Los Angeles’ Destruction Was Fueled by Bad Policy—and Bad Incentives

Story by The Dispatch.

As fire still rages in the Los Angeles area, I’ve been torn about whether to write about it. Beyond the very real tragedies and my general rule against public dunking, a lot of what’s going on out there has nothing to do with policy. As our friends at The Morning Dispatch explained, for example, national experts and folks on the ground seem to agree that the unfortunate and freakish confluence of several meteorological phenomena—especially the hurricane-force winds and recent lack of rain—made much of the damage in and around L.A. unavoidable regardless of the policies in place or the people in charge. And much of the knee-jerk, partisan hysteria surrounding the fires has proven to be premature, half-baked, or just plain wrong—not to mention distasteful.

On the other hand, there do appear to be several policies that, while they didn’t cause the fires, probably made things in L.A. today worse than they’d otherwise be—perhaps by a significant margin. They fit squarely within the stuff we talk about all the time here at Capitolism and provide lessons about not only the L.A. fires but also how (ostensibly) good policy intentions can generate really bad outcomes, thanks in large part to some equally bad incentives for all the people involved.