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Just how many lives has terrorism claimed in the past decade? It's easy to answer that question now. No one knew the answer to that a decade ago. No one knows
by jsz0 13y ago
Just how many lives has terrorism claimed in the past decade?
It's easy to answer that question now. No one knew the answer to that a decade ago. No one knows how many lives terrorism will claim in the next decade. The government does have to plan for the worst case scenario.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> The government does have to plan for the worst case scenario. No more so than the government needs to consider all other scenarios, and the costs of any policy choice in those scenarios, and use the likelihood along with the potential costs and benefits of each scenario in assessing the desirability of the policy. Otherwise, planning for the worst case scenario just becomes a convenient excuse for policies that make life considerably worse for everyone in the most likely scenario.
- Spearchucker 13y agoThat doesn't make much sense. What's the objective? If it IS saving lives, then a lot less money than the NSA burns up can be spent saving a lot more drug addicts, cancer sufferers, typhoid, HIV, and so on - there are millions more deaths than those caused by terrorism - no matter how unquantifiable those are.
- mikeash 13y agoReplace "terrorism" with "killer robots" or "sharks" or "bedbugs". Your statement remains as valid as ever, but somehow the government is only spending billions (or trillions) on one of them. Why?
- malandrew 13y agoDon't know about the latter two, but they aren't worrying about the former because they own almost all of the killer robots.
- jsz0 13y agoThe NSA does a lot more than just fight terrorism and of course the US invests a huge amount of money in mitigating the impact of other risks like natural disasters. They have to look at all these different threats and divvy up the money accordingly.
- mikeash 13y agoConversely, a lot of US government organizations are involved in fighting terrorism besides the NSA. None of this answers my question: of all these possibilities, why does the government only go after one?
- mpyne 13y agoYou speak as if the government doesn't have programs that track sharks or bedbugs.
- mikeash 13y agoNot of any substantial size, and not because of the possibility that they'll suddenly kill us all.
- jlgreco 13y agoYou speak as if he thinks the government should have no programs to track terrorists. It seems pretty clear to me that it is the magnitude of resources devoted that concerns him (and myself).
- dwallin 13y agoSure, but there's a point where the government could go too far. For example, if the government starting having random mattress inspections inside peoples homes that would be way too intrusive despite any reductions in bedbugs that might result.
- eieio 13y agoThis is so intentionally obtuse that I'm not sure what to say. Let me know when bedbugs conspire with sharks to fly a plane into a building. I think a great case can be made for the NSA and other agencies spending too much money "fighting terrorism," but there's no reason to hurt that argument with such an absurd stance.
- mikeash 13y ago"No one knows how many lives bedbugs will claim in the next decade. The government does have to plan for the worst case scenario." The above is nuts, right? Yet both bedbugs and terrorists account for a negligible number of American deaths historically. So the above can't be nuts if the equivalent statement about terrorism is non-nuts. Please explain where I'm wrong, and don't just say I'm "intentionally obtuse".
- eieio 13y agoThe United States has experienced large scale terrorist acts(9/11) and has stopped other terrorist plots since then. Terrorism has claimed significantly more lives than bedbugs, and has also cause tremendous damage to United States infrastructure. I'd also argue that comparing the deaths of folks involved in 9/11 to the deaths that have(n't) been experienced by bedbugs to be both absurd and disrespectful, but that's beside the point. It's hard for me to believe that you're actually trying to make this argument.
- Cushman 13y ago> Terrorism has claimed significantly more lives than bedbugs On the scale of deaths overall-- no, it hasn't. That's the point.
- flyinRyan 13y ago>and has stopped other terrorist plots since then. No it hasn't, not a single one. Every single case they've "stopped" was simple entrapment of mentally unstable people. If they'd left those people alone nothing would have ever happened.
- regularfry 13y agoDeaths from terror attacks follow a power law distribution. There is literally no such thing as a worst-case scenario. For any "justifiable" spend or effort on preventing attacks, you can guarantee that there will be an attack coming along which will justify spending more.