The Mother of All Opportunity Costs

[donkeyotay]

"An Inconvenient Truth" opened successfully, launching a new awareness that we should not take the weather for granted anymore than we should food and water. I wonder what Al Gore thinks about this new front in the war on terror being opened up, this drive to start a regional, or global, war that will easily chew up the 10-year grace period that he has described as being our last chance to preserve the environment as we know it.

I, like Newt Gingrich, used the term WWIII to describe what seems to be starting in the Middle East, but unlike Newt, I thought the term might sober people up. Newt thinks it will incite them. I concede the point to Newt. I came across a Fox pod-person – one of the deluded souls who thought Sadam had nuclear weapons and was a card-carrying member of al Qaeda – and sure enough, he can’t wait to get WWIII rolling.

This man, a Vietnam veteran, has apparently forgotten being misled by Fox and the president into the quagmire of Iraq. They have, apparently, absolved themselves of any responsibility in that humanitarian disaster by re-branding their adventure as a civil war, and talking like we were doing the Iraqis an unappreciated favor in having shown up to be victimized by their civil war. How we got there and why we went are forgotten.

Was anything learned? Apparently not. World wars can start on the smallest of pretexts, and the starting gun on this one will be that Hezbollah crossed the border, killed several Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two more. Despite what you may have heard from the same television coverage that brought us Shock and Awe, this act was part of a complex context, and while reasonable people disagree about the context, only a fool, an ignorant American television-watching fool can see this as a good reason to throw away world peace.

Since we claim to be a Christian nation, it should shock our conscience that we care no more for the half a million refugees created in Lebanon that we do for the tens of thousands we have created in Iraq. I ask each of us to consider how we would feel in their situation. All things considered, to varying degrees, we live well. We enjoy clean water, plentiful food, heated and air-conditioned homes, and the security in which to enjoy these things. These are the things taken away from innocent people who become refugees. I feel for these people, and feel that I must speak up for them, must speak to my fellow citizens because my conscience was shocked by what this man said about the situation. He said, “Kill them all. Sooner or later we’re going to have to do it, so just kill them all.”

This really is our last chance. September 11th did not change everything. It did not change human nature or ethics. It is still much easier to start a war than end one, and human beings are still animals willing to give up higher thought processes for blood lust. War is still brutish and should be a last resort. Actual war should not be confused with television war where you watch the conflict from the comfort of home and scream for one side to be annihilated as if it was a football game.
We can let the same incompetents who brought us Iraq remain unaccountable and let them expand the operations to the entire Middle East, perhaps including the use of so-called tactical nuclear weapons. So far, they have not even had to admit to having used the Social Security surplus that was built up so that the baby boomers, but that bill will come due. There will be no work done on any domestic issues while we are consumed with this long, long, -hell, it's unwinnable- war, but Al Gore must be so frustrated that maybe he’ll run for president. In his movie, he laid out the case for an urgent need to address our climate’s ability to sustain us. He said we had ten years before the changes would become so catastrophic our civilization would not survive.

So, it seems there are two threats to civilization as we know it, and they are not unrelated. As we watch, from the comfort of our homes, war refuges fleeing smoldering cities and tanks of fuel burning, we are not only missing the opportunity to live civilly, we may be missing the opportunity to live at all. We need to take care of each other. We need to take care of the earth that sustains us. We need to stop and think that war really isn’t desirable, as some seem to think, and that we cannot afford the opportunity costs.

[lonestarnot]

1. The opportunity costs of war would be?

[donkeyotay]

3. While you're pursuing one thing, you can't pursue another

The opportunity cost of war is that you sacrifice living in peace, and if Al Gore's right, while we're busy blowing everything up, we will not only not be able to work on stopping global warming, we will be contributing to it in a big way. If the war doesn't kill us, it's aftermath will.

[lonestarnot]

5. And as supply increases, opportunity costs drop, so again

the question is what in the hell are the opportunity costs of war?

[donkeyotay]

6. We're, obviously, not talking about the same thing

Opportunity cost is the lost opportunity to pursue one business venture while you're spending you time/capital involved in another. The opportunity cost of war is the opportunities that one can pursue during peace, ie, bread and butter issues like health care, or more important issues like the planet's ability to sustain us.

Have I misused the term. Is that your point?

[lonestarnot]

7. No, we are talking about the same thing, LOL, I think.

One of the elements of opportunity cost is that when supply goes up, opportunity costs drop (if I recall correctly from econ. ed.) So more war more killing and destruction should reduce opportunity costs of war, meaning more war. In addition demand goes down because supply is saturated with more war, meaning less war, so if I'm right in this premise (and I could very well be wrong, as this study was long ago), but if I'm right, I am wondering where we are at in the scale. Are opportunity costs still high? And at what point do they saturate the demand supply scale?

[donkeyotay]

10. Oh, no! Not the S-D charts from Econ!

"And at what point do they saturate the demand supply scale?"

I once had a close encounter with the Dismal Science, but it didn't take. As far as I know, I'd guess that demand is far, far from saturated. Politically speaking, the demand will increase before it diminishes. It only diminishes when it is too late, people are sorry for what they've lost.

[lonestarnot]

11. It's looking more and more like it's already too late.

War = Peace on the radio address this a.m.

[glitch]

2. Well said K & R. Strange how opportunity costs are never mentioned. nt

[donkeyotay]

4. You would expect the CEO President to keep an eye on the bottom line

The bottom line is that our nation's head long plunge into war without end, war on a tactic, war on 3 billions people, is not only going to cost us our economy, but our environment. The Decider is deciding for the whole world. His choices have irreversible consequences.

[glitch]

8. Indeed. And that goes for all of the self-described hard-nosed capitalists

Capitalists? Hardly. Looters, sure. (who can tell the difference anymore?)
Who cares about the bottom line of the company, corporation, country you're looting?
Corporate raiders who know nothing and could not possibly care less about balance sheets.
Nobody said it better than RFKjr when he said these looters were "treating this country like a company in liquidation". Only this was a few years ago, it's now a planet in liquidation.

Edit: the opportunity cost here may very well be human survival. Staggering, isn't it?
Or in Bush/Cheney's case, swaggering.

[donkeyotay]

9. Calling Al Gore. Al Gore. Please report to the front office

I saw that Condi was referring to the impending war as "birth pangs." These arrogant neocons are so sure that they have everything under control - just like they did in Iraq.

So bush can start another war, but he can't finish it. How many of the 10 years scientists say we have to address climate change will this war take? Does anyone know? Does Condi know?