AT: The terrible wildfire in Greece, which destroyed the seaside village of Mati and killed, at last count, 91 people, was all the more awful because it need never have happened.
Unfortunately, it did, and it was a problem of not having free markets. The New York Times, in an op-ed from a Greek journalist who knows the place, points out that scores of unpermitted buildings and a non-working property registry, along with the corruption that makes its home in any such setting, were at fault.
What neither government nor opposition parties acknowledge, however, is that many communities across the country may be death traps, wherever homes are built without permits, with town planners trying to catch up later. Instead of being demolished, illegal buildings are usually accommodated by law, as politicians fear losing votes by destroying people’s homes.
Unpermitted buildings? You know, like the shacks and shantytowns of the Third World? Sounds like it.
The Independent of London is even more direct with the blame:
A large, centrally controlled state can be a source of secure employment (as in Greece), yet is often grossly inefficient.
With all that chaos, people couldn’t get out, and that was why so many perished.
The Independent continues:
State power, wrongly exercised, can inhibit legitimate business, and its regulatory functions have little effect in societies where illegality and a shadow economy are prevalent. Look at post-communist countries that suffer from a legacy of a large yet weak state. Greece may never have been part of the Soviet bloc, but successive weak governments, coping badly with the country’s underdevelopment, have created a series of distortions that are unseen in western Europe, but common in the east.
Does Greece’s problematic historical development contribute to this particular type of disaster? The short answer is yes, it does.
What we are looking at here is a state with massive spaghetti bowl of regulations, regulations so tangled and specific and full of exceptions, as well as so numerous, that they couldn’t be enforced except selectively. more here
No-tie PM Tsipras received a Pat Robertson-esque bishop shoveling from Bishop Amvrosios. So long as he receives he check from Berlin.
The Independent of London:
No, it can’t. It will eventually squander its resources to the point where govt employment is no longer secure.
No again. It is always – by its very nature – grossly inefficient when compared to resource use determined by markets. Hayek won his Nobel Prize by proving this.
A few more Mexicans come here and we’re liable to have a grease fire too.
So the problem with regulation is that it hasn’t been implemented hard enough? By the right people? With enough funding? Yet.
Why didn’t anybody discover this? Before.
Darwin Award winners.
The Greek people created the weak government they wanted and some of
them built homes without safety
in mind. If called to account they
would then resent the government officials actions.
I’m sorry they’re dead but not sympathetic as to why.
Just about everyone in the Balkans smokes cigarettes and they think nothing of tossing their burning butts from car windows. I was in Macedonia during the summer of 2007. There were seven fires burning at one time (in a country the size of Vermont).
Fires are not uncommon all over the world it happens the last thing anyone needs is government coming in after the fact and mucking things up . In old times there were fire brigade’s but with government taking over every aspect of life the citizens become like sheep waiting for the slaughter .
Greece – another country that has been uncontrollably invaded by moslems – and probably the elephant in the room they are studiously not talking about.
I occassionaly watch House Hunters International, and when they check out Houses in Europe it’s just Scary what the previous homeowner has done with the exposed wiring. I’m surprised they are able to even stop towns from burning completely down.