Adversity does not create character, it reveals it.  This hurricane season has shown adversity also opens opportunity; good, bad and sometimes lighthearted.  First the good.  

 In the run up to Irma, essential supplies, such as fuel, food and water were rapidly depleted by fleeing citizens.  Those staying behind added plywood, batteries and generators to the list of dwindling commodities.  Prices for available goods ascended rapidly and the media said such price gouging proves the inherent evil of capitalism and they screamed for government intervention.  Once again, they are wrong, here being why.

 Let’s assume you own a lumber mill or water bottling plant in Georgia and your trucks are loaded with product which normally yields two dollars profit per unit.  Suddenly Florida’s plunging supply and rising prices means you could pocket twenty dollars per unit once delivered.  What would you do?  When the price is tightly regulated, you park your truck and drink your coffee while fawning over the fair ladies on The View.  Floridians go thirsty and can’t board up their windows.

 In a free market economy, you would fire up your truck, fix the old one behind the shop, borrow your neighbor’s mini-van and deliver as much product as possible into the marketplace.  Suddenly, the Sunshine State would be awash in drinking water and plywood.  When demand is high, an increasing price always increases supply; a principle America’s founders understood well.

 Moving to the evil end of opportunity, brings us to the looters.  It is not surprising decades of propaganda has convinced the unwashed there is no dishonor in stealing stuff to which the ruling class says the downtrodden are entitled.  Look at Antifa and BLM.  The only difference between cleaning out a flooded Footlocker and voting for government freebies is who is stealing the bounty.  Theft is theft whether the perpetrator is wearing a hoodie or a coat and tie.  Covetousness and theft are the lifeline of progressivism, even though both are “shall nots” in the Ten Commandments.  This brings me to my lighter opportunity.

 A video clip showing a Florida reporter battling the wind and rain was broadcast worldwide.  While speaking of Irma’s danger and the deserted boardwalks, the camera panned the beach before accidently stumbling upon a lone fisherman bait casting into the storm surge.  Apparently, he did not get the get-out memo.  The anchor stammered, “let’s not show that,” and he continued hyping Irma.  I chuckled thinking that could be my father-in-law if he lived in Florida, as he too would believe evacuations are for sissies if the fish are biting.