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

samantha sjatkins at mac.com
Fri Jul 27 06:32:09 UTC 2007


Lee Corbin wrote:
> 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.

Whether or not?  Surely you are not suggesting that there is any longer 
a shred of doubt on this score. 

>  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.
>
>   
Prisons in the US are a travesty.  We lock up much too much of the 
population and for far too long.   But actually there is a lucrative 
prison industry paying inmates pennies on the dollar to do work that 
would have much higher labor cost on the outside. 


> 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:
Huh?  The cases are not remotely comparable.  Never has an opinion of 
mine been so well vindicated when I was so vilified upon originally 
expressing it.  There was no reason among the ones offered before and 
since officially that in the least justified the Iraq fiasco and the 
destruction of so much.   Every single one has been shown to be an utter 
sham, another fig leave over ugly nakedness.   Germany and Japan were 
actually dangerous.  You cannot respectably claim that Iraq was and you 
darn well know it or certainly should by this late date.


>   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.
>
>   
What a pile of horse manure.  Do you actually believe anything you write 
or does it just flow from your fingertips while your mind is otherwise 
occupied?

- samantha




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