Every one of us wants to be secure, safe, healthy, wealthy, happy and so forth. But if we think in absolute terms, 100-percent probability, forget it. Not going to happen! Everything we do, or take part in, assumes some level of risk. The less the probability of success, perhaps the less we want to consider the action. No one recognizes this more than gamblers who are well aware of “the more you risk, the more you might gain, but the greater the chance that you will lose.” Besides, recall Mr. Murphy”s Law: “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong!” If not now, some time in the future. While it may not be expensive to get to pretty good, we often cannot afford the cost of getting to very good. The closer one approaches 100-percent probability, the closer the cost comes to being unaffordable. In the real world, if you can reach above 90 percent without going broke, you”re doing pretty well. Where failing is unacceptable, as in spacecraft, liquid gas transport and now probably deep wells, redundant systems are built in, figuring that if one fails the second will not. Works more often than not.
At lower levels, most of us use insurance to try to manage our risk in our lives. Probably the best example is automobile insurance. If life is safe, we risk only our premiums and these depend on how much risk we are willing to take, and the levels of compensation we feel are in line if we err. If we are a bad risk, premiums go up. If we are safe drivers, the cost goes down for the same coverage.
Sometimes shock, ego and emotion spurs us to pay far more for questionable lower risk than is wise, or may not even be possible. To me, the cost of all the security action after Sept. 11 is a good example. Sept. 11 was a tragedy and probably not preventable under the circumstances. After all, no one could even concede such a thing happening. First the hijacking and impact, then the unforeseen effect of vertical compaction that took the towers out. Like the oil spill, we are not likely to see that happen again. But terrorist acts will continue to happen and let”s be thankful that terrorists are after headlines and publicity so hijackings and destruction of planes and perhaps cruise ships are nice targets. Destroying things as power lines and water systems simply don”t give the same publicity, even if more damaging.
So far, with two wars and the national security operation, the country has spent much more than a trillion dollars, a lot of resources, and a lot of lives, to boost security, and I”ll bet the risk level overall has not been reduced more than a few percent, if that. I think the premium has been far too high and has heightened our risk within the country as the infrastructure degrades, our world reputation fails, education and other vital public efforts are stripped of funds because of the size of that premium.
If terrorism within the U.S. is not about to be stopped, perhaps not even modified, reason suggests that we had better learn to live with it. If one goes beyond emotion and macho, the loss of three thousand lives or so and the towers in Sept. 11 really doesn”t compare with the deaths, maimings and cost of the transportation accidents that people seem content to live with. Or murders. Or arsons. So why do we justify all the costs we pay for ineffective overprotection? Or is it that we just like to borrow from the Chinese and downgrade our economy?
Risk and its management seems to come back to people”s values, perspectives and priorities. And these change more than we would like them to. Change can be frightening. For good or bad, older people find new risks in ordinary things that they did not previously worry about. As well, older people tend to be more conservative, in the traditional sense and be far more interested in their own problems so that general things like government, infrastructure and education suffer. Much risk is felt in things such as illegal immigration and so many people on welfare, but, interestingly enough, most of the worried and critical are not willing to take the drastic steps that might eliminate the problem. Again, priorities may be the source of the problem. The country has far too little funding to do all, and at this time it seems to be felt that funding is more to the country”s advantage if used for security, war and defense than it would be if applied to the country”s internal needs, which
