Predictions

Mumbai Musings

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Like most people, I was shocked and saddened to hear of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India last week. Close to 200 people dead so far, with untold numbers more injured. It is a tragedy of terrible scope.

Speaking as someone who works with violent crime survivors, I can attest that there is a hidden cost that very few of us will ever see. Thousands upon thousands of people were involved with the victims, from family members and close friends to coworkers and casual acquaintances. Most of those people will find their lives have been changed, and rarely for the better.

Although hardly an expert on terrorism, I have been paying attention to the issue over the years. I thought I’d share a few thoughts.

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Opting for a Really Big Deductible

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Our fellow Chicago Boy, Steven den Beste, has posted some thoughts about piracy on his own personal blog. He thinks that the recent plan to allow NATO warships to form an anti-pirate patrol off of Somalia is not the optimal solution to the problem. Instead he thinks that a few heavily armed squads of soldiers, placed on a civilian ship as it traverses pirate infested waters, would do the trick.

I have been writing regularly about maritime piracy for years now. Most of my previous posts were lost when my former ISP abruptly terminated service, but the idea of hiring mercenaries for short term security in dangerous waters is hardly new. The concept of having regular military troops perform the same job merely transfers the cost from the private shipping company to the taxpayer.

But the same problem which prevented the shipping companies from hiring private soldiers keeps them from allowing government troops on board. And that problem is higher insurance premiums.

Back when I first became interested in the problem in 2001, ship captains who had to navigate through areas with heavy pirate activity were given $20,000 in cash. The idea was that the money was to be kept in the ship’s safe, and paid to any group of pirates who managed to make their way on board. Danegeld on the high seas.

But we all know what happens if you pony up the Danegeld. The idea that a mere $20K would satisfy a self respecting pirate band today is ludicrous. And it will probably get worse before it gets better.

Anyone interested in maritime piracy is encouraged to read the ICC Piracy Report, a free weekly update listing attacks on shipping. One thing that becomes painfully obvious very quickly is that pirate attacks are becoming more frequent, the pirates are demanding ever increasing amounts to return control of the ships they take, and the pirates are becoming ever more violent in an effort to coerce the shipping companies to pay up.

One would assume that the huge amounts demanded by pirate bands recently is a prime motivator for shipping companies to hire some mercs, but that is only if you discount the enormous number of vessels that daily move through the major shipping lanes. Four, eight, ten, a dozen ships might be held for big money, but hundreds more manage to move through those waters every day without having any problems. The increase in money paid to the insurance companies if troops were allowed on board is still greater than the cash paid out to the pirates.

Right now we are seeing a fluid situation that is trying to reach equilibrium. The pirates won’t stop because they get some really good money for attacking maritime vessels, and there is very little risk. The shipping companies will continue to pay ransom money as long as it is cheaper than increased insurance premiums. The pirates will continue to demand ever larger payouts as long as they are ultimately handed the cash.

If things are allowed to develop as they have been, eventually the shipping companies would begin to balk at the huge amounts that the pirates would demand. Then I expect the pirates would turn into terrorists, executing the captured crews in public and highly visible ways in an attempt to get the money spigot turned back on. It would only be at this point, with insurance premiums climbing because of the increased chance of murder, that the shipping firms would begin to look to resisting piracy in an aggressive and effective way.

The decision by NATO to begin anti-piracy patrols is probably seen by the shipping companies as a possible solution, and one that they won’t have to pay for out of their own pocket. It would work if the warships tasked to hunting down the pirates would actually shoot a few of them, but I really don’t expect that to happen.

First Tobacco, Now Food

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I was not happy with the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement for many reasons.

One of my main objections was that the entire premise behind the complaint against the tobacco industry was that they used advertising to control the minds of their customers. It seems extremely obvious that the dangers of using tobacco were well established long before my birth in 1964, yet it was claimed that tens of millions of Americans were too stupid or weak minded to pay attention. Consenting adults in this country could be trusted to choose political leaders in elections, but they were helpless to resist when confronted with a picture of the Marlboro Man.

One of the most moronic claims by the anti-tobacco crowd was that the cartoon advertising mascot Joe Camel was enslaving the youth of America. It was said that children recognized Joe more readily than they did Mickey Mouse, even though the cigarette ads only ran for 9 years and giant amusement parks featuring the anthropomorphic camel were never constructed. It looked to me to be a blatant attempt to demonize an industry in order to force them to pony up some cash.

The title of this article is “10 Things the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know”, and it shows that some people figure the same methods used against Big Tobacco will work just fine when applied to the food industry.

Click on that last link and all the same tricks are on display. Food companies target little kids to advertise unhealthy food. They sponsor studies that obscure the fact that unhealthy food is bad for you. The industry puts pressure on legislators to keep them from passing laws limiting consumer access to fattening and sweet foods. They bankroll front groups which fight anti-obesity laws. And so on.

This appears to me to be exactly the same tactics used against tobacco companies. They are evil, unconcerned with the health of their customers, and all too willing to employ Jedis working on Madison Avenue to use their powers on the minds of vulnerable little children. (“Broccoli is not what you want to eat! Ice Cream would be much nummier!”)

The author of the article claims that obesity is a major health concern, and I have no problem with that. But I do object to the idea that people in this country are so stupid that they just can’t figure out that eating unhealthy foods will make you unhealthy.

How long will it take before state legislatures combine resources to blackmail the food industry into making a huge payment? I figure about ten years on the outside.

I see the campaign against the tobacco industry, and now the food industry, as an attack on the free market system. Free markets means free choice, which means that individuals have to be allowed to make bad personal choices if that is what they want to do.

I mean, isn’t that the very basis of American society?

Random Thoughts

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The big war (not the Iraq campaign) isn’t over. We have continuing problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but we’ve suppressed our enemies for a while in most places. However, eventually we are going to have to fight large battles again, because our enemies will eventually attack us in a way that we can’t ignore. I suspect that we are now in a situation like that of Israel, which has never been allowed or willing to defeat its enemies decisively and so has to fight a major campaign every decade or so. We will probably have to keep fighting until we develop the political will to win decisively. This is going to be true no matter who is President or which party is in charge in Washington.

One counterexample to my speculations is Korea, where we have been in a mostly peaceful stalemate for more than fifty years. And there are always conflicts simmering around the world that rarely do us harm. But North Korea is an isolated regime that seems likely to fall apart eventually. Radical Islam is a much more distributed, dynamic, ambitious and aggressive enemy that does not seem likely to stop fighting unless it is defeated. Remember the anecdotes that suggest that the Syrians and Iranian mullahs and Hamas want Obama to win? The usual assumption by Obama critics is that Hamas et al favor Obama because they think he’s one of them. I suggest that they are favoring him because they think he’ll pursue policies that will make it easier for them to defeat us.

In the old days America could walk away from wars, because most of the costs of our walking away would be borne by non-Americans. Technology has removed this security and we should update our sense of security accordingly. Most of us haven’t, or have become complacent, because 9/11 now feels like distant history. But the metaphor of distance is misleading here. We are not physically more distant from threats; advances in technology and in the technological sophistication of our enemies may even make us more vulnerable. Like it or not we are probably going to be at war for many more years, even if it doesn’t feel like war most of the time.