If many Americans thought it was "just the right thing to do" to send guys with big guns to Haiti in order to make sure everyone played by the rules, then why did the US federal government have to get involved at all? The Americans who thought it was a good idea could have volunteered themselves, or paid for others to go and do this moral work. There was no reason Barack Obama had to chime in with his own thoughts on the matter, except to say that he was strapping on an M16 to cover Michelle as she handed out bottled water to orphans.

Obviously, I am being facetious. The reason the US federal government "had to" coordinate the rescue efforts in Haiti is that it would violently punish any private group that tried to field a comparable effort with adequate defense for its participants. If foreign arms dealers began trying to sell grenade launchers, tear-gas canisters, riot gear, and other equipment to nongovernmental groups in Haiti, the US Navy would almost certainly interrupt their shipments as wildly "destabilizing."

Upon reflection, we see that there never was any hope for the blossoming of Rothbardian defense agencies in Haiti. For an analogy, if the US Air Force bombed any nonapproved Haitian farms while the US Navy intercepted any incoming shipments of food, then statists could "prove" that a free market in agriculture is a horrible idea that leads to preventable starvation.

# posted by Bob Murphy @ 10:39 AM