Causing Terror on the Cheap

I read that comment too, but I am not sure 'broken windows' truly applies here. Although I believe there is net public harm from US post-9/11 "security" policies, when you consider that: a.) the spending being done on security is entirely public deficit spending not offset by tax increases or cuts in other departments, b.) the economy has been well below full employment (~58-62% employment-pop ratio during the period) and full capacity utilization (~68-81% capacity utilization during the period), c.) no other expansion of public employment and spending would have likely occurred in the past decade absent the 9/11 attacks (arguable, but there really isn't a political consensus for expanding the US welfare state), and posit that the 2000s growth rate would have taken essentially the same path absent the 9/11 attacks, then it would appear that much of the security theater policies have had a small medium-term stimulative economic effect (small because it is largely offset by increased consumer travelling expenses and time, dampening productivity). The three keys I mention above violate the pretext of the broken window fallacy (at least in the medium term, and probably in the long-term because of historically low interest rates). In a full employment situation, there would be significant deadweight loss, and in a balanced budget situation, there would be significant economic impact due to either increased taxation or offsetting spending cuts. But neither of those conditions applies to the recent US situation. The BWF assumes that the money would have been spent doing something else (more profitable), and I am pretty certain that will not be the case until the debt needs to be paid, which is unlikely to ever occur (I think the assumed future policy is to continue to roll the debt over until the singularity).

For the longest time, I thought about terrorism from a security standpoint. If you treat the US as a system to break, then you see a lot of weak points: bridges, trains, malls, etc (in other words, the stuff you see on 24). If you damage these, you could do a whole lot of damage to the US economy, kill a lot of people, etc. But then I realized something: destroying bridges doesn't cause fear in the same way that, say, flying a plane into a landmark building does.

I used to think that the terrorists were idiots that couldn't pull off a simple attack... now I realize just how good they are at what they do: causing fear. The point of terrorism isn't to kill, it isn't to cause direct harm in any way. Those are tools to make us scared, and we've all played right into it. I'll never forget exactly where I was when I found out about the attacks on 9/11, or any of the resulting protection mechanisms; they succeeded in their goals, probably more than they ever thought they would.