The Bourgeois Virtues and Disaster Relief, Joplin Version

Steven Horwitz

In my work on Walmart's role in the response and recovery from Hurricane Katrina, I also highlighted several other private sector firms that had gone to extraordinary lengths to provide relief to Gulf Coast residents in ways that could not be understood only as profit-seeking.  I argued that the very language they used to talk about their efforts was the language of ethics and values and not (just) what was good for business.  In a book chapter published last year, I used the framework of McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues and documented the ways in which McDonald's, Marriott, and Procter & Gamble provided important relief after Katrina.  

Well P&G is at it again, this time in the aftermath of the recent tornadoes.  The New York Times reports:

Days after the tornado, two of the company’s brands, Tide and Duracell, arrived with their own specially equipped trailers and crews, which set up in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Joplin.

One trailer housed the Tide Loads of Hope mobile laundry, first dispatched to post-Katrina New Orleans in 2005, which provided free wash-and-fold service. The other was the Duracell Power Relief Trailer, which provided free batteries and flashlights as well as charging stations for phones and laptops.

I take special pleasure in noting that they set up shop in a Walmart parking lot.

As the Times also notes:

“You have to be incredibly careful around natural disasters because you don’t want to be seen as an ambulance chaser, and you cannot merchandise on the back of a disaster,” said Carol Cone, managing director for brand and corporate citizenship at Edelman.

But Tide has steered clear of pitfalls, Ms. Cone said.

“What they came up with is to give superhuman powers to their brand to help out during disasters,” Ms. Cone said. “In a disaster people have lost everything, but what Tide realized is that just bringing in a laundromat gives people a modicum of normalcy, a moment of humanity.”

Here is commerce meeting virtue:  by giving away their product, they have enabled people to navigate a terrible situation with one less thing to worry about and to at least have the dignity of clean clothes while they rebuild the rest of their lives.

Capitalism makes it possible to engage and deploy the whole range of bourgeois virtues.

(Thanks to Claire Morgan for the heads-up)

Comments

[McKinney]

Nice! I have to remind my children that the "selfless" politician, policeman, social worker and charity all survive on the backs of entrepreneurs and commerce. The former couldn't exist without the latter.

[Jim]

A couple additions to your Walmart piece:

1) Walmart offered workers around the country double and triple time with added vacation, to go to New Orleans and help clean up their stores, deliver goods and restock shelves. The government stopped them from going because it would take local jobs away. So Walmart's response was slower than it could have been.

2) FEMA's stockpiling is silly and a waste of capital. There is no other fit description. As you illustrate, they would be better off purchasing supplies on the open market if they want to get involved. No private firm would act in the manner FEMA does, not just because they demand ROI on inventory, but because logistically it is a silly and inappropriate strategy that does not meet effectively meet its goals; it turns them into an inventory speculator without logistical expertise. It is a waste of money.

Private distribution and supply channels could easily reallocate inventory to high demand areas while production catches up. It is what they are built for and do every day.

So the lesson learned is not just whether private levees would have failed in the first place. But if they had failed, they would have been fixed in less than half the time, and heads would have rolled for the failure. Bureaucracy does not work in any way like that.

Sorry for being long winded, but therein lies a crucial question for big government advocates. For despite one's political views, it seems to me the failure of bureaucracy at almost every turn must be obvious to anyone, and a 'killer concern" in building huge national institutions.

[Nicole Youngman]

Cone's quote nails it re: the sense of normalcy. I do wish Lowe's hadn't been charging over $100 for a large tarp when I was in Tuscaloosa immediately after their twister, however. High-velocity trees + roofs = holes that need covering NOW.