Knowledge in a crisis is dispersed and obscured by a 'fog of war'—just as Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg lacked accurate information despite being on the ground—so effective response requires giving local actors autonomy and discretion to act on contextual knowledge rather than top-down direction.

causalpending

Speaker

Russ Roberts

Evidence Quote

he had a very a noisy picture of the reality on the ground even though he was on the ground... his genius was partly giving a lot of autonomy to his generals who had that information

Source

Peter Boettke on Hurricane Katrina and the Economics of Disaster 12/18/2006EconTalk
Created: 6/17/2026, 10:29:22 AM

My Notes

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