Military Intervention as a...

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I recall, many years ago, when Wabulon and I were dropping a friend off at his apartment, Wabulon turned to me and asked, "What are we doing?"

"Why, we're dropping Scott off."

"We're not staying?"

"Well, I think if Scott wanted us to stay, he would ask."

Wabulon looked shocked. "Oh, no, no one could possibly know if they want you to stay until you have been over for at least four or five days."

I thought of this today when, on the drive to work, Sandy asked me, "Why do you think we're really in Libya?"

"Whoa," I responded, "let's not rush things here. Are we even sure why we're in Afghanistan yet? Sandy, military intervention is a discovery procedure. It may take you years to figure out why you really invaded some foreign country."

But the damned planning mentality always wants to know everything in advance.

Comments

  1. Adriaan7:52 PM

    Are you making a joke or do you seriously want to make that argument? If so; I'm interested in some clarification.

    ReplyDelete
  2. gcallah10:08 PM

    Adriaan, that post was entirely sarcastic.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bob Murphy9:32 PM

    Obviously you are making a joke about being agnostic about the invasions, but it seems you are serious in your critique of Hayek.

    In case that's true, your analogy is wrong. If you walk up to a car producer and say, "What is the point of your operation?" he'll say, "We're making cars." Then if you say, "But what is your ultimate goal?" he might say, "To make profit."

    What competition does, is allow us to see what are the most efficient ways of doing it.

    So if Sandy said, "Granted, we know full well what our goal in Libya is, do you think this is the best method of obtaining it?" then you could say, "Hayek wants us to have various coalition partners try different things, and I'll get back to you in a year."

    ReplyDelete
  4. gcallah10:38 PM

    No, Bob, there was no critique of Hayek intended here. It was a joke through and through. I agree with Hayek: competition IS a discovery procedure.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wabulon4:37 PM

    In relation to comments #1-2: "No one is ever joking"--Red Dragon, Thomas Harris. Read it if you haven't.

    ReplyDelete

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