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Comment by agilord | Hacker News Reader

"We spend $0 a year on defense against meteor strike. Should I, as a citizen, be content with meteor strike happening every few years?"

"We spend $0 a year on defense against flesh-eating bacteria. Should I, as a citizen, be content with flesh-eating bacteria happening every few years?"

"We spend $0 a year on defense against maniacs going postal. Should I, as a citizen, be content with maniacs going postal happening every few years?"

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I don't think any of those statements are true.

Compared to the US defense budgets and what the US spends on counter-terrorism, I think all of these are effectively zero. Yes, there might be programs in the million USD range, but certainly not in the hundreds of billions.

Hmm, depends how you count it. Arguably, hospitals are significant defense against flesh eating bacteria, just not terribly targeted. Likewise, police forces, firearm restrictions, and mental health services all serve to reduce somewhat the risks from "maniacs going postal". I wouldn't be surprised if either of these were in the hundreds of billions, though certainly not all of that is federal money. I don't know enough about meteor defense, but expect you're closer to unequivocally right there.

So, police forces do great job to prevent terrorism too. Hospitals have knowledge how to mitigate the casualties of a bioterror attack. By your reasoning, we might say that we already have the infrastructure to prevent the immediate dangers of terrorism too (without the defense budget monster). Oh yes, they are "not terribly targeted" :)

I don't know what you're arguing, here. Yes, by my reasoning it's fair to count some of that spending toward fighting terrorism - in fact, I believe that should be a significant portion of our response: investing in resiliency that will help in the event of terrorism but also in the event of the myriad other disasters we are occasionally faced with, and hopefully even when there's no disaster at all.

It's still wrong to say we spend $0 on X, Y, and Z.

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