MSGuild
> the truth was they didn't trust the system  to give to it
Pyrate,

The book about Buffalo Creek goes into this feeling of suspicion a great 
deal. The southern Appalachian community was based on a moonshine 
economy for a long time. They already had a culture of suspicion of 
outsiders. Then there was the mine company store and script. When 
surviving folks were handed trailers and money it seemed like that meant 
that nobody cared. The trailers were all bunched together with strangers 
living in them. Community was wiped out and replaced with trailer parks. 
Where folks used to step out their door to sit on the porch on a trailer 
they would step out the door to nothing. No porch, no people. When it 
rained on those trailers everyone would put their clothes on lest they 
had to run away in a hurry.

What we do have here in America is the non-profit structure that in a 
sort of unstated manner goes about doing the work that would not get 
done unless the government was larger. The idea is that rather than have 
the government raise taxes in order to support large government programs 
-- and the politicians to control everything -- to instead let the 
people, the citizens, form so-called non-profit organizations that are 
mandated to do good works of some usually unstated goals and to not tax 
them.

Though it is fairly obvious that the government screwed up pretty good 
in the Gulf region response to Katrina and Rita it would be really 
difficult to say that the non-profit sector did not come up to the 
plate. And a bunch of that non-profit response came about through 
individual citizens and corporations giving of their time and money to 
the non-profits. The non-profits include churches, foundations (most of 
them are set up simply for the reason to give away money, like the WMF), 
trade organizations (like the Building Stone Institute), community 
oriented organizations, or educational organizations like PTN or APT.

Though it may seem like chaos that we have thousands of non-profits and 
that they can do whatever the hell they want as to good works without 
the government having much to say about what they actually do what it 
does mean is that there is a great deal of freedom of choice for where 
people put their money, time and interest that would otherwise be sucked 
up in paying taxes to a bigger government to do stuff that we as 
individuals would have even less to say about what happens. What we have 
is a system that encourages people participating in non-profits to do 
good works all over the place all of the time in all sorts of usually 
unseen ways... then suddenly something really big happens, like the Gulf 
region situation, and energies stored up get focused in that place. What 
you get is instead of one response a thousand thousand responses and the 
statistical odds are that a good portion of those responses will be 
about as much help as humans can possibly come up with.

I don't exactly agree that Americans don't give or do not know how to 
give. We are all pretty damned good at giving.

][<en

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