The Cost of Preparedness: Paying for the Next Black Swan

The fully burdened cost of paying for the common good is always hard to calculate. Until afterwards.

Like millions of Americans, I felt a deep ache in my stomach when I first heard the news on Friday—families swept away in the dark of night by rising floodwaters. I can’t shake the image of teenage camp counselors doing everything in their power to save the kids in their care. As a dad of three daughters, every update feels like a punch in the gut.

This one hits close to home. I fell in love with the Hill Country during my 2018 run for Congress through TX-21. The floodwaters tore through towns and backroads I’ve walked, driven, and campaigned across. If you’re looking for ways to help or get updates from the ground, my former opponent in that race, Rep. Chip Roy, has been sharing timely and helpful information.

A screenshot from Chip Roy’s Twitter account for how to help

When Two Storms Collide: A Holiday Turns to Horror

While many of us were waking up to thoughts of fireworks and parades, the Hill Country was already underwater. A stalled Independence Day storm, fed by Pacific and Gulf moisture, dumped over a foot of rain in hours—sending the Guadalupe and Llano Rivers surging past their banks and turning Camp Mystic, founded in 1926, into a disaster zone.

As of this morning: 109 dead, 161 missing, and damages potentially topping $18 billion.

Local first-responders performed heroic rescues, but questions are piling up: Why did so many people up and down the river get no warning? Did budget cuts at the National Weather Service hobble our radar network? Did we properly calculate the odds of this happening again?

Risk, randomness, and the government’s job

Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls these moments “Black Swans”: low-probability, high-impact events that rewrite the future overnight. We can’t predict the precise moment—but we know the risk class exists. Part of government’s role is to blunt the blow when it comes.

Volunteers always show up afterward. But mitigation must come before.

That duty isn’t cheap. New flood gauges, redundant radar, home buyouts, and stronger bridges all carry price tags that are easy to defer—until deferral turns into tragedy.

A Texas-Sized Lesson in Weather and Warnings

America’s first coordinated weather network began in 1870, when President Ulysses S. Grant ordered the Army Signal Corps to telegraph storm warnings—an early sign that protecting the public was a federal duty.

Texas learned that lesson the hard way on Sept. 8, 1900, when a Category 4 hurricane devastated Galveston, killing at least 6,000 people and bankrupting the state’s busiest port. In the aftermath, engineers raised the island and built a 17-foot seawall—an expensive but life-saving collective investment. Just 15 years later, a similar storm struck. Only eight lives were lost.

That tragedy also sparked what would evolve into today’s National Weather Service. From Ike to Harvey, each storm has repeated the same message: Shared threats demand shared solutions—and shared costs.

The Seat Belt Test: How We Already Invest in Risk

We already understand how to manage risk on the road. For example, a three-point seatbelt costs automakers around $25 per vehicle, yet it saved 14,955 lives in 2017 alone. Similarly, the driver airbag adds about $300 to the cost of a car but is considered cost-effective at $24,000 per quality-adjusted life year (QALY). These safety measures are small upfront investments with enormous returns—proof that society is willing to pay for protection when the benefits are clear.

You hope you never “need” that belt or airbag. But the day you do, the value is infinite to you—and priceless to your family.

As a society, we made that tradeoff. The result: over 400,000 Americans alive today who otherwise wouldn’t be.

Floodplains are our collective seat belt

Central Texas has flooded before. It will again. Yet flood mitigation projects often stall—trapped in the tragedy of the commons. No single homeowner, county, or business wants to bear the full cost of levees or early-warning systems that benefit everyone.

That’s exactly where government must step in: coordinating, funding, and enforcing standards that spread the cost and multiply the benefit.

What We Should Demand from Our Leaders

• Restore forecasting capacity – Fully fund NOAA and the NWS so radar outages don’t become silent killers.

• Invest in dry-day infrastructure – Floodwalls and elevated roads may seem unnecessary when the sun is out—but they’re priceless when the sky opens.

• Modernize the Flood Insurance Program – Price risk accurately, discourage rebuilding in harm’s way, and subsidize strategic relocation.

• Publish plain-language risk dashboards – Every Texan should know their flood risk, evacuation route, and historical waterline by address.

And what we must do ourselves

What We Must Do Ourselves

Black Swans don’t wait for the next legislative session. Call your county commissioner, state legislator, or member of Congress this week and ask one question:

“What line item in the next budget will make the next flood less deadly?”

If they don’t have an answer, offer to help them craft one.

Risk isn’t optional, but tragedy compounded by inaction is.

The Next Threat Is Already Smoldering

This time, the disaster came by water. Next time, it may come by fire.

Central Texas sits on the edge of the urban-wildland boundary—a line we’ve been pushing closer to danger with every new road and development. A fast-moving wildfire through these dense, winding hills could be even more catastrophic.

We can’t say we weren’t warned. Are you prepared?

Joseph