: Par for the Course
Reports from Lahaina on Maui indicate that the various gubmints and gubmint-adjacents behaved par for the course during the late wind-driven fires.
Some doofus blocked residents from fleeing the firestorm in their cars.
Nobody addressed the danger of non-native grasses growing in former farmland.
Hawaii Electric had concentrated on green energy initiatives rather than maintaining power lines.
Some doofus was worried more about water equity than using water to fight fires.
And so on. Gabriella Hoffman writes:
The Maui case study exemplifies the danger of embracing radical environmental policies that falsely elevate nature over people instead of balancing the interests of both.
But I say that this is exactly what you get from administrative government. My point is that this is what government does. It does stupid stuff. It puts off necessary maintenance. It gets side-tracked onto fashionable issues that don’t have anything to do with making the trains run on time.
And it always will.
Because people that work for the government aren’t thinking about how to improve service. They are going with the current thing, and thinking about retirement. I remember 60 Minutes guy Andy Rooney talking — way back —about a visit to a cafeteria at the Pentagon. Everyone was talking about their pensions. He was shocked.
But guess what. Government workers don’t have to worry about making a profit or adapting their product offerings to the market. All they have to worry about is keeping out of trouble and waiting for retirement. And whatever the latest fashion is, hey why not? The latest thing could increase the budget.
I say that we need to minimize government because everything it does is tainted by the lack of a bottom line and the lack of responsibility and the tendency to get with the latest hot Thing and the temptation to direct traffic.
Your mileage may vary.