<story><title>If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We&apos;d Ground Our Fleet</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/if-a-drone-strike-hit-an-american-wedding-wed-ground-our-fleet/282373/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cscurmudgeon</author><text>Arguments like this are logically wrong. I am glad you are not a judge in real life (hint: why is racial profiling wrong?)</text></item><item><author>glesica</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a simple economic analysis. People &lt;i&gt;tend&lt;/i&gt; (this word is important) to follow their incentives. If a person on welfare faces a high effective marginal tax when they start working (due to paying taxes plus losing benefits) they will not start working. If a CEO is compensated exclusively based on short-term share price, they will ramp up the share price even if they have to hurt the company to do it.&lt;p&gt;We have seen mountains of evidence that people follow their incentives even when those incentives lead to perverse, counter-productive behaviors. It&amp;#x27;s basically what the entire &amp;quot;Freakonomics&amp;quot; franchise is built on, for example.&lt;p&gt;We also know that the incentives faced by the military establishment are pushing toward more war, more violence. This is obvious, just look at the early &amp;#x27;90s when we thought the world was going to be more peaceful. We cut back on military spending, military contractors howled and screamed.&lt;p&gt;So, while we have no direct evidence that anyone in the military establishment is willfully disregarding civilian casualties, we &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have extremely strong inferential evidence that some people in the military establishment are likely to do so, now, in the past, and in the future.</text></item><item><author>cscurmudgeon</author><text>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have made these accusations without any evidence. Be responsible and ethical and show us something real, if you have it. (note: I am not taking sides.)</text></item><item><author>rdtsc</author><text>It is profitable.&lt;p&gt;If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let&amp;#x27;s say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to.&lt;p&gt;So the direct financial and career incentive for everyone in the chain is to always make sure there is a stream of new terrorists, new cells, new intelligence chatter about &amp;quot;the Great Satan&amp;quot;. And that is indirectly accomplished by indiscriminately bombing civilians. Everyone who is involved in picking the target and knows it is a funeral, will know civilians will die. I can&amp;#x27;t help but think they also know it is job insurance as well. They would be stupid not to.&lt;p&gt;American public via media has been tested enough during releases of so many atrocities, torture tapes, lies, monitoring that by now, I think they&amp;#x27;ve built an accurate model of how much outrage will be generated and how much will actually threaten future operations, funding, reelection and so on (so far not much).&lt;p&gt;The bottom line, I don&amp;#x27;t even know and 100% believe them when they say these are all &amp;quot;mistakes&amp;quot;. The incentives and the motivation, especially in the long term, is for them not to really care if civilians get bombed.</text></item><item><author>sethbannon</author><text>The way America is conducting the war on terror is both self-defeating and morally repugnant.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crpatino</author><text>Yes, the argument is logically wrong... but logic is not the only mental resource we have to make sense of the world. By example, if we agreed that the truth can only be called &amp;quot;truth&amp;quot; if it is derived by &amp;quot;logic&amp;quot;, there would be no scientific method, and we would still be killing each other with swords because there is no logical way to figure out, let alone unmanned flying devices, but any sort of flying machine heavier than air. Instead, you would be arguing that it is &amp;quot;illogical&amp;quot; for a simple peasant to be able to kill a noble knight that has been training in the art of war for his whole life... so those damned crossbow mercenaries are cheating and ought not to exist.&lt;p&gt;And for the example you offer, judges&amp;#x27; very job description require them to narrow down on a case by case basis, and to make a decision based on the evidence available, beyond reasonable doubt. The ethical principle that requires this to be so is that the asymmetry of power between the individual and the State is so big that it is most fair for the whole process to start with a bias in favor of the individual.&lt;p&gt;Other situations require a different kind of analysis. And the consequence to apply this level of precision to political analysis is that no analysis (and no criticism to the de-facto policies that are guarantied to emerge anyways in this vacum of knowledge) is ever possible.</text></comment>
<story><title>If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We&apos;d Ground Our Fleet</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/if-a-drone-strike-hit-an-american-wedding-wed-ground-our-fleet/282373/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cscurmudgeon</author><text>Arguments like this are logically wrong. I am glad you are not a judge in real life (hint: why is racial profiling wrong?)</text></item><item><author>glesica</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a simple economic analysis. People &lt;i&gt;tend&lt;/i&gt; (this word is important) to follow their incentives. If a person on welfare faces a high effective marginal tax when they start working (due to paying taxes plus losing benefits) they will not start working. If a CEO is compensated exclusively based on short-term share price, they will ramp up the share price even if they have to hurt the company to do it.&lt;p&gt;We have seen mountains of evidence that people follow their incentives even when those incentives lead to perverse, counter-productive behaviors. It&amp;#x27;s basically what the entire &amp;quot;Freakonomics&amp;quot; franchise is built on, for example.&lt;p&gt;We also know that the incentives faced by the military establishment are pushing toward more war, more violence. This is obvious, just look at the early &amp;#x27;90s when we thought the world was going to be more peaceful. We cut back on military spending, military contractors howled and screamed.&lt;p&gt;So, while we have no direct evidence that anyone in the military establishment is willfully disregarding civilian casualties, we &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have extremely strong inferential evidence that some people in the military establishment are likely to do so, now, in the past, and in the future.</text></item><item><author>cscurmudgeon</author><text>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have made these accusations without any evidence. Be responsible and ethical and show us something real, if you have it. (note: I am not taking sides.)</text></item><item><author>rdtsc</author><text>It is profitable.&lt;p&gt;If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let&amp;#x27;s say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to.&lt;p&gt;So the direct financial and career incentive for everyone in the chain is to always make sure there is a stream of new terrorists, new cells, new intelligence chatter about &amp;quot;the Great Satan&amp;quot;. And that is indirectly accomplished by indiscriminately bombing civilians. Everyone who is involved in picking the target and knows it is a funeral, will know civilians will die. I can&amp;#x27;t help but think they also know it is job insurance as well. They would be stupid not to.&lt;p&gt;American public via media has been tested enough during releases of so many atrocities, torture tapes, lies, monitoring that by now, I think they&amp;#x27;ve built an accurate model of how much outrage will be generated and how much will actually threaten future operations, funding, reelection and so on (so far not much).&lt;p&gt;The bottom line, I don&amp;#x27;t even know and 100% believe them when they say these are all &amp;quot;mistakes&amp;quot;. The incentives and the motivation, especially in the long term, is for them not to really care if civilians get bombed.</text></item><item><author>sethbannon</author><text>The way America is conducting the war on terror is both self-defeating and morally repugnant.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cglee</author><text>Why is this logically wrong? I think it&amp;#x27;s a given that people&amp;#x2F;corporations follow economic incentives. We even have a legally binding phrase for that to protect shareholders. No one is making explicit accusations, just pointing out that privatizing certain industries (prisons, military, etc) can lead to perverse incentives.</text></comment>