Let me try this again. Scenario 1: a city votes to do road construction. This results in all residents of that city paying more in taxes. All residents get to

Let me try this again. Scenario 1: a city votes to do road construction. This results in all residents of that city paying more in taxes. All residents get to decide and all residents pay for the results of their decision. Scenario 2: the U.S. invades Iraq. There are some casualties amongst U.S. Forces as well as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties, many of them civilians. What's different about this scenario is that none of the dead Iraqi civilians or their families had a say in the U.S. decision to go to war. But they pay the overwhelming cost in life. Whereas no Americans at all are required to risk their lives. That is the asymmetry in costs that the OP was talking about.