Welcome to the Reason Roundtable, your weekly Libertarian podcast from the 55-year-old

magazine of Free Mines and Free Markets.

I am Matt Welch, joined by I presume a clapping that Gillespie, Peter Suderman and Catherine

Mangue Ward, Heidi Ho, Pals.

Howdy.

Happy Monday.

Hey, Matt.

All right.

Two weeks ago, a fire broke out on the island of Maui, bringing the kinds of destruction

that Hawaiians haven't seen since the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

114 people have died, the most of any American wildfire in a century.

850 people are still missing.

The historic resort town of Lahania is mostly destroyed, sorry for mispronouncing that.

Thousands of buildings have been incinerated and the fires are in fact still burning if

contained.

President Joe Biden is out there just today, we're recording this on Monday as we always

do, unless it's holiday.

To have a look at the wreckage, every natural catastrophe is at heart a natural catastrophe,

but there's also plenty of government and policy failure at play here.

The New York Times, not a Libertarian magazine, in a pretty withering article today, wrote

that, quote, the initial shock and grief are giving way to anger and questions about

the government's planning and response, most significantly why communications around

...