OT New Orleans: The City that Couldn't Afford to Die

((I posted this to another newsgroup, but it may be germane to the
discussions here about rebuilding New Orleans.))

When a disaster strikes, even though it may in actuality be a
meaningless, random event, people search for meaning within it. Given
the destruction and loss, they seek consolation in being able to feel
that at least some positive purpose was served as well.

Since New Orleans' French Quarter was built on high ground, and survived
the flooding, the theory that it was God's vengeance for breast-baring
bead hoarders looks a little shaky - and that kind of notion would only
be popular on the lunatic fringe.

((I forgot to mention the possibility of it being God's way of telling
us to switch from greasy-kid-stuff Christianity to cooler, more
refreshing Islam... which we will probably hear about from the mountains
of Pakistan any day now.))

Obviously, any disaster brings out the courage of people dealing with
its immediate aftermath and the generosity of those who help the people
affected.

Is there a candidate, though, for a greater or more specific purpose
that this disaster might serve? As perspective emerges on the
consequences of the levee breach in New Orleans, I think that a
candidate has emerged.

In broad, oversimplified terms, the situation appears to be the
following:

The neighborhoods where white people in New Orleans lived were mostly
low-lying, and therefore were mostly destroyed by the flood.

The neighborhoods which were built on high ground, in which the
buildings still survive, were mostly poorer neighborhoods, predominantly
inhabited by black people.

New Orleans had a large, thriving black middle class, unmatched by other
American cities. This means that many black people there had reasonably
well-paying jobs doing honest work, just like ordinary white Americans.

((Source: an article by noted author Anne Rice, "Do you know what it
means to lose New Orleans", which was quoted in the group where this was
originally posted. I knew about the jazz musicians serving the tourist
trade, but this refers to a large number of people additional to them.))

New Orleans was sometimes called 'the most dangerous city in America',
so it does have some black people who are poor and desperate, some of
whom have turned to crime, as well.

It is expected it may take perhaps as much as six months before people
can start returning to New Orleans.

What does this add up to?

Here are two scenarios for what might happen in rebuilding New Orleans:

Scenario A:

During the time it takes to get the city ready for rebuilding, the
people displaced by the flooding find new homes and new jobs in other
cities throughout the United States.

People who lost businesses instead of, or in addition to, homes in New
Orleans often would not be able to recover those losses through
insurance, and the government and charity, while interested in ensuring
displaced people have the basics, would not be in the business of
restoring some people to a former privileged position. Thus, they would
themselves get jobs, and, perhaps later, secure loans and begin
rebuilding their businesses from a small start.

Since New Orleans has an important geographic location as a port city,
resettlement would take place on a gradual basis, starting with people
doing work that had to be done in New Orleans, and then with people who
could make money supplying goods and services to them.

Scenario B:

The people displaced by the disaster are largely housed temporarily
until they can be returned to New Orleans, and are discouraged from
looking for permanent employment and residency elsewhere.

Once the structurally-unsound buildings are reinforced, everyone returns
at once, and the day after, everyone returns to their old job. Of
course, some businesses are now owned by the government that rebuilt
them, instead of by their former private owners, whose equity was
destroyed, but virtually every employer functions.

***

Scenario A, it would seem, is *much* more realistic than scenario B.

Now then: how do the two different scenarios affect different groups of
people from New Orleans?

Scenario B restores almost *everyone* in New Orleans, by and large, to
their former station.

Scenario A lets the white people from New Orleans rebuild their lives.
Where does it leave the black people?

Because New Orleans is a 'dangerous city', there are some black people
from there who are criminals. Thus, it won't be as easy for the black
people from New Orleans to find new jobs and new homes elsewhere in the
United States; being from New Orleans won't automatically free them from
the suspicion and prejudice black people in general face. (Note also
that this suspicion and prejudice is not *entirely unfounded in fact*,
deriving from hatred and bigotry, but largely results from a real crime
problem. Of course, that crime was bred by poverty, and that poverty was
caused by past crimes against black people, but it is not reasonable to
expect white people to risk their personal safety out of guilt feelings
over slavery.)

Plus, their homes in many cases haven't been destroyed. Just their jobs.

So the black people in New Orleans that through hard, honest work built
lives for themselves - will have nowhere to go and nothing to return to.


Just maybe this disaster can serve a purpose. Maybe it will force
America to consider, without pretense or denial, the problems that black
Americans still face.

Explicit legal discrimination has been abolished. Laws prevent employers
from discriminating. The "doors are open", what keeps black Americans
from walking through them? Why are they choosing the obvious dead-end of
drugs and crime?

(( RANT WARNING - this second half of my posting, admittedly, deals with
what might be called a pet theory of mine to explain social pathologies.
I think it's just what used to be common sense in the Victorian era and
before, but what do I know? ))

In a booming economy, like that of the 1960s, there are jobs for people
whose skills are limited.

In an economy like that of the 1970s, it is much harder to find a steady
job without a college degree. These cost money for most students.

Men starting from a poor background, therefore, often have very poor
prospects of *earning enough money to support a wife and family* within
a few years of leaving high school. Of course, black men aren't the only
ones with this problem these days; it's just even worse for many of
them.

All humans are mortal. We are all headed to oblivion and annihilation;
the only ultimate survival is in our descendants.

Those of us who Nature has caused to do the hard work involved in
bringing the next generation into existence - will always have the
opportunity to do so.

Those of us who are not directly required by Nature to work hard to have
descendants, on the other hand, will not have descendants - unless we
are chosen and accepted by those who do that work. Therefore, people in
that group must also work hard - being indirectly required to win the
competition for mates.

Women gestate, women undergo labor, women lactate.

Men are driven to seek out sex, and support a huge pornography industry,
among other things.

Also, if you visit a dairy farm, you will find that the unmodified cows
are much more peaceful in disposition than the unmodified bulls. Yet
they did not learn male-female stereotypes from watching TV.

When do you have crime, riots, and revolutions?

When you have men who don't think honest work is going to put a woman in
their arms any time soon.

Societies in the past have solved this either through denying women
sexual autonomy through a system of arranged marriages, or through
economic coercion by denying women access to most forms of remunerative
work, or both. Also, wars against neighboring communities to capture
women from them have been common.

We have to find another way.

To start with, while first-graders are cute and adorable, and
pre-schoolers even more so, to concentrate exclusively on "Head Start"
programs to solve the problem of the destructive cycle black poverty is
to abandon the next generation of black people when it needs help the
most - around the time of graduating from high school.

Men will work very hard - if they have hope. If all hard work will get
them is bare existence, they may instead feel there is little to lose,
and choose to rebel.

And it isn't just *black* Americans who place a high priority on clothes
that fit, adequate shelter, and the most fulfilling of human
relationships - white men do too, _pace_ Earl Butz.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
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John Savard wrote:


When a disaster strikes, even though it may in actuality be a
meaningless, random event, people search for meaning within it. Given
the destruction and loss, they seek consolation in being able to feel
that at least some positive purpose was served as well.

Since New Orleans' French Quarter was built on high ground, and survived
the flooding, the theory that it was God's vengeance for breast-baring
bead hoarders looks a little shaky - and that kind of notion would only
be popular on the lunatic fringe.



ALL OF AMERICA IS CURSED! RANCID FAG SEMEN IS FLOATING ON THE WATERS OF
NEW ORLEANS! :-D : http://www.godhatesamerica.com/
Ah, now that's the Old Time Religion that made America what it is today!
Morally, intellectually, and financially bankrupt.

Pat

Didn't read all your post, but it seems like a good strategy might be
to:

1. Build one or two New Towns near New Orleans, but above sea level.
And build them well.
2. Don't replace destroyed homes in New Orleans, except with park land
and farm land.
3. Make sure there's good road and rail links into New Orleans from the
new towns.

Then New Orleans can continue with the same business importance, but
with a smaller population.

As for the other towns. make sure new buildings can withstand
hurricanes. Hurricane proof houses are not rocket science.

Another thought in any hurricane area: When Walmart or other wants to
build a store, you say, OK, and here's a $10 million contribution to
build a hurricane proof store that can operate immediately after a
hurricane. Even build some hurricane proof appartments for the workers,
and a helicopter pad that can take some chinooks.

On 10 Sep 2005 08:35:31 -0700, "Alex Terrell"
wrote:

Another thought in any hurricane area: When Walmart or other wants to
build a store, you say, OK, and here's a $10 million contribution to
build a hurricane proof store that can operate immediately after a
hurricane. Even build some hurricane proof appartments for the workers,
and a helicopter pad that can take some chinooks.

You don't give them money, unless you think that Walmart is a charity
case. You say, if you want planning permission for that store then you
will do the following. At least that's how it works in the UK.
--
Stephen Horgan

"intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence"

Stephen Horgan wrote:
On 10 Sep 2005 08:35:31 -0700, "Alex Terrell"
wrote:

Another thought in any hurricane area: When Walmart or other wants to
build a store, you say, OK, and here's a $10 million contribution to
build a hurricane proof store that can operate immediately after a
hurricane. Even build some hurricane proof appartments for the workers,
and a helicopter pad that can take some chinooks.

You don't give them money, unless you think that Walmart is a charity
case. You say, if you want planning permission for that store then you
will do the following. At least that's how it works in the UK.
--
Could work, if there's the demand.

It doesn't always work in the UK. In Tunbridge Wells they built a large
trading estate with no public transport provision, despite the fact
that it's right next to a railway line. They could have got a light
rail system, but didn't.

Alex Terrell wrote:


1. Build one or two New Towns near New Orleans, but above sea level.
And build them well.


I like the radical proposal- we raze the whole city to the ground, put
the debris in a giant landfill raising the ground level by 20 or 30
feet, and build New New Orleans on top of the landfill.
Of course, since the main appeal of the town was its historic buildings,
it might be cheaper just to raze it, bury it, and forget about it.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


Alex Terrell wrote:


1. Build one or two New Towns near New Orleans, but above sea level.
And build them well.


I like the radical proposal- we raze the whole city to the ground, put
the debris in a giant landfill raising the ground level by 20 or 30
feet, and build New New Orleans on top of the landfill.
Of course, since the main appeal of the town was its historic buildings,
it might be cheaper just to raze it, bury it, and forget about it.

If you were to hold off for a year, you could make money by taking waste
from other states, and using that as landfill.

Alex Terrell wrote:

As for the other towns. make sure new buildings can withstand
hurricanes. Hurricane proof houses are not rocket science.

Houses which can withstand 150 MPH sustained winds are feasible
(albeit with severe cost and design flexibility issues although damage
from flying debris is a problem), but the storm surge of 25 feet of
water? Unless you want to pay to build a house as a reinforced concrete
bunker, your house is not going to withstand the sheer weight of water
in a powerful storm surge.

The obvious solution is not to build so close to the ocean, but
stopping this is close to politically impossible. Storm surges from a
hurricane as powerful as Katrina are rare events, but I would like to
see the government not offer flood insurance to people who insist on
building private residences close enough to the ocean that it gets
damaged or destroyed by every run of the mill topical storm or category
1 hurricane that comes along.

Alan F

afiggatt wrote:
Alex Terrell wrote:

As for the other towns. make sure new buildings can withstand
hurricanes. Hurricane proof houses are not rocket science.

Houses which can withstand 150 MPH sustained winds are feasible
(albeit with severe cost and design flexibility issues although damage
from flying debris is a problem),

Steel frame construction? I'd guess it would add 20% to construction
costs. I suppose houses in LA have a similar cost overhead to meet
Earth Quake regulations.

but the storm surge of 25 feet of
water? Unless you want to pay to build a house as a reinforced concrete
bunker, your house is not going to withstand the sheer weight of water
in a powerful storm surge.

25 feet is a bit extreme. You can build the ground floor as an open
garage, to withstand upto 10 feet of water. Agree it's not in
everyone's taste.

The obvious solution is not to build so close to the ocean, but
stopping this is close to politically impossible. Storm surges from a
hurricane as powerful as Katrina are rare events, but I would like to
see the government not offer flood insurance to people who insist on
building private residences close enough to the ocean that it gets
damaged or destroyed by every run of the mill topical storm or category
1 hurricane that comes along.

Makes sense. But if someone wants to build a concrete bunker, perheaps
it should be insurable.

Ian Stirling wrote:

If you were to hold off for a year, you could make money by taking waste
from other states, and using that as landfill.



Hey, I like that- "New New Orleans- the city built on garbage!" :-D

Pat