Why the "War on . . ." is Stupid: Combatting Demand Side Problems with Supply Side Solutions

Warning - this blog post is going to be esoteric, and if you don't understand economics, you might get lost.

For the past thirty years, the U.S. has fought "wars" on drugs, terrorism, and illegal immigration. Each time, some politician gets up on stage, makes some kind of pronouncement and we end up spending billions of dollars without anyone taking the time to think if these strategies work. And, for the most part, they don't.

The problem, as I see it, is that politicians use the wrong strategy for dealing with a societal issue. Let's take the War on Drugs, for example. Drugs like heroin and cocaine are dangerous, addictive drugs that destroy families and threaten the fabric of our society. So, in response to this threat, politicians seek to destroy the supply of drugs by making them illegal to sell, possess and use. Additionally, the military and militaristic police forces arrest drug dealers and destroy whatever drugs they can find.

But after thirty years of fighting this war, drugs are still available, still used, and still destroy families. Worse yet, drug cartels have responded to the use of the military by becoming militarized themselves. Northern Mexico is now basically a war zone. Moreover, where drugs like cocaine and heroin are unavailable, people have switched to meth or prescription drugs. It is as if we are dogs chasing our tails.

The reason for this condundrum is that while we are attacking the supply of drugs, we are not attacking the reason why people use drugs in the first place. People like taking drugs because drugs are effective in providing a short-term escape from life. Because of this fact, drugs have a limitless supply, as people can shift from one type of drug to another.

With terrorism, its the same thing. The initial response to terrorism is to kill all terrorists. Okay, that makes sense, but presupposes there is a finite number of terrorists. The problem is that if the methods of killing terrorists inflame the populace, the number of terrorists and potential terrorists becomes so high that its impossible to kill all terrorists. Look at Israel and Palestine - after 40-50 years of warfare, the Palestinians are so inflamed that terrorist organizations were able to use suicide bombers - throw away terrorists - to carry out attacks. Its entirely possible that Hamas killed more terrorists through suicide bombing than Israel did through conventional methods. The supply side solution is impossible to achieve because the demand is such that supply is infinite.

The same can be said for immigration - making migration from Mexico into the U.S. actually spurred immigration because migrant workers could no longer go back home and immigrated instead.

Now, I'm not saying that there's no supply-side solution. Osama bin Laden should be brought to justice, for instance, and no one cries over the dead body of Pablo Escobar, but a War On. . .is just plain stupid.

By the way, in the case of Escobar, and more importantly, Medillin, the solution to the Colombian drug wars was both supply-side (fight drug cartels) and demand-side (economic development). As a result, Colombia is currently flourishing.

Health Insurance Companies, Torture, and Eric Massa (Random Thoughts Blogging)

Rather than go into an introductory rant, here are my thoughts about a few things going on in the world today:

Insurance Companies Hate Being Vilified
In the health care reform debate, Insurance companies are wondering why they are being vilified by the left. In some respects, this is a fair complaint because health insurance companies are simply maximizing profit, which is what all corporations are supposed to do. Are these companies acting any differently than Ford, WalMart, Apple, or even my law firm? Not really.

At the same time, there is a huge difference between normal corporations and health insurance companies. First, health insurance companies are legal monopolies. So, if Apple decides to price itself out of the bargain computing market, people who want computers have a competitor to go to. In health care, this doesn't happen. Second, if a consumer is unable to purchase an Apple, they do without a computer, if they are unable to purchase insurance (and they get sick), they die. This, understandably, leads to bad press. So while I understand where the insurance companies are coming from, they did choose this business.

Lawyers and Torture:

So Liz Cheney, in addition to promoting the use of torture, is attacking lawyers who represented terrorists. This is a very, very bad idea, and she has been chastised by other conservatives. But they don't write on this blog, so here's my two cents:

The role of lawyers in Anglo-American jurisprudence is to be the figurative champion for the client, fighting with words and logic instead of with swords and axes (which is how things were done back in the day). The whole idea is that both sides get champions, who fight it out, and God (or the jury, judge or King) sorted them out. But this only works if both sides get attorneys. As a result, all sorts of evil people and corporations are represented by perfectly reasonable and nice people. The system doesn't work if they aren't.

What Liz Cheney and her cohorts are suggesting, though, is that attorneys who represent alleged terrorists are, in fact, terrorists themselves. And this is a very dangerous concept because if the acts of the client are imputed on the attorney, no attorney would ever defend anyone in anything, and the system would break down.

Speaking of torture, by the way, CIA waterboarding was much worse than imagined. Mind you, in controlled conditions, Hitchens and ManCow both lasted less than 20 seconds, and reported having panic attacks for months afterward.

Eric Massa Folies
I have no idea how this guy got elected, and to be honest, I thought all closet cases were Republicans. And while I'm not sure if Massa is gay, tickling another grown man, as Massa has admitted he has done, is about as gay as Men's Figure Skating. Sure, there's a possibility that the participants might be straight, but its very, very unlikely.

Thoughts on Torture

Over the past year, I've written about torture at a few of my other blogs (and those reading this post probably know what I'm referring to), but mostly I've narrowed in on the issue of efficacy, and not some of the other issues in the discussion.

For those of you who haven't benefited from my prior postings, allow me to sum up the efficacy argument thusly - torture is highly effective in getting someone to talk, but what is said is likely to be false because the motivation is to stop the torture, not to tell the truth. So, in the ticking time bomb scenario, an Al Qaeda operative is probably more likely to lie and give false information to his interrogators, so that he can a) stop the torture; and, b) still manage to complete the mission. And if torture doesn't work in the ticking timebomb scenario, it sure as hell doesn't work in any other scenario.

Of course, there is more to the torture debate then efficacy, and that's what I'm blogging about today. First, of all, there is a moral question - should the U.S. torture suspects? As someone who believes that America can be a shining city on the hill, and that America should aspire to such heights, I absolutely think that America should not torture. As even a nominal Christian, the idea of torturing someone when I am supposed to turn the other cheek is abhorrent.

But imposing my moral qualms is hardly democratic, so let me try to appeal to your reason. Torture, even if effective, hurts us in the War on Terror. One of the things I've heard over and over since 9-11 is that Al Qaeda is different from any enemy we've faced before. While that's somewhat true, Al Qaeda operatives are more willing to die for their cause, the truth is we've faced enemies like Al Qaeda before. The difference is that where Al Qaeda kills for the sake of killing, these other enemies killed for the sake of profit.

I am referring to the Mafia, the KKK and Jesse James. While they weren't necessarily enemies of the State or terrorists, both the Mob and the James Gang depended on local support to protect them. Missouri, post-Civil War was a wasteland, and as was the rest of the South. The James Gang was able to use this deep-seated anger towards the North to their advantage and hide from the authorities. The Klan was able (and still able in some circumstances) to do the same. The Mob, similarly, was protected by the Italian populace in part out of frustration with life in a new country.

In all three examples, the power and/or influence of these groups waned as their supporting populations declined. The James Gang was beaten by a town in Minnesota; prosecutions against the Klan increased as people became more accepting of African-Americans, and the Mafia has seen similar declines as the Italian American population has moved to the suburbs. Now, that's not to say that there are no Mafioso or Klansmen anymore, every population has its nutjobs, but without the support of the community, these guys are quickly rooted out.

Al Qaeda works in the same way. It depends on the populace of Islamic countries to allow it to hide in plain sight. In this, Iraq is a good example. Prior to Iraq War, Al Qaeda had little to no presence in Iraq (except for a base in the Kurdish area), because its target audience - Sunnis - were, for the most part, big supporters of the Hussein regime. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, the Sunnis lost power, and then turned to Al Qaeda for support in their fight against the Shi'a, and the U.S., and Al Qaeda in Iraq had some pull. From the local population, they got material support, recruits and a place to hide - all resources used to kill American soldiers. But when the Sunni leadership in Iraq cut a deal with the U.S., all of Al Qaeda's Iraqi support dried up, and they became completely ineffective.

Here's where torture comes into play: if we need the support of local populations to eliminate Al Qaeda (and we do), then doing anything to antagonize these populations is self-defeating. Torturing suspects to gather information is absolutely antagonizing, and only serves to create more Jihadists and provide Al Qaeda more support. In fact, Al Qaeda's strategy is to get the U.S. to torture and do other similarly self-defeating things to fire up the Islamic world.