Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

The United States has experienced large scale terrorist acts(9/11) and has stopped other terrorist plots since then. Terrorism has claimed significantly more lives than bedbugs, and has also cause tremendous damage to United States infrastructure. I'd also argue that comparing the deaths of folks involved in 9/11 to the deaths that have(n't) been experienced by bedbugs to be both absurd and disrespectful, but that's beside the point.

It's hard for me to believe that you're actually trying to make this argument.




To several significant figures, American deaths from both terrorism and bedbugs are 0% of total American deaths.

Tremendous damage to United States infrastructure? What are you talking about? Those buildings damaged and destroyed in downtown Manhattan? Yes, billions of dollars in damage, but way down in the noise in the economy overall. Congress causes more financial damage in a night of gridlock than that.

It's hard for you to believe? Well, believe it. I am making the argument. We react far too hard to terrorism, by several orders of magnitude. It's basically an allergic reaction. The story of terrorism and the US over the past decade and change is pretty much the story of a bee and a person with a bee allergy. Essentially all of the damage is done by the massive overreaction to the sting, not the by the bee. The difference is that we can, at least in theory, simply choose to stop being allergic. The problem won't be solved by overreacting even more.


> Terrorism has claimed significantly more lives than bedbugs

On the scale of deaths overall-- no, it hasn't. That's the point.


>and has stopped other terrorist plots since then.

No it hasn't, not a single one. Every single case they've "stopped" was simple entrapment of mentally unstable people. If they'd left those people alone nothing would have ever happened.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: