Risk, Liberty, and Security
NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is making more and more sense these days. Trips to the developing world have helped him see the light on free trade, and why sweat shops are a necessary, if regrettable, stretch on the road to prosperity.
Today he strikes a blow for another libertarian theme -- the need for sound, numbers-based risk assessment in public policy, instead of basing our laws on perceived risks, hype, symbolism, and message-sending. The Cliff's Notes version of Kristof today:
Cars kill 43,000 people every year, or 117 per day. The flu kills 36,000 per year. Guns kill 26,000. Food-borne illness kills 5,000.
Excepting 2001, wanna know how many Americans terrorism kills every day? Almost zero. Much closer to zero than to one. Even if we isolate 2001 and the 3,000 people killed on September 11, the deadliest year for terrorism in U.S. history, that boils down to less than 10 deaths per day, or one tenth the number killed the same year in car accidents. Yet we've created the largest bureaucracy in the history of government, we've suspended the rules of criminal procedure, and we've launched what could amount to a trillion-dollar war -- all in the name of fighting a threat that's not even amont the top 20 killers of Americans.
Kristof unfortnately uses these numbers to suggest we need to spend more federal money on highway safety, AIDS resarch, gun control, and so on. I'd like to see us go the other way, and perhaps consider spending less on a huge bureaucracy that, if history is any indicator, isn't going to do a whole lot to make us safer.
No, we shouldn't forget September 11. Nor should we stop searching for, apprehending, and bringing justice to those who want to kill us. And Kristof's right -- the damage a one-time stray nuke could do is alone worth considerable vigilance and preventative effort.
But these are handy numbers to keep in mind the next time you hear an elected official or Bush apologist tell us we'll need to sacrifice our money, our skepticism, and a bit of our civil liberties in the name of safety and security.