RE: Why anti-terror actually kills more people then the terror attacks
Thanks for the comment!
You are half right.
There are measures that exist - like police and fire fighters. Increasing money here will lower the effect per $.
But then there are measures that care for things not existent, so for a given sum you get the whole effect (of course you can also go more or less, but you have a number - 10 million - to go for).
One of those examples (Netherlands again) are defibrillators. I don't know the details but you find them in state buildings like town houses or administrative buildings and in hotels. Even the cheap hostel I used when I was there had one.
It is a very cheap measure that saves quite some lives because a lot of people die after an heart attack before the emergency wagon arrives. With the semi-automatic defi you can safe them.
I see a lot of defibrillators in banks nowadays :D
I wanted to point out the sole vulnerability I saw in your logic. You make a great argument that I never thought of. I actually meant to show that even if you account for some increase in the cost of other programs, it wouldn't change the result by much. I would estimate it is about 183 deaths per 2 billion USD spent on anti terror, which is not that different from 200.
In banks? For those that see all the new and increased account fees ? :D