STer

These can certainly be frustrations. But they are frustrations most people perceive as having at least some other side to them. A lot of people, for example, perceive social security overall as a good idea even if it can be a pain when paying in. Filling out papers, paying taxes and social security would have to get pretty onerous before I think people would resist on the basis of these things. I just go back to my point that if you look at really opressive societies that control much more openly where people can go , how they have to dress, who can go to school and who can't and so on, you can see the type of perception of "lack of freedom" that eventually makes people stand up (or think about the civil rights movement in the 60's in the US and consider the feeling of lack of freedom that led to that vs. the kinds of complaints most people are putting up in this thread). I don't think these types of lacks of freedom will motivate people because, as annoying as they may be, people wake up and can pretty much go about and do as they please as long as they go through a few steps that most just find a minor annoyance. The main lack of freedom I think most people feel is being unable to do what they want because they have to go to work and work so hard to make a living. But I don't think they perceive that as some imposition from the government. They just see it as kind of the way it is.

I highly doubt you have been prevented from doing all the things you wanted to do. That's an exaggeration. Some of them, sure, if your finances wouldn't allow it. But yet again if the economics are the main thing here, I doubt most people will perceive that as a "limit to freedom" by the government in the same way that people in really openly oppressive societies perceive their freedom being limited.

Meaningful in theory. But until most people you meet have a family member or good friend who actually was put in prison for these kinds of things, people will not perceive these kinds of laws as really limiting their freedom. In practice, I doubt they're really enforced strictly very often. So they end up being like a lot of laws that remain on the books but are just, as an unwritten rule, not really used except in extreme or some arbitrary few cases. So they aren't perceived as onerous by most people who have no personal experience with them at all and probably aren't even aware of them because of that.

So a lot of yours are economic too like others. And besides those, you just wonder what we might be able to do that we aren't even aware is possible. Again, not that motivating to the average person if you compare it to the types of things that really get people feeling oppressed to the point of wanting to change society. I think this thread is showing why most people, though they feel some annoyances at taxes and red tape, don't really perceive a "lack of freedom" as a major problem in the West. They don't wake up feeling all the things they really want to do but can't because of the government.

So for you the frustration is mostly wishing you could charge less than the minimum wage for your services and disliking the red tape in starting a business? I am sure a lot of entrepreneurs are a bit annoyed by the latter one. But most people aren't entrepreneurs. And I don't think most people would be that upset that they can't go under the minimum wage. I'm sure many even feel protected by that, right or wrong. This points out part of why I started this thread. I have a feeling the things that frustrate a lot of people on this board are not things that are very powerful in moving people in the general public to get really active and resistant. When people feel really oppressed in more basic ways like what you can say, what you can wear and so on, as in some really repressive societies, I think they're more likely to become fed up. But if the lack of freedom here amounts to things like this, I can't see it being strong enough to really motivate people to resist or even perceive much of a lack of freedom.

Thanks for sharing your story. So I wonder if the pattern that will emerge here is that in the West it is mostly about economic things like this. If so, then perhaps it's entrepreneurs who would really be most frustrated and perceive a lack of freedom where others might not really perceive it.

Educators open up schools, tutoring services, educational product companies and so on all the time. So perhaps be more specific of exactly what you want to do and why you can't do it because of our lack of freedom.

Obviously, within the libertarian and anarchist movements, people are constantly talking about freedom and liberty and how they are infringed upon. So I'm curious. In your daily life, what are the activities that you really want to do but feel unable to do because of this lack of freedom or liberty? Obviously the issue of keeping your money rather than paying taxes is there. But what about other than that? In some areas of the world I can imagine some pretty simple clear answers. In the Middle East, a woman could say "I want to go to school" or "I want to wear summer clothes instead of a burqa." But I'm especially curious what people in Western industrialized countries really feel limited in doing that makes them yearn for freedom and liberty. I think this topic is pretty important because if you're trying to convince people to work and make sacrifices to bring about more freedom and liberty, there would have to be clear things people really want to do but can't currently to motivate them to put in such effort.

I have literally never seen a thread get this derailed and off track. I'm not even participating in this thread anymore.

I don't get it. Who thinks of terrorism only in terms of economic damage? Isn't it the loss of life that's more the issue? I'm not saying this to justify or argue against the policies. I'm just not getting how focusing on it in purely economic terms makes any sense. If analysed in terms of lose of life it's arguably even worse. The number of people killed by terrorism is small compared to those killed by the War on Drugs (assuming even 10% of AIDS deaths are due to dirty needles, which would be practically unknown with the WOD). But death is simply another unfortunate outcome that can be expressed as an ecomomic cost. How much would people pay for these deaths not to happen? Obviously not an infinite amount, nor zero, so it's economically quantifiable. Just like you wouldn't pay 10 trillion dollars to have no road deaths this year and therefore said deaths are worth less than $10T so you wouldn't pay less than $X to prevent all the terrorism deaths. It's just another cost. I get the feeling you didn't read any of the thread up to this point.

This is not even close to what I meant. I didn't mean a single thing other than that we could talk about the topics OP mentioned exactly as she suggested. That's it. All of this reading in beyond that is taking this thread absurdly off the rails. This is a great example of what happens when people project their own biases onto something completely neutral. I was not in any way saying or implying anything particular about the nature of these topics. I was only saying that yes they could be talked about (meaning the general topics OP raised). And I already made clear that when I mentioned the psychological roots, I did NOT mean that there is anything wrong or pathological about any of these situations. I simply meant that EVERY human state has psychology associated with it and I thought that might be what OP was hoping for Stefan to talk about. Psychology does NOT equal psychopathology.

This is a forum, not your personal email with Stef. I'm also pretty irritated. I thought I was being kind because I knew it was unlikely Stefan would get around to your concerns since he is so busy with so many things lately. So I decided to take the time to at least give you some feedback. I thought you'd appreciate that someone was listening and open to talking. Boy was that a mistake. I also had to laugh at the idea that what I said was "random stuff" when it was laser targeted to the topics you raised. I'm getting the feeling, as I said, that you're just looking for reasons to be offended. I don't know why but you're aiming them at the wrong person. I have a feeling if not for the miscommunication that sometimes takes place in writing as opposed to other forms of communication you'd realize that pretty quickly. Anyway, I guess we can just end this thread here if you wish.

Hey look at this page http://www.lgbtmap.org/effective-messaging/talking-about-lgbt-issues-series An organization dedicated to promoting LGBT....wait what's that word....oh yeah, issues. The word "issues" is used all the time within the LGBT community itself, even by their fiercest advocates. Why? Because it's an accurate word. These topics involve many issues. If they didn't, you'd not be asking Stefan to talk about those...issues. So again, stop going out of your way looking for ways to pick at words to make yourself offended. Or if you are offended, then please go complain to all the LGBT groups that work on LGBT "issues".

I'd appreciate if you stop making false accusations or implications. It is unmerited and rude. I explained my stance thoroughly in the last couple posts due to your own misinterpretation of what I said. If you are out there just looking for people to twist their words so you can be offended, I would prefer you look elsewhere.

Yeah this is the problem of acting in this way in a situation where no policy is set. Of course your boss said it's not policy to do what you did. But what he really means is there is no policy in any direction on it. So if I were you I'd work to get a policy put in place. I also think you might be able to reconcile this by finding an organization that works for child welfare and would be sympathetic to your views and approaching them to discuss this issue as an overall business issue. Then you could feel that you're being responsible by acting on this by calling in people who are in a better position to apply pressure where employees who are dependent on the company cannot (unless they have a lot of leverage at the company). Like I said, you may not be able to get some businesses to agree to a policy of intervening. But at least if you can push them to take a stance one way or another then activists have something to target and to try to reward those who take a healthy stance and call out those who don't. Right now they kind of have no stance so there is nowhere to apply pressure.

Let me add one more clarification because I think I realized why you reacted as you did. The field of psychology doesn't only study psychopathology, aka abnormal psychology. It also studies normal healthy psychology. Saying that something has psychological roots does not mean it is pathological. It simply means that it involves the mind in some way. We can study the psychology of love or artistic achievement just as much as the psychology of depression or psychosis. And we can certainly study the psychology of various sexual orientations and gender identities without at all claiming there is anything pathological about them at all. I hope that clears things up.

There is nothing insulting about it. Every single thing human beings do has psychological roots. Otherwise our minds would not be capable of them. I guess it's a measure of how stigmatized psychology itself has become if the very notion that something has psychological roots is seen as insulting. To be clear, biopsychology is a field of psychology too. So even if you believe these issues are biological, that biology is still mediated through the psyche. Besides which, other than the social issues involved, which would likely just boil down to the non-aggression principle for Stefan, what else could you want to be discussed about these topics than their psychology and dynamics?

My guess is that he wouldn't have much to say about the social issues around these things. The non-aggression principle, which he supports, simply would lead to the conclusion that people can do what they like as long as they are not initiating force or coercion on anyone else. If you want him to speak on the psychological roots of these issues, that could be interesting, although I imagine he would defer to the researchers who work on these issues as to their causes and dynamics. But of course he can speak for himself Just my guess of what he might have to say in case he doesn't get around to it.

This is a really interesting scenario and what I think puts you in such a difficult situation is that when you're in a structured environment like that you are supposed to follow policies. Yet there probably is no policy one way or the other in writing on such a situation. Perhaps you could do even more good than intervening in a few cases by raising this as a policy issue. Perhaps some companies would take a stance that it isn't their place or the place of their employees to intervene unless the abuse is severe. But, even if so, then you could at least know that before choosing to work there and educate the public on which places take which stands. This could, with advocacy, become a corporate responsibility issue.

When I said the world is complex, it wasn't to say you have to go in detail on every aspect. It was to point out that you are only even mentioning one side. You could just as easily, in no more words, recognize it's an issue with conflicting forces, not unilateral forces. You say the government wants terrorism to happen so it can exploit it. But the government also doesn't want it to happen because it makes them look bad and ruins trust in them. I see that you now concede that there are, in fact, mixed incentives here even for states. I get it. You don't like the State. I think we all got that a while ago Yes terrorism is aimed at changing how people think so they will act in ways the terrorists want. If people thought differently, then changing how they think would require different tactics as you say. But this goes way beyond support for the state. It has to do with reason vs. emotion on a fundamental level. And as I've pointed out, people are simply not wired, nor would you expect them to be given our evolutionary history, to act purely on logic. If pure logic was the ultimate survival mechanism, we likely would have evolved that style over hundreds of thousands of years. For better or worse, we have an unconscious that works on symbolism and a lower brain that works on emotion and this has been true since long before the state. There are many situations where our reasoning minds would not be fast enough or accurate enough to save us and the other parts serve a crucial purpose. That's why they evolved and stuck around for so long. I'm not saying everything that exists was selected for. Some are just spandrels. But I think you wouldn't even challenge that the nature of our unconscious and our reflexes and so on was selected for. Equating Mises' idea that states can't calculate with evolution and germ theory is extreme to me. That's like equating some high level understanding about buildings with the importance of basic physics. Evolution helps us understand all of life. The economics of states isn't even in the ballpark. My point is that if this is the Misesian style, to try to turn everything into economics, then it is faulty because that is not accurate to human life and decision-making. Some things are not possible to accurately put a price on, even when we have to choose one. There is no sensible way to put a price on one's child's life. And yet, the facts of life are that resources are limited and we have to. So one way or another a price does get put on, but there is no logical way to do it where you can say "Oh yes, that certainly is the right way to do it." What are you going to use? Supply and demand? I agree with Stefan that the way to really make change is going to have to come from serious changes in parenting as I've gone into in this thread here. And, as you'll see there, the possibility of another Institute or of those who support it finding an existing one that deserves our help is raised there. http://board.freedomainradio.com/forums/t/39141.aspx At this point I think we are wasting most of our energy focusing on symptoms that are only going to be fundamentally altered by changes in childrearing (in the types of ways I mention in that thread). Even if that wasn't the case though, your logic is faulty. Pointing out proposed solutions that are false is itself a service. Debunking falsehoods does not require one to know what the actual answer is or even propose one. Saying "No, we should not accept this proposition, we should accept this other one instead." is very valuable when possible. But saying "No, we should not accept this proposition, instead we must continue to reserve judgment and seek an accurate answer because we still don't have one." is also valuable. I think you've hit on something very powerful that you should think about a lot when you said: >As an anarchist and an atheist, I find all of this attention and meaning being placed on symbols to be both amusing and absurd in the extreme. I wonder if you realize just what a deeply profound position that is for you to take. The human unconscious has evolved for hundreds of thousands of years to work on symbolism. For you to call that absurd is like calling breathing as we do absurd. These things evolved for a reason. They were strongly selected for because they offered huge benefits in our environments for a long time. Now we are in a different environment, quite suddenly, and it may no longer serve us as well (called maladaptation in evolutionary psychology). But these things can't be changed that quickly. They are deep biologically- and psychologically-based aspects of humanity. And if you are different and not wired this way (which I doubt highly anyway, you probably are not realizing just how much you yourself are moved by unconscious symbolism too) it puts a crucial gap between you and most other people at the very core of how you operate. If so, you really should take this into account when thinking about how others operate. Trying to change that is not trying to change their beliefs, but trying to change their very makeup. I don't think you can do it. You have to work with their makeup as it is and spread healthier ways of relating the parts to each other (kind of as Internal Family Systems does). The power of symbolism is clearly very real and so those who worry about it have every reason to do so. And that power is just as important in causes you'd probably support as it is in those you'd oppose. Being pro-reason to the point of being anti-symbolism is not the same as believing in evolution when others didn't. This is not a belief issue. This is a biological/psychological wiring issue, more akin to being against the way our bones are structured or the shapes of human hands. The metaphorical/symbolic nature of our unconscious is a profound part of human nature. And personally I don't think it is going away and I'm not even sure we should want it to. Even scientists are not immune to these things, the issue is that they hopefully harness them in a more healthy way. If Mises simply pointed out that people deal with terrorism irrationally, that's fine. That wasn't the discussion here in this thread though. The discussion here was about OP's claim that going out and telling people this and showing them the economics of it would be effective. It was a question of messaging. I don't believe showing them the economics of it would be very effective for the reasons I've pointed out - most people don't respond to terrorism in those terms and the reasons why are very deep, not superficial. Just my educated guess though.

Actually, I posted the link to the article, and added the quote to provide a glimpse of what was in the article, though I do consider the quote as very relevant, hence the thread title. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused. I would assume by posting a quote, and citing the link afterwards, it indicates the primacy of the quote, with reference provided. By posting the link first, followed by a synopsis, it would indicate the primacy of the link in its entirety. I tend to dislike blind links which give little indication of the material to be found. Don't know if there's any standard for this. Well it wasn't just the quote, but the fact that your only comment on the article and the title of the thread all point to one thing: trying to move people toward considering economic arguments against anti-terrorism as more effective than other arguments. So it was the combination of selected quote, your only comment on it, and the thread title that all led in one direction as to the purpose of the thread. If there was any other statement being made, it wasn't made. But if you had more to add feel free, of course.

I disagree with you that the reason terrorism intidimidates people is because it is in the State's interest. In fact, the State has plenty of interest in keeping people feeling safe, secure and spending money too. The State has mixed incentives in these situations and I believe you are highly oversimplifying. In fact, one of the reasons so many people think there has been a cover-up in Benghazi is that the Obama administration wanted to make sure people were not fearful and believed Al Qaeda is more solidly defeated than they really are. You paint it as the government scaring people up. It could just as easily be painted as the government lulling people back to sleep in many cases. You really think the US government wants terrorist acts to occur which make the public lose faith in their leaders' abilities to protect them? I think that's incorrect. I won't deny there may be some mixed incentives here. But to claim our government benefits completely when people live in fear of terror is something we simply disagree on. Then you bring up the media as if these entities are one and the same. In fact, they are often at odds. The media covers these stories and the administration tries to stifle those reports many times. Again, you seem to me to have too oversimplified a view of a very complex system. In addition, I believe terrorism could still be very intimidating even without a state involved at all. The fact that there is irrationality involved may well be the case, but I've already covered that that irrationality is precisely why I do not think it is effective making economic arguments, even if they did tell the whole story, which they don't. I thought of another way to put why terrorism and car crashes cannot be compared easily. Terrorism's power is symbolic. Car crashes are almost never symbolic. Terrorism isn't about the number of people killed, but about what it represents about possibilities for the future and how peopel view our place in the world. 3000 people killed may not be many compared to even more killed in car crashes. But imagine if 3000 are killed by a new infection and nobody knows how far it will spread. People go into a panic in such a case. It isn't due to the number killed but what it represents about possibilities in the future. When people see something like 9/11, even if they don't think it consciously, many deep down understand what this means is possible if terrorists get a nuclear weapon and what it means about the new vulnerabilities the US faces that it never faced before. There is no analogous process going on with car crashes symbolically. The only example I could think of is if tomorrow a few hundred cars suddenly exploded spontaneously and nobody knew why. That would symbolize some new danger with unforeseeable growth possibilities. I don't doubt there is a segment as you say for whom rational or economic arguments are persuasive. But I'd like to think I'm one of those people and yet, even for me, talking about terrorism in primarily economic terms seems misguided. Terrorism is not primarily economic. It is primarily symbolic and emotional. That's why terrorists almost always choose symbolic targets and often symbolic dates. Sometimes those targets are economic, but usually not. And they are wise because the human unconscious works in symbols. Symbols are more powerful than rationality and will continue to be as long as the human mind is structured as it is.

If your assertion were true -- that people value their lives and their family's lives beyond any amount of money -- then there would be near-unanimous support for abolishing modern cars (and the roads for which they are built). The risk of traffic is objectively far greater. It could not be any greater than it is, actually. The fact that they don't support such a change proves that there is a profound flaw in your assertion. Societies can't take costs into account. Only individuals can. Costs are incurred individually. Benefits are accrued individually. Only the individual can account for costs, because they are different for every person, they change over time. Also, the benefits (for which costs are traded) are valued differently by every person, and that value constantly changes over time. Since "society" can't account for the costs or the benefits, "society" can't calculate what the rational limit is. We have two data points -- your opinion and my opinion. Only the market for these ideas will reveal how effective the economic argument is, overall, compared to any other. The problem cannot be solved by the same thinking that caused the problem. I happen to think it's very effective and illuminating to think in terms of economics, because economics is reality, whereas words are not. It's like the idea in my sig line -- the State engages in crime, and simply calls it something else. The economic reality is the same. Only the words change. Words are easy to manipulate. That's why States are so good at propaganda -- they want people to see the world through the lens of the State's language and the State's ideas. So, no, the economic reality of security, and the market for security, is not "another discussion." This is the core of the topic as I see it, and as I believe it should be seen. You're not in charge of what belongs in each thread, or what's relevant, or what's welcome. Again, sometimes arguing for a change in the status quo requires a rejection of the assumptions behind the status quo. Those assumptions are embedded in the language -- the language guides people's opinions before they are fully formed. It's why Statism is taught to children -- so they think in those terms from the beginning. That's why Statist propaganda has always fought tooth and nail for control of the language. It's why Orwell wrote about Newspeak -- MiniTru wasn't just controlling the language, they were controlling thought. Security is an economic good. It has costs and benefits. So do roads, schools and crime. The economic calculation problem runs through all of them, and the reason I am an anarchist as to terrorism, roads, schools and crime is the same reason I am a free-market proponent as to the production of cheese, shoes and computers. That's what the linked article in the OP was about, so I don't see how that could be off-topic. The issue with cars, as said from the beginning of the thread, is that car crashes do not intimidate people to fear it happening to them the way terrorist acts do (as is their intent). So no, people do not fear car crashes the way they fear terrorist acts and therefore do not want to see cars banned. Furthermore, cars serve positive purposes - some of them even lifesaving themselves - that balance in their minds with the dangers of them. Terrorism does not. Proving yet again the entire point that these things are not analogous in people's minds. If you think they are, you are welcome to keep believing that. I've done my best to change your mind and if I've failed, so be it. Yes societies can account for costs. A group of people can get together and ask how much they as a group are willing to pay for something. It happens every day. The individuals in the group may disagree but discuss it and come to a consensus and then pool their money and go buy it. If you think that doesn't happen, we live in different worlds. So be it. You can throw whatever theoretical argument at it you want and it won't trump the fact that it happens every day and we all know it does and most of us participate in it quite often. Empiricism in action. We would need systematic studies to determine the effects of these arguments in a way untainted by noise. But if you want to go by the apparent everyday consequences, I'd say the economic argument is a total failure. People don't even rise up over the government literally printing money out of thin air. You think they're going to rise up because more money is spent on protecting them from terrorism, which they actually do fear? I doubt it. But I'd be glad to see the studies. You used complete sophistry when you said you think it's "effective" to consider these things economically because it's illuminating. I was very clear that is not what we are arguing. We are discussing whether it's effective as a persuasive argument to the public. Not whether it's effective in actually making sense of the matter. These are not even close to the same thing. If you think they are, then you have a lot of studying to do here about the irrationality of people and its roots. I don't know how you could be on FDR and not be aware of the massive gap between making sense of something logically and convincing a highly irrational public. OP linked to the article only to show the source of a quote that was pulled from it with the specific stated intent of considering whether the public would be more moved to resist government anti-terrorism measures by showing them the monetary costs than they are by simply showing the corruption of the leaders. If you then follow the link and arbitrarily start pulling other parts of the article to justify going on an anti-state rant out of the blue, I find that off topic. If you don't, so be it. But if that is what you want to discuss and it obviously isn't happening here, I don't see why you wouldn't rather start another thread to discuss that with those who are interested.

I would not argue that terrorism only exists when there are States. I would submit that, even in a highly advanced, anarchic society, defense against terrorism would still be a necessity. I believe the primary defense against terrorist attacks would need to be focused on attacks that were designed to help bring about the formation of a State, in much the same way that most terrorism today is designed to bring about changes to existing States. 1. Yes, I do believe it's convincing. It's convincing for me, certainly. It helped me tremendously to read anarchist economists who showed me that security is just another economic good. It was (as usual) my last mental obstacle between being a minarchist and an anarchist. 2. Counter-terror is analogous to car crashes in the sense that they are both subject to the laws of economics. The majority of people have a HUGE blind spot when it comes to traffic deaths. Terrorism gets grossly-disproportionate political attention, but traffic death is real. I bring it up because I am trying to highlight the starkest contrast I can think of -- between the State's totally lackadaisical response to traffic, compared to its hysterical response to terrorism. Both traffic and terrorism are a concern because they both pose an immediate threat of death or serious injury. Armed robbery is another example. All three of these topics can be addressed and discussed by reference to the State's economic decision-making process, and its lack of economic information. I found your comment about there being "nothing wrong" to be disingenuous, inasmuch as it followed immediately after saying I was wasting your time by being an "angry." If you want to convince me that this discussion is "not about the state," then let's start by ensuring that it's not about me or my emotions. It's not very convincing when you stray from the topic (e.g., to talk about me) when it suits you, then chastise me for failing to discuss things precisely the way you want them to be discussed. Ok well on #1 we just disagree then. I don't think most people consider security "just another" economic good because many people value their lives and those of their loved ones beyond any amount of money. There are people who, if they could get the money, would literally pay any amount to have a loved one back or to live longer. Many would even trade their own lives for the loved one's life. This is just not the case with many other things. I agree with you that as a society the costs must be taken into account. That's why I didn't argue this logic is completely wrong. As a society we do have to put some cost limit on these things. But we can only do that in the abstract when it isn't ourselves or our loved one that we know for sure is going to be the person in question. What I argued is it isn't convincing to talk in these terms. The OP was about claiming that the economic argument would be more effective than arguing about the corruption of the people putting in place the policies. I disagree. I'm not saying the latter is very effective either. They probably are both ineffective with most people in practice. But I could be wrong, I guess that would have to be tested out to see what people actually respond to. This is just my best guess. On #2, I guess I needed to be more specific. Of course you can find analogies between any two things on earth. You can name any two things and I can find some thing they have in common. That's what you're doing saying car accidents and terrorism are analogous since both can be looked at economically. Of course they can. My point was that people don't consider them mostly as economic issues so those links are not that relevant to them. You also said yourself that you see a blind spot involved when it comes to one of them. So even as you show why they are analogous you point out, in the process, how they are not in fact viewed in the same way. And that is exactly why I don't think making analogies between them is effective. Most people do not think of terrorism and car accidents using the same type of logic and most don't think of either of them as mainly an economic issue. You can argue that they should and that's another discussion. But they don't so trying to convince them using that logic is, I think, not likely to work. I said you were wasting my time NOT because you were angry, which I pointed out was fine, but because you were pulling out that anger in a thread where it wasn't relevant. I also went on to say that all of that would be perfectly fine in another thread. So I think I made it clear that those feelings are relevant and welcome on the board, I just found them a sidetrack for this particular topic. I didn't "stray from the topic", I called you back into the topic. Those are not the same thing and that is disingenuous again to claim they are.

Magnus, This discussion is not even about the state. Imagine there is no state and we have to set up defenses against terrorism (assuming you aren't going to claim that if you got rid of the state nobody would ever try to use that tactic, which would be pretty much a conversation-ender as I would see nowhere to really go from there and would find you as utopian as I would any state claiming they could stop all terrorism). The same questions still remain even in an anarchist society: 1) Is analyzing policies on terrorism through a primarily economic lens effective? - (Notice I didn't ask if it's possible to do, just if it's effective, meaning will people find it convincing?) 2) Are anti-terrorism policies and anti-car crash policies analogous? - (This has absolutely nothing to do with whether there is a state or not since you could have these kinds of policies in any society of any kind. The question is simply whether they are of the same category.) If you can't answer these without going back to anti-state ranting - since I specifically took the state out of the equation to avoid that - then we really have nothing more to say on this topic to each other. If you want to discuss how horrible the state is on these matters, that's a perfectly valid discussion, but really would make more sense in another thread. And the fact that you'd call me out for saying you're an angry anti-statist on FDR, when I specifically said right after it "(nothing wrong with that in itself, especially on this board)" shows how disingenuous you really are being.