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Re: Gambling for Empire

On 3/12/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Why did the White House invade Iraq? Why are the Democrats boosting the war funding ...?

At this stage, it's the idea of "why not take a bigger loss, if there's some chance I can turn it into a gain" that keeps Washington politicians going. It's especially easy for them to do so, since they are gambling with other people's money. < 

there's also the matter of sunk costs: "we" invested trillions of
dollars and thousands of lives in Iraq, so "we" should continue with
the folly. Basic economic theory tells us that the past investment is
irrelevant to decisions about what we should do in the future.[*] But
real-world human beings don't act that way.

Of course, mere psychology doesn't help very much with the
understanding of socio-economic forces and structures.

[*] If there are any successes in Iraq that resulted from the past
investment, then those are relevant.
--
Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

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