Since Krugman likes to speak of chutzpah:

"And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action?"

Krugman has the chutzpah to "conveniently" not mention that it was his beloved incompetent Federal Government that built the lousy levees that didn't protect New Orleans during Katrina in the first place:

(From Wikipedia)

"The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as the levee system catastrophically failed, in many cases hours after the storm had moved inland. The federal flood protection system [emphasis mine] in New Orleans failed at more than fifty places."

On another issue, how about THIS for a telling remark from Komrade Krugman:

"Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens."

Krugman inadvertently admits that one of the great "productive" things that government is good for is attacking another country, which then has to have its own government to defend itself. It's funny--I can't remember the last time Proctor & Gamble, Amazon, or any other private corporation sent someone to attack me.

Perhaps Komrade Krugman should read Hans Hoppe's The Economics and Ethics of Private Property and The Myth of National Defense to know that "self-defense by armed citizens" and/or by private competing security services is a much more efficient way to defend oneself than the forced monopoly of force of government.