 You are listening to the Huron Brooks show. Alright, this is Huron Brooks and we're talking about this devastating hurricane in Texas. So first our thoughts are with other people suffering from this unbelievable rain that's coming down and the winds have already devastated much of coastal Texas. Now it's rain and ultimately flooding that is causing, you know, causing probably loss of life unfortunately, a lot of property destruction, a lot of devastation. And really it's going to be a test of Houston's infrastructure and probably more than anything else. Think about all the refineries, think about all the industry. Houston is a very industrial city and it's going to be interesting to see the massive oil storage facilities there. And in the past there's been a lot of talk about what happens when there's a massive flood. What happens to those facilities? Is that going to cause oil to spill over? Is there going to be a massive environmental disaster here in terms of oil spillage or any kind of chemical spillage, massive chemical plants? I know you guys have been to Houston, but Houston is this massive industrial city. You know, the other thing about Houston that is worth pointing out is Houston is a city that doesn't really have any zoning. And so, you know, you could have industry and residential and commercial and high rises and a hodgepodge of different places around the city. So it's a very interesting place and should be very interesting to watch. Interesting and potentially sad to watch how it all plays out. But, you know, let's hope that those industries are really secured, all the facilities that those industries secured, all those chemicals and everything else because you could add on to the flooding. The additional disaster of all those spillages would be quite horrific. If you're in Texas, so if you want to discuss anything, any of this, and free for you to call in 888-900-3393-888-900-3393. You're listening through on Brookshow. And we started talking about the fact that in Galveston in 1900, 10,000 people died when that hurricane hits and how Galveston was completely unprepared. The technology at the time was such that when we were far more exposed to the weather than we are today. So even though today there is far more population density, so there are far more people who are going to be affected by Hurricane Harvey than were affected by the hurricane in Galveston. Today, because of better forecasting, but primarily because of our ability to construct defenses against these hurricanes, we are likely to see far fewer casualties and far, you know, probably more property damage. But also, not the level. I mean Galveston was basically flat and nothing survived. You're probably not going to see that level of devastation. We today have the technology to build better. We today have the technology, you know, to protect ourselves. We have the technology to build things that are resistant to 130-mile-an-hour wind, although there were some pictures of some buildings that came down from those winds that, you know, didn't, were not built well enough or, you know, the winds were unexpected or the direction of the winds was unexpected and everything. So you've got amazing technology today at place, both to predict, forecast, warn. A lot of people evacuated, particularly the most dangerous places where people evacuated those places. She and I are going to see that again in a hurricane in Galveston, a hurricane they had one day to prepare. And of course, our technology allows us to build these safe and sound places. And this is why, while weather is potentially dangerous, right? Radical, not radical, extreme weather situations. We have massive quantities of rain or we have these devastating winds or we have the sea levels rising because of some activity of weather. We, as human beings, are actually quite able to protect ourselves against this and quite able to build buildings that protect ourselves, build infrastructure that is protected. I suspect that if more of our infrastructure was private, this would be done even better and we'll get to flood insurance in a little bit. And we're quite able to cope with these natural disasters and natural disasters are natural disasters. Disasters called by nature. I mean, for all of you out there who love Mother Earth, Mother Earth likes to beat up on her kids once in a while. There is no Mother Earth and there are no kids to Mother Earth, but you get the reference. If you want to call in 888-900-3393, 888-900-3393. So major hurricane, major flooding. I did see some news coverage from Houston just this morning. The flooding is pretty devastating, but what was interesting was lights were on. It looks like some of the power utilities are hanging on and doing okay. Cell coverage was pretty strong. That is people were able to communicate. It turns out Twitter is one of the main ways in which people are letting people know and people are sending out about distress and about needing help. So Twitter, private enterprise, the whole internet infrastructure. The cell phone towers, the cell phone companies are doing relatively well. So that's good news and thank God the government doesn't own those cell towers and doesn't actually run cellular infrastructure, internet infrastructure. But let's hope that people stay safe and that there are enough emergency personnel there to be able to help people who are in trouble. It sounds like the Texas has really mobilized. They've got 2,000 Texas National Guards. You've got Coast Guard helicopters everywhere. But this is going to take days because flooding is often because of rain somewhere else. It's not even because of rain where you are. So rain in the hill country in Texas flows downstream towards the Gulf and flows through Houston and some of those coastal communities. So they're going to get pounded over the next few years with potentially more flooding and repeated flooding and devastating floods. So we'll just have to see. It's very hard to tell news reporting at these disasters. Sometimes they seem to under-report how bad things are. I think that happened with Katrina. It took us days to really realize how devastating Katrina was. And sometimes they over-report because tragedy and disaster cell and they overdo it. And 24-7 news coverage tends to kind of overdo this and make us more wide known. But this looks like a very serious event and therefore thinking about the people who are struggling there and hoping they all do well and that they find a way out of this. All right. Ten. When we come back, we're going to talk about flood insurance, federal flood insurance. Five. And we'll be back right after these messages. Three, two, one. All right. We're talking today about this massive hurricane that hit Texas, the flooding. And I want to get into discussion of flood insurance and how that distorts everything out there and FEMA and everything else. We talked about earlier, we talked about how even with the fact that there's so much population concentrated in a place like Houston, we're still unlikely to see the kind of devastation that we saw in 1900 because of the kind of technology we have. And this goes to this question of kind of global warming climate change that even if, you know, and everybody's going to blame the storm and climate change even though there's zero, zero, zero, zero evidence of that fact. But even if there was, even if it's true that carbon fuels are causing climate change and climate change is going to cause more hurricanes like this. It's also true, and this is much more important, that those fossil fuels are making it possible to protect us from these kind of devastating natural disasters. That is that it's the fossil fuels that make it possible for us to put satellites into space. It's the fossil fuels that make it possible to build better, more resilient buildings. It's a fossil fuel that makes it possible to evacuate people. It's a fossil fuels that are running those helicopters looking that the Coast of God is using to try to evacuate people. It is fossil fuels everywhere in our lives that makes it possible for us to bear the brunt of what nature dishes out so much better than we ever have as human beings in the past. And it's fossil fuels that are ultimately the reason why there will be relatively fewer, still there will be some casualties but relatively few casualties as compared to let's say the hurricane of 1900. They just flattened Galveston and completely destroyed it. So even if you could make the connection to climate change, my response is who cares? We're ready and equipped. And if anything, if we could just get our economy to be more privatized as we'll talk about, it would respond even better to these kind of disasters and the number of casualties from hurricanes and other natural disasters would actually decline substantially as a consequence. Now, these are all points, by the way, made by, excellently, brilliantly by Alex Epstein in his book, The Marquise for Fossil Fuel. So I highly recommend I had Alex on the show last week when I was filling in for Michael Pelka. And he makes this point brilliantly in the book. So I strongly recommend that you buy the Marquise for Fossil Fuel. All right, we're going to take a quick call. Richard from Miami is calling. Hi, Richard. Hi, Aaron. Actually, it sounds like you answered most of my question because I woke up to reports this morning that the amount of rainfall in this situation is record levels over 500 years. I don't know how they know what happened 500 years ago. Well, don't you know that the American Indians kept detailed records of rainfall? Oh, no. I mean, the Spanish might have. In some areas the Spanish might have. So there might be actual records of rainfall in some places. But yeah, I mean, that sounds a little ridiculous, and it is a little ridiculous. But so what is my argument? I mean, I don't know. Maybe this is the largest rainfall in 500 years in that particular part of the world. I think more rain than that drops in one mountain in Maui in Hawaii, the wettest place on the planet or something like that. It doesn't matter, right? And even if it is the worst, you can't prove, you can extrapolate from that impact of climate change. You can extrapolate almost anything from that. 500 years is a nanosecond from the perspective of the history of the planet of planet Earth. So what about 16,000 years ago? Maybe more rain dropped back then. I'm not an expert on the geological history of the Earth, but wasn't Texas like underwater at some point? So to tell us that something is 500 years or once in a 500 years occurrence, OK, stuff happens once every 500 years. Bad stuff happens once every five years. But to extrapolate from that to climate change or to manmade anything is just absurd and shows how little people think in terms of history. 500 years sounds like a long time. But when you take into account how long the Earth has been here, it's nothing and how long even people have lived in North America. People have lived in North America, what? And here I'm speculating a little bit because I don't know exact number. 20,000 years, I think they crossed over the Bering Strait somewhere around 20,000, maybe 15,000 years ago. What's 500 relative to 20,000? So the whole thing is meaningless. I mean, it's interesting. Wow, it's a lot of rain. I mean, that's what it tells you, right? Because I've been in rainstorms in Texas, and when it rains in Texas, it rains in Texas. I tell people who, you know, sometimes it rains in California, not very often, but sometimes. And I tell people, man, it never really rains in California. But when it rains in Los Angeles, you get a little wetness in the air. But when it rains in like the Midwest or in Texas or in it, I mean, man, what was the term it, raining cats and dogs? I mean, it really does. You know, the drops are the size of little cats and dogs. Anyway, it really, so it's interesting that it's in spite of how much it sometimes rains in Texas. This is the most in 500 years. And it's scary for the people living there because that means that floodwaters could be the highest they've ever been. It could mean a lot of bad stuff. But they're trying to connect this to, they're trying to inflict guilt. They're trying to cause you to feel, ooh, the worst in 500 years, we must have caused it. There's no way to extrapolate it between those two. All right, Richard, do you have any other questions? Thank you. Sure, sure. Thank you. That was great. Sure. All right. We're going to hold off on Skyler and on Henry, who are both calling in until after the break. We've got a break in by about a minute and a half, and then I'll take you both after that. So, yeah, I mean, this idea that every time something bad happens, it's our fault. It's so, it's so original sin kind of thing. It's so, it's so you got to feel guilty. And as a human being, anything bad that happens out there in the world must be your fault, must be our fault. It comes from that, this, you know, requirement to feel guilty about our lives that I guess we get from Christianity, maybe from other places as well. But it's so much, unfortunately, a part of our lives. You know, always it's our fault. No, mother nature, not a mother, but nature. Nature, you know, bad stuff happens. I mean, there's going to be a big earthquake in California. And it won't be anybody's fault. Although you can stop feeling guilty now if you really want to. And I'm sure I've even seen stories where climate change somehow causes earthquakes. And if it's not climate change, my guess it's going to be fracking. Fracking is going to cause the next big earthquake in California. Even though we've always known there's going to be a next big earthquake in California, we just do. It's just nature, right? There's going to be a massive hurricane that hits Texas or hits Louisiana, hits Florida. Hey, Florida, you haven't had a real hurricane hit you in a long, long time, you do. Right now, statistics don't quite function that way. Yeah, at some point they're going to get the earthquake. But we always look to blame human beings. All right, when I come back, I am going to blame some human beings. I'm going to blame not for the hurricane, but for the response to the hurricane and why we're probably going to see a mess afterwards, why part of the disaster would have been avoided if not for government action. So the whole structure of incentives around living in places that are susceptible to these kind of natural disasters is all messed up. All right, you're listening to your own book show on the Blaze Radio Network and we'll be right back. All right, we're talking about Hurricane Harvey and the devastation it's causing in Houston and the kind of response we should have and we're going to get into discussion of flood insurance and FEMA. But let me quickly take Henry's call from Virginia. Hi, Henry, you're on the Iran Book Show. I'm doing that. Oh, there we go. Hey, how are you doing today? I'm doing okay. How about you? Excellent. I'm doing pretty well. So I was on the new listener and I was wondering if you could quickly speak to the response and whether or not a response would fit into the objective as to ethics kind of with respect to humanitarian action because I've been reading actually quite family books called Doing Bad by Jim Good by Christopher Coyne where he talks about how humanitarian action tends to fail, particularly state-led action. And I was wondering but more specifically if you could kind of speak to the kind of the philosophical or ethical, I guess, response to this sort of event which you can't know ex-ante. No, that's a great question. So look, these are human beings that are suffering. We are, as life-loving human beings, objectivists, I think are extraordinarily benevolent and I feel legitimately, rationally sorry for the people whose lives are being, in some cases, destroyed and in some cases devastated by what is happening, by the weather. And it's no fault of their own, assuming that, right? I mean, some of them could have protected themselves better but to some extent it's no fault of their own and I am quite happy to help in situations like this, to write a check to the Red Cross or to something like that. If not for, and I have to add this, the fact that I'm already writing a damn big check through my taxes that go to the federal government and the state government that go to all the stuff and that the government is already taking money from me supposedly to do exactly this. So I have to say that my benevolence is, or my willingness to contribute to help people who for no fault of their own are suffering right now is mitigated by the fact that I feel like I gave at the office that they're already taking, they put a gun to my head and they've taken my money and using it for these services. So if we lived in a truly free market and I want to get to this also when we talk about FEMA when we talk about flood insurance, if we lived in a truly free market then I think we would all be incredibly generous because we would sympathize with other human beings who for no fault of their own are now in trouble and in need. I don't think it's a moral claim against us, I don't think it's morally required to do so, I don't think if you don't give your inherently a bad person. But I also think that it's completely consistent with objectivism to value human life and to say what's happened to these people is sad and I'd like to help them because I'm a human being and they're a human being and you know what? Those people in Texas are damn productive and I benefit from them being able to produce and to create and to build. My life is better off for the fact that they go and work in their refineries and their industries and they work at the port there to some extent they are contributing to my well-being and therefore I am willing to help them out in a case of disaster. And this goes back historically to kind of how America's always been. I mean if the neighbor's house was burnt down by a fire you know the neighbors would all get together and go out and build a new house for them and help them build a new house and I think that's what you benevolently do to your neighbors. It's not about if my house burns down then I expect my neighbors to come to me then you're creating this atmosphere of people owing each other things and the benevolence goes out the window. No, it's an act of benevolence. It's an act of respect for other human beings particularly if they're your neighbors, human beings hopefully you like, human beings who are productive, human beings who contribute to your life in some way and I think in a world in which we live in today people who live in other places in America who are working for a living contribute to my life and I'm willing to help them. Two minutes? If they really suffer from no fault of their own. But again I think that's mitigated by the fact that the federal government and the state government forces me already to participate so I don't do charity because I feel like I give so much already. But building kind of off of that point that makes a lot of sense and that's a great answer thank you but kind of building off of that would it be do you think too harsh to say that so one of the points of the book that I've read is that humanitarian action on a state level tends to be miserable and fail without a doubt on a number of different levels and do you think that's simply because of the philosophy behind that is it would be fair to say that it's ineffective because it's impractical and the good is the practical? Yeah I mean it's impractical because it's centrally planned it's planned from afar it's impractical because the bureaucrats have all the wrong incentives and they don't exactly know necessarily what they're doing it's impossible because they don't have the infrastructure to deliver so we're going to talk to Skyla after the next break but you know like after Katrina the first people to provide goods in the New Orleans area was Walmart because Walmart knows logistics they know infrastructure they know how to do this FEMA just doesn't have that skill set and it can have that skill set because it's a government entity that is involved in force not in providing goods and services alright we have to take a break here we've got a hard break coming up Skyla hang on we're going to come to you after the break we're going to talk FEMA flood insurance and anything else you want to talk about related to this devastating hurricane you're listening to your Yaron Brook show we're here every Sunday between 11 and 1 3, 2, 1