… that seems to be more or less my job description the last few days. Very small amounts of critical action, but otherwise, simply waiting for the time when that action is needed.

I need to figure out something to do, or I’m going to start to get very, very bored.

EA is doing 2:1 matching on all employee donations to relief efforts along the gulf coast. I can’t even begin to comprehend what it must be like, there, even after reading all sorts of horror stories. I’ve donated for most of the major disasters in the last few years, but this… as horrible as 9/11 was, and as shocking as it was because it was consciously inflicted, this disaster is orders of magnitude worse for the country, and its repercussions will be felt for years, if not decades, to come.

I wish I could say that I had confidence that our government were up to the task, but they’re clearly not. FEMA is completely directionless, and the Bush administration has once again completely fallen on its face. I hope Red Cross and other humanitarian groups, as well as volunteers can pick up the slack, and that there’s a full accounting of all the things that went completely wrong.

Not much I can say, other than I hope any money that I donate helps, thanks to EA for generously amplifying our contributions, and my thoughts and hopes are with the victims of this disaster.

So, I was reading some articles today about how funding was cut for the levees in New Orleans due to the massive expense of the war in Iraq, and it got me thinking about 9/11, and how essentially, there is a massive fault in our collective feedback loop.

For *this* President to care about something, it has to affect him personally, either by hurting his allies, or hurting him politically. The problem is that in essence, the President *gains* from massive tragedy – after 9/11, his poll results went through the roof. He’ll undoubtedly be able to leverage this tragedy for political gain as well.

The problem is that essentially, the general public doesn’t care that preventative measures weren’t take, because as a whole, individuals find it hard to believe that these were known potential threats. Since *I* couldn’t have predicted 9/11, it took some time to internalize that our *government* as an organization *did*. Similarly, though the President has said that he didn’t think anyone could have anticipated the levees not holding up, many people did.

The issue, though, is that people seem content to hold the President and his administration to the same standards as some random idiot off the street.

This creates a problematic feedback loop, because essentially, the President is *praised* for massive governmental failures by increased polling numbers, while incurring *no punishment* for massive failures that *led* to the occurrence in question. Not only that, but had he *not* cut the budget for the levees, he’d have incurred *penalties* for overspending (well, even more overspending). In essence, had he taken action to prevent tragedy, he’d have lost in two ways. By taking no action, he wins. This, of course, discounts the tremendous human suffering involved, but I expect that in Bush’s calculations, that doesn’t factor in at all.

I’m not saying that this is a conscious conspiracy – I’m saying that we’re missing a feedback loop to govern this particular behaviour. It’s like training a dog. You praise it when it’s good, you punish it when it’s bad, and it learns to be good through positive feedback.

We’re giving the President positive feedback every time tragedy occurs. There’s simply no incentive for him to do anything to prevent it.