Sun, 26 Feb 2006

Do we need big brother?

The behaviour of political leaders in recent years with respect to dealing with large scale crises flies in the face of common sense and historical data. There seems to be a certainty that people are too stupid to help themselves and that we need top-down control. One recent major failure of this model was seen in the pitiful response to the hurricane that devastated New Orleans.

While catching up on some of my reading today, I came across an interesting article in the New Scientist of 8 May 2004 entitled Heroes of the hour. It was written before Katrina, but the lessons in it are clear.

Minor update: the URL above takes you to the article summary. You need either to be a subscriber or to pay to read the whole thing.

Posted at: 11:20

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