[tylerdurden]

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New Orleans was build below sea level over 200 years ago

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New Orleans was not built below sea level. They didn't build a levee around a piece of lake and then pump all the water out. The levees were built (by the french, originally) to route the river around an area that regularly flooded. This prevented the river from depositing fresh sediment in the area, which is the only thing that kept it above sea level in the first place - the sinking is a natural process.

If government had not built the levees in the first place, and such river control had been left to the free market, would New Orleans even exist as we know it today? I doubt a free market would build a single monolithic levee system (a system in which any single failure dooms the entire area) around such a huge area.

Did government set all these people up?