From: Phil Osborn (philosborn@altavista.com)
Date: Sat Sep 22 2001 - 17:01:58 MDT
The Trail of Tears... Slavery.... The Phillipine War... WWI... Dresden... Hiroshima... Nagasaki... the War on Drugs
Just a few of the incidents in which the U.S.A. state acted criminally or as a terrorist power involving, in the least of these, about twenty times the number of victims and probably an equivalently high dollar loss as compared to the losses from the recent attacks.
10-20 billion dollars and 6,000 dead. That comes to what ... about one or two days lost for the nation, when you compare it to the typical death rate and the gross national product. Of course, the reactions by politicians and media and the results in the marketplace may very well spin that into a national setback of months or even years.
Does it matter whether the terrorist acts took place on September 11th or 12th? Why? What about August or September? What about last year or next year? While I certainly grieve for the unfortunate victims of the recent attacks, I grieve more for the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria by fire. THAT was a worldwide tragedy, probably a terrorist attack with fanatical religious motives, and it may well have set back human progress a hundred or more years. Or the murder of Archimedes by the Roman soldier. Who knows how much further down the road to the singularity we might have gone if he had lived another five or ten years? With the current rate of progress, the WTC terrorism should be just a blip on the charts. Should be...
Those people in the U.S. state apparatus, who claim as their chief justification of the powers they arrogate that they are necessary to keep us safe, fell down on the job, badly. From a libertarian perspective, it is not really that important that we punish the evildoers. What is important is that we be free to live our lives, and that therefore we reduce the risk of losing our lives or freedom to the economically most efficient level. If punishment will deter future attacks, then that is something to consider. Life is never risk free. Catching and/or killing ten thousand or more would-be terrorists scattered around the world as sleepers may not be cost-effective, at least using traditional state methods. Other methods of risk management are available.
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