Robust, resilient systems are never monotonous. They're not even efficient. They never come in first, or last, and can stand a lot of punishment without collapse. The earlier post After The Flood included a brief paean to systems that may not be tidy but are resilient and referred to the "small minded prig who sees the spotty failures and longs to eliminate the clutter and make everything right. His whole objective is to eliminate those failures though they are in truth among the most valuable parts of the system. In his longing for neatness and order he creates tragedy. It isn't that the small failures are desired, or that they are not lamented since real people suffer, it's that there is less suffering that way." So who are these prigs, let them speak for themselves!

Faster Katrina Recriminations
Blame federalism!

. . . As long as we're apportioning blame in the Katrina fiasco, here's another culprit: federalism, by which I mean a) the U.S.'s interpolation of an unnecessary level of government (states) between cities and the national government and b) the non-hierarchical, "sovereign" nature of this unnecessary level, so that the national government can't just give its Louisiana subdivision orders the way, say, General Motors can give its Pontiac division orders. This gratuitous complication of authority clearly crippled effective planning for a New Orleans catastrophe, as each level seems to have assumed that the other level would have a workable plan. ... And federalism is still bolixing up the relief operation, which now seems to have two bristling, competing centers of authority (the Louisiana governor and the Bush administration). . .

Wouldn't it be better to have a system with one chain of command? Or is it desirable to have officials working through the night, not to provide help but to defend their turf?

The Case Against States, Part II
Blame federalism for the Katrina snafus.

The whole problem would be easier if we had a unitary, hierarchical government in which federal preemption wasn't seen as an invasion of state "sovereignty." When United Parcel Service thinks its Cincinnati division isn't ready to deliver Christmas packages, I imagine it sends a team to find out and takes over the Cincinnati division if it has significant worries. I'm sure there are hurt local feelings--feelings that would be stronger when it's an elected city government's authority that's being preempted. But the whole preeemption problem is immeasurably exaggerated by our unnecessary fears about uncomplicated federal power. We'd be better off if we were more like UPS;

And when UPS went on strike? How do the other package delivery organizations fit into this? What about common carriers, trucking companies that handle larger stuff too?

The unitary prigs don't have an accurate or useful view of reality. UPS is one of several competing hierarchical organizations and it only serves a portion of the needs for delivery service. If government was in fact like package carriers we would have half a dozen national governments to choose from. I might use one national government while my neighbor used another. But we couldn't use any of these national governments for all our delivery needs, we'd have to use a different one for the big stuff than the small stuff, and perhaps yet a third if we were shipping outside the nation.

It's an absurd analogy, but the critique of the idea is much more than faulting the analogy, quibbling with the hypothetical used to explain the idea. The idea sucks. The whole world is resonating with the realization that the idea sucks. The UK has been on a multi-year campaign to "devolve" authority to regions. The EU constitution attempted to enshrine the principle of subsidiarity. Here's the opening Wikipedia graf on the subject:

Subsidiarity is the idea that matters should be handled by the smallest (or, the lowest) competent authority. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level. The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, cybernetics, and the management of large organizations. Subsidiarity is, ideally or in principle, one of the features of federalism.

Europeans didn't come to this understanding quickly or easily. They got there the hard way by trying to maintain the sort of unitary, hierarchical systems that Kaus longs for. It was a bloody mess, both ineffective and unfair. They haven't yet reformed themselves well, and there are recidivists and reactionaries, as ever, but it is not possible to make a useful intellectual or practical argument for unitary systems when the full complexity and scale of life is considered. It is only in boutique sized nations, often with a single large city, that such hierarchies are effective. But, those "nations" can be smaller than most US states.

It isn't that the errors and defects of subsidiarity are desired, it is that other management methods are worse. Those methods have a poorer record over time, since they are prone to big mistakes rather than a multitude of smaller ones, as well as being unethical and aesthetically inadequate.

I want to add that I seldom read Kaus but followed this link from Cronaca, which I monitor, and read when updated. I think the post, though brief, is brilliant.

One of the great advantages of being an historian is the freedom not to comment on current events -- especially where the evidence is clearly incomplete and final judgments premature.

So I plan to refrain from commenting (much) on the response to Katrina; in the immortal words of Boris Badenov: "this is no time for recriminations; recriminations will come later". . .