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Comment by daten | Hacker News Reader

We also don't have enough resources to protect against every imaginable risk, which six-months ago, is all the current oil disaster could have been: imagined.

It still makes more sense to spend attention and resources protecting us from falling crates of bananas if those are more harmful in reality.

But fear normally wins these battles, like with terrorism. Automobile accidents kill about 36,000 people[1] per year in the United States. That's 12 times the number[2] of people killed in the 9/11 attacks. Which one of those do you think we're spending hundreds of billions on?

1. http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

2. http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm

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>... every imaginable risk, which six-months ago, is all the current oil disaster could have been: imagined.

Ahem:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=127_1274931222

I don't know, how much goes into transportation in the US? I mean, aside from the vehicles, including researching new tech for safety, advertising those features, law enforcement of safe driving laws, DMV money, roadwork, and whatever else goes into it. It seems like a lot to me.

Another thing to think about is that maybe we're hitting the safety cap in automobiles. Maybe the cost of making things more safe nowadays is just way too high. It could be that the cost of going after some terrorists is even higher, but we might not have been so sure at the time.

Also, the problem with ignoring people who set out to murder you is that it shows an unwillingness to do so. It might prompt other would be killers to attack. A car, on the other hand, isn't going to notice all the accidents happening, and choose to crash because of them.

>Also, the problem with ignoring people who set out to murder you is that it shows an unwillingness to do so.

Terrorism is not about murdering people. It's about pushing people like yourself to overreact.

Terrorism is pretty much about murdering people. If you're talking about the motive for terrorism though, I didn't mention it, so I don't know why you would try to contradict me on something I never mentioned.

Also, what are people like me? And what is a proper reaction to an organized attempt to kill civilians in your country? I do not suggest that the US took the proper course of action, btw.

> Terrorism is pretty much about murdering people.

No. Terrorism is, by definition, about using fear as a weapon to further your goals. Terrorism can be perfectly successful even if nobody dies -- it's all about playing your opponent's need to react against him. That's why even a fake bomb, or pre-announced bomb attacks IRA style are terrorism -- because there has to be a reaction to a bomb threat, at a relatively small cost a terrorist can force the opponent to do huge evacuations and bomb sweeps.

Completely ignoring the 9/11 would have been a better reaction that what the USA took -- but as usually with well planned terrorism, completely ignoring the attack would have been politically impossible.

> And what is a proper reaction to an organized attempt to kill civilians in your country?

A proportioned response against the attackers, instead of some of their various allies or complete third parties.

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