Source: www.econlib.org - Thursday, January 31, 2019
The world is full of problems, and most people want government to solve these problems. When government solves problems, however, they usually create some new ones. If you’re lucky, the victims of the new problems are the very bad guys who created the original problems. Serves them right! Yet more often, the victims of the new problems are innocent bystanders. They’ve done nothing wrong; they’re just caught in the crossfire. Like who? Let’s start with babies in Nazi Germany. The babies didn’t start the war. They’ve never hurt a fly. But it’s hard to kill the Nazis without putting the babies’ lives in grave danger. You don’t have to be a pacifist to realize that this is a tragic situation. Imagine trying to justify it to the babies: “You’re totally innocent. I get that. But Nazism is so horrible that I’m going to put your lives in grave danger anyway. I’m so sorry. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” This is an intellectually honest position, but oh so bitter. It’s far sweeter to invoke collective guilt , say “They had it coming,” and kill indiscriminately. You might reply, “Well, the intellectually honest position is demotivating.” But that’s not quite true. Yes, acknowledging innocent bystanders demotivates indiscriminate killing. But it strongly motivates the search for an approach with lower collateral damage. Given humans’ ubiquitous in-group bias , this is a feature, not a bug. Wartime
Source: Breaking News
The world is full of problems, and most people want government to solve these problems. When government solves problems, however, they usually create some new ones. If you’re lucky, the victims of the new problems are the very bad guys who created the original problems. Serves them right! Yet more often, the victims of the new problems are innocent bystanders. They’ve done nothing wrong; they’re just caught in the crossfire. Like who? Let’s start with babies in Nazi Germany. The babies didn’t start the war. They’ve never hurt a fly. But it’s hard to kill the Nazis without putting the babies’ lives in grave danger. You don’t have to be a pacifist to realize that this is a tragic situation. Imagine trying to justify it to the babies: “You’re totally innocent. I get that. But Nazism is so horrible that I’m going to put your lives in grave danger anyway. I’m so sorry. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” This is an intellectually honest position, but oh so bitter. It’s far sweeter to invoke collective guilt , say “They had it coming,” and kill indiscriminately. You might reply, “Well, the intellectually honest position is demotivating.” But that’s not quite true. Yes, acknowledging innocent bystanders demotivates indiscriminate killing. But it strongly motivates the search for an approach with lower collateral damage. Given humans’ ubiquitous in-group bias , this is a feature, not a bug. Wartime
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Source: Breaking News
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