Katrina

Katrina's aftermath has driven home the point that the folly of mankind can compound the fury of nature

That's Pete Boettke, in Christian Science Monitor.

Hurrican Katrina struck just over one year ago, (here's the three articles I posted at the time), and it's time to reflect. Beneath the polarised debate that emerged in the wake,

it is imperative that we undertake a critical analysis of the institutions and policies that succeeded and that failed...

...so says the Mercatus Center's Katrina Research Project, which provides this analysis by looking into three aspects: social/cultural; political/legal; economic/financial. This is an enormously sensible distinction to make, and raises the bar for serious studies of social change by insisting that explanations must consider all three aspects, and therefore (necessarily) must be conducted within a theoretical frame in which all three aspects are consistent.

The intellectual battle is often fought one front at a time, and that's fine. But don't neglect those frames - such as Austrian praxeology (i.e. economics/sociology) - that can seriously contrubute to all aspects of social change.

Full disclosure: I am a Mercatus graduate fellow