Why anti-terror actually kills more people then the terror attacks
Everyone flying in or out the USA knows the tremendous trouble they take to screen passengers for terroristic activities.
Those things are often the target of both headbanging and ridicule since they produce a lot of false positives and a damn low number of successes – all while being a pain in the ass (often literally, if you happen to look “muslimic”).
But while this is important to consider, there is a fact that is often ignored even by the enemies of such measures, not to mention the proponents.
The anti-terror measures kill people. A lot.
The Math
There is a truth most people do not want to hear, and the truth is this: Human lives have a price. It starts with the distance between police stations and their patrols and ends with workplace laws.
A professor did the math on the anti-terror laws and came to the result that it costs the USA about 2 billion dollar per life saved. Not million, but billion.
That surely is a high price, but is that high for a human life?
Let’s look at Germany and the Netherlands.
In Germany it is law since this year that every rental property, where people live in, has to have smoke detectors.
Now, there is no question that those save lives. Most people that die from a fire die in their sleep, killed by the smoke. But you need to place a smoke detector in more then one room and you need to replace them after several years. That adds up! How expensive are that many smoke detectors?
The Netherlands did the math (they like to do this, which is maybe the reason why it is such a good place to live) and they came to the result that it costs about 30 million Euro per life saved. Too expensive. They didn’t make a law like Germany.
Are the Netherlands cheapskates that don’t value a human life? No. They are just effective. They put the money where it is most effective in saving lives. And 30 million Euro is just not effective.
In the US the average cost per life saved is 9 million dollar, for example.
Let’s err on the expensive side and make it an easier number: 10 million per life saved. That is what you have to pay.
Now look again at the costs of the anti-terror measures: 2 billion per life saved. That is 200 times the average!
Or to put it in other words: For every life you save from a terror attack, you could save 200 lives with a different policy change.
Bluntly said the anti-terror theater is killing 199 lives for everyone it saves.
Change
The good news is that you can help change this and save lives.
Don’t agree when politicians do what the terrorists want them to do: Make the society less free.
Don’t accept their costly security theater that just makes life harder for everyone.
Insist on fact-based politics and not FUD.
And to raise your spirit, which you surely need after that, here is a cat picture!
Haha, awesome! A mathematical proof on how anti-terror measures kill people! :D
The only thing one could dispute about it, is that putting more money into a life saving program, will most likely also increase, the cost per saved life. But at best that factor would bring your number down to 100 kills, which is still a lot. Great approach, mate!
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