The Compassion of Profits

The National Post has an interesting summary of a study of the responses to Hurricane Katrina. The gist of the study was that Wal Mart and other big box retailers provided the best immediate respose to the disaster. I don't necessarily enjoy shopping at Wal Mart, but I certainly am not one of these folks that condemns them at every opportunity. This has got to sting for Wal Mart's critics who contend that Wal Mart is an evil exploiter of the poor in America and worldwide.

Of particular interest to me was this comparison of government to enterprise:

Companies must, to survive, create economic value one way or another; government employees can increase their budgets and their personal power by destroying or wasting wealth, and most may do little else. Companies have price signals to guide their productive efforts; governments obfuscate those signal.

This point has always been ignored in my opinion. The idea that bureaucracies and governments act in some benevolent interest has always baffled me. Just because someone has a government title doesn't mean they will stop acting in their self interest. It only means that their actions have less accountability to the public. WalMart's success and FEMA's failure only serves to underscore this.