[ExI] Costs of the Roads Not Taken (was "Up against the warming zealots"...hmmm)

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Wed Jul 25 06:59:17 UTC 2007


Eugen writes

>> > We certainly do have the money to burn on frivolous war-making.
>> > So if we want to make it happen, we can.
>
> Elaa wrote
> 
>> Do you really believe that? 
> 
> I certainly believe that if you can destroy value to the tune
> of more than a terabuck (and counting) that that value was
> expendable, by definition. (Whether there's considerably more
> where that came from is an open question).
> ...
> A first good step would be stop spending terabucks on breaking
> things and start spending terabucks on making things.

Whether or not the war was justified in some sense, it's simplistic
to describe the choices this way. We might employ the same 
logic to save a great deal of money on police and prisons, for
example.  They don't create wealth and are very costly.

The problem, of course, is that the consequences of alternate
policies may be even more costly.  Surely this was the supposition
of those wishing to invade Iraq even as it was the supposition of
those wishing to attack Japan and Germany in 1941:  though
much more expensive by far than the current operations, it was
deemed that in the long run failing to take these actions would
have been even more expensive.

Lee

> A lot more accountability is in order. Unfortunately, currently people 
> are politically apathetic, and that's one of the reasons some of them
> can get away with breaking things to the tune of more than a terabuck.




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