The U.S. state of Texas, and Houston in particular, has been hailed as an example of the success of deregulated, "free market" capitalism. Houston is the home of the Bush dynasty and a central hub for many gigantic oil and gas corporations (thanks in part to the state's especially weak environmental regulations), and also the largest city in the country without any zoning laws to curb the development of urban sprawl. These are the very ingredients that formed the recipe for the city's current disaster.
Most climate scientists believe that Hurricane Harvey was made qualitatively worse by global warming. (Here's
a look at how.) Well what causes global warming? To no small degree, the oil and gasoline businesses that Texas's, and Houston's, economy has been largely built on. Why were large numbers of homes built in an area that was well-known to be flood prone? Because there were no regulations to speak of on real estate speculation and development, which resulted, predictably, in the profit motive driving the forces thereof to ignore the many warnings by scientists and engineers about the dangers that come with paving over wetlands and prairie lands that soak up heavy rains with impermeable concrete. Why has the city's flood control infrastructure collapsed? Because, in the 12 years since Hurricane Katrina hit, nothing has been done to repair and strengthen the broadly antiquated and inadequate flood control systems in this country, and Houston's are decades old. Why has nothing been done? Because the project of taking preventive action in the wake of Katrina has been resolutely opposed by the real estate, oil, and financial sectors; the institutions that dominate Houston's economic life.
In short, it is precisely Houston's much-lauded "free market" economic model that destroyed it. Perhaps a little community-controlled economic planning and less concern with corporate profit margins could have prevented this storm from unnecessarily shattering the lives of thousands and thousands. I posit that as a thought.
The official response serves as a shining example of the callous indifference that the ruling class feels toward the victims of its policies. At a staged event at Corpus Christie's crisis management center, President Trump, Texas Governor Abbot, and FEMA Administrator Long congratulated each other on a job well done, as though the crisis had passed! Abbot, who has long been a tool of the oil industry, slavishly praised Trump, a representative of the real estate capitalists that knowingly placed countless homes in flood prone territory. What could one expect from the political clay of such interests though?
An editorial on the appropriate response to the hurricane by The New York Times proposes that rather than "lamenting its failure to heed long-ago warnings", America should "look ahead" and thus
learn nothing from this episode! It also suggests that public officials now must "make difficult decisions about whether to rebuild and how." In other words, the way our elites see it, this disaster provides an opportunity to gentrify Houston! For anyone who doesn't know, gentrification refers to the rebuilding of major cities by implementing policies that attract wealthy aristocrats in large numbers (e.g. by replacing rent-controlled housing units with luxury high-rises and offering strategically-placed tax breaks to businesses in selected industries while banning "unsightly" street vendors) in order to restore the given city's tax base, which in turn prices the poor and working class people out. This is the general policy of most of America's major cities today. The devastation of Houston by this storm, apparently, is something that these aristocrats see as a positive development that can perhaps accelerate said process there, as it did in New Orleans!
Contrast this heartlessness and unbridled greed and selfishness with the way that the people themselves, both in Houston and around the country, have responded: the truly massive outpouring of donations, the organization of rescue efforts by ordinary community members, and more testify to the very different breed of moral fiber that real people possess. Let me suggest that now is the time to give that sense of morality a political direction! Now is the time for the promotion of economic planning on the basis of public ownership and control and the democratic participation of the entire community population! That and only that can prevent even worse "natural" crises both in Houston and around the world in the future.
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Originally Posted by IMPress Polly
