Email
Print
Learning from forest fires, hurricanes and recessions
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: February 10, 2009
We have learned something about forest fires. They are part of a natural process through which nature manages a healthy ecosystem. In our Long Leaf Pine forests, fires burn away the low brush and clear the way for the healthy growth of the pines.
There is another important lesson about forest fires. Don't tell people how good a forest fire is when one has just burned down their houses.
We have learned something about hurricanes. They are part of a natural process that brings needed moisture to the land-locked regions. Last year some people prayed for "little" hurricanes to bring rain and relief from the drought.
There is another important lesson about hurricanes. It is not a good idea to tell people how good a hurricane is when one has just flooded their houses.
There is a lesson we have learned about economic crises and their impact on state and local government. They force government leaders to make hard decisions about what programs and activities are most critical and which can or must be reduced or eliminated.
Only when the money runs out can some outdated and weak programs get culled or pruned. In good economic times their supporters and the good people who are served or employed by the programs hold on tenaciously.
Only a financial crisis can break their grips.
Many strong and necessary programs, even if cut back temporarily, will survive. When the economy gets better, they will have a larger opportunity to make a claim for even more public resources because the eliminated programs will no longer be claiming a share.
This argument asserts that economic downturns force the government to adopt the principles of "zero base" budgeting and apply them in a tough-minded way.
Like the forest fires and the hurricanes, an economic crisis clears the decks, destroying good and bad, but opening the way for new and healthy growth when the crisis has passed.
There is another important lesson about an economic crisis. It is not a good idea to tell people how good an economic crisis is when one has just blown away their jobs and houses, burned up their savings, and threatened to take away the state government programs that might help them through the crisis.
(This is a lesson I should have remembered before I wrote this column.)
Still, it is important to search for and take advantage of the opportunities that even the worse crises may bring.
Two successful "social entrepreneurs" brought hardnosed but hopeful messages last week.
First, Noble Prize winning "micro lending" banker Muhammad Yunus, speaking at UNC's Kenan Flagler Business School, urged government leaders to view the crisis as an opportunity. In good times "when something works, you don't want to touch it" even if change would make it better. It is only when, as is now the case, that systems are not working that there is an opportunity to redesign them to make them work better. Yunus urged the U.S. to spend at least 50 percent of its economic crisis response toward the design of better economic systems.
Second, in talking to a UNC Law School group, Martin Eakes, CEO of the Self-Help Credit Union, made specific proposals for addressing the current crisis. For instance, to help stabilize the housing foreclosure stampede, we should give bankruptcy courts the power to adjust home mortgages downward to reflect the true value of the property. But Eakes says there can be no way to get through the crisis without a lot of suffering and self-sacrifice, which, in the long run may really make us better people.
Maybe Eakes's lesson is one we should remember even when the fires are hot and the hurricane winds are howling.
D.G. Martin is the host of "North Carolina Bookwatch," airing at 5 p.m. Sunday on UNC-TV.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
Click a region for news specific to that area.
 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
Advertisement
