“How Safe Are We? Balancing Risks, Benefits, and Costs” featuring John Mueller
http://www.cato.org/events/how-safe-are-we-balancing-risks-benefits-costs
Featuring John Mueller, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute, Senior Research Scientist, Mershon Center, Ohio State University; and Mark G. Stewart, Visiting Fellow, Cato Institute, Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Newcastle, Australia; moderated by Laura Odato, Director of Government Affairs, Cato Institute.
Join us for a non-technical primer on risk and cost-benefit analysis with applications to policies ranging from homeland security to climate change. Our panel will consider key issues as probability neglect, cost neglect, and acceptable risk. In general, the place to begin is not with the perennial question, “Are we safer?” but rather with the rarely asked, “How safe are we?” Increases in domestic homeland security spending since 9/11 exceed trillion. How many post-9/11 security programs reduce risk enough to justify their cost? Panelists John Mueller and Mark Stewart are the authors of Terror, Security, and Money (Oxford University Press, 2011).
This guy isn't putting forward the most libertarian solutions I've heard.
I don't think from this point on I'll be able to hear "…one in a million" without thinking about drowning deaths now. Thanks John
Mayor Bloomberg said that our chances of getting killed by terrorists is less than getting killed by lightning? Mr. Bloomberg, what are my chances of getting killed by a large soda?!
The problem with the key statistic is that if terrorists have their way — witness persecution and killing of Christians and whatever flavor of Islam is in the local minority in the Arab Spring countries — the zeroes will drop off. "How do we keep terrorists from getting their way" is the real question. The war on terror has killed more than one American in 100,000 — slightly more than the 9/11 attacks — but has it prevented the risk from move to 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100?
The risk of terrorism might be low but what of the cost. The threat of terrorism can place a community in a state of fear. The cost of that fear might be considered good reason to reduce the risk of terrorism.