(no subject)

[Carl Remick]

>Ah. Now we're getting into "Their Morals and Ours" territory... Is it
>more immoral for the United States to issue an ultimatum to
>Afghanistan (if it is indeed Osama bin Laden's group that is
>responsible) and to follow through (if bin Laden and company are not
>delivered) with massive retaliation (and thus to kill innocent
>civilians by the office-tower-load)? Or is it more immoral not to
>take actions that kill yet more innocent civilians by the
>office-tower-load, and thus to teach every fanatic for the next
>century that large-scale terrorism is a really effective way of
>getting the world's attention, and has little downside, and so set
>the table for even more massive civilian casualties in the more
>distant future?
>
>I don't know the answer. One reason I do economics and not political
>science is that even thinking about such questions leaves me
>profoundly depressed...
>
>Brad DeLong

This is one of the most revealing comments I've seen you make, Brad.  
Something that fascinates me about economics is the abstraction that is 
involved and the way that aids in sanitizing capitalism's basic grubbiness 
and insulating the observer from the sheer brutality that fills the 
marketplace.  You guys seem content just to twiddle with your globalistic 
formulas -- math is the fun part, as you say -- and set them loose in the 
field via outfits like the IMF; then, boom!, when the natives revolt and 
Indonesia is torn apart or the WTC/Pentagon is blown up, the political 
scientists are left with the hard work, tackling thorny moral problems that 
never should have arisen in the first place.

Carl

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