Escape From New Orleans

I. Do not underestimate how stupidly or cruelly people will act when they determine their behavior will have no adverse consequence to themselves.

II. Prevention is almost always cheaper and easier than curing.

If you buy into the two above statements, then you should understand my next: III. Looters should be shot early and often.

It seems the earlier policy in Post Apocalypse New Orleans of ignoring the looting in order to rescue civilians has backfired. Now the looters, armed and emboldened, currently have the upper hand. The newest news off cnn.com notes that relief and rescue efforts have stopped at night because of armed gangs ambushing vehicles with supplies and (seemingly) randomly shooting at others.

I saw an interview with the police chief of Miami last night. During this interview he said something like, ‘We used to go and shoot looters when things like this (disaster) happened, but I think we’ve gotten past that kind of thing now.’ HARHARHAR. In other words, ‘We are a civilized people. We value life over property. We have no word for ‘protecting property’ in our culture!’ It’s like some poorly written character on Star Trek talking down to the audience about how wrong it is to kill those who are merely stealing! Silly atomic age humans!

When you let a person do wrong and you let them get away with it, you invite them to do bigger wrongs. When cops fail to stop looters from looting you embolden the looters to commit worse crimes. From the looter’s point of view this is merely an intelligent and evil reaction to their new circumstances. If the cops can’t stop me from stealing, they probably can’t stop me from stealing guns. If they can’t stop me from stealing guns, how can they stop me from killing someone? Or shooting at a rescue chopper for kicks?

Not only do you invite a specific criminal to escalate their own behavior, but you invite others to learn from the criminal’s actions and modify their own behavior. This escalation is the direct opposite of deterrence.

Would looters, bandits and gunmen have been deterred by an initial spate of killings by police? I like to think so; it seems difficult to believe the current situation could be worse. Was this even an option for the outnumbered and uncoordinated police? Unknown, but I’ve read of incidents on both sides of that coin. When confronted by evil, inaction is most often the worst policy.

Instead of prevention (i.e. killing looters) now we must face the cure stopping rescue procedures while thousands of National Guard units are mobilized to retake Post Apocalypse New Orleans.

Oh, a last somewhat related point: place your bets on when the international community and/or the U.N. will come to the United States aid with food, shelter, money and other aid. Any time now… Any time… HARHARHAR!