This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, June 5th, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

The tragedies that have rocked Myanmar and China show how government response is very in times of tragedy and what life under

socialism might mean when tragedy strikes. Jim Dorn, editor of Cato Journal, says

that we can minimize some of the risks associated with tragedies by adopting

institutions that maximize individual freedom.

The response to a natural disaster like an earthquake depends upon two things. First the initial

wealth that people have which is generally generated by the private sector and

second the extent of a market and civil society which are lacking tremendously in Burma or Myanmar and less so

in China since 1978 since liberalization. But it's typical that friends and neighbors and family will be

the first responders as well as private entrepreneurs who may be looking for a profit but are doing good at the same time.

What's the record historically?

Well, I think if you look at George Horwich who has written extensively on this shows that economies that are market oriented

with private property rights with the free flow of information and with a vibrant

market system in which prices are free to move have responded much faster

than countries that are originally under central planning or huge bureaucracy lack of free flow of

information lack of prior property and certainly we've seen this with the

response in Burma.

China has done a much better job.

They're more open now.

They didn't react the way they did with the SARS problem,

which occurred a couple years ago where they didn't tell anybody what was going on.

In this case, there was much freer flow of information, a much more rapid response.

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