I’m sorry to report your friend is a complete dumbass.
Being a democratic government does not mean you can’t be proactive and have emergency services. Does he think Switzerland has a public consultation every time there’s an avalanche?
In the US the latter used to be FEMA’s job, and with respect to the former the feds allocated flood (and more generally disaster) mitigation funds, for the day decade or so Texas has systematically ignored those funds or tried to route them elsewhere, and in 2021 under ARPA the county was awarded millions which could have been used for flood alert and prevention but decided to not do any of that for political reasons, and send most of it to the PD instead.
Being a democratic government does not mean you can’t be proactive and have emergency services. Does he think Switzerland has a public consultation every time there’s an avalanche?
In the US the latter used to be FEMA’s job, and with respect to the former the feds allocated flood (and more generally disaster) mitigation funds, for the day decade or so Texas has systematically ignored those funds or tried to route them elsewhere, and in 2021 under ARPA the county was awarded millions which could have been used for flood alert and prevention but decided to not do any of that for political reasons, and send most of it to the PD instead.