"Peter C. McCluskey" wrote:
> I amazed by the number of people who think the attack will cause a decline
> in gdp lasting longer than a few weeks.
> Most wars and natural disasters show either little effect, or appear to
> cause an increase in economic activity. ...
Of course the loss of the WTC will not depress our gdp much. Hell,
those buildings were over 30 years old, practically worn out. The loss
of the brains and the loss of confidence in the airlines will have a
tremendous leverage in favor of the attacker, however.
Something John Clark has hammered on in another context suddenly
takes on new meaning. He has written about NMD stacking the financial
odds in favor of the attacker by 100 to 1. I never concerned myself
over this, for in general a highly advanced society can overcome a
two order of magnitude disadvantage. But if you look around, it
could be that advanced societies are a million to one underdogs in
defending some very vulnerable infrastructure.
Recall that not all terrorists are foreign. How much did McVeigh
need to spend in order to knock down a tall building? Under the
current rules, the attacker has perhaps more than a six order of
magnitude leverage. If a Taliban robot or a McVeigh goes after
the power grid, then our troubles are just starting. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:55 MDT