the guy by the door …

An extraordinarily well turned phrase. I don’t entirely believe it, but find it helpful. The world is dangerous. It always has been – before 9/11 even. Unlike Israel Horovitz , I do not believe that our unknowing then was paradise [Are you going to say hello, Ollie?]. Fear is not an enemy, it has uses. It would not have survived natural selection otherwise. It alerts us to things we need to pay attention to. .On the other hand, the fear of fear propells us into foolish acts. This second order fear makes us long for what cannot be. The pursuit of guaranteed complete and total security [CTS] is the most dangerous path of all, because it is a path toward a mirage concealing an abyss.

The increasing privitization of security functions in society assures that it be increasingly treated as a commodity. [In addition to wikicaveats, I have my own.] If we naively assume that (security,investment) points lie “near” a continous curve, then that “function” slopes upward to the right [increased security requires increased investment] and has an asymptote at security=1. [The “function” has an infinite derivative as the economists say. The choice of a compact interval for security is not vital.] Investment in security, like many more easily measurable commodities shows diminishing returns. There is of necessity a point where trying to be more secure is simply not worth the opportunity cost.

As often happens, the two [or more] body problem is more demanding, but in the case at hand, it’s not really that hard. We cannot achieve CTS because our investment is necessarily finite. If we continue to invest more and more “over there” it decreases our investment “here”. There is a point at which a marginal increase in security “over there” comes at a larger opportunity cost “here.” Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are “over there.” London is ‘here.” I submit that yesterday’s events show that we are way past the point of optimal investment. We have been for some time.