Applying opportunity costs to something like government spending on war is a great way to use a bunch of unknowns to prove your side of the argument. Unfortunately it will not be of much use to someone who disagrees with the basic cost/benefit analysis of the war in the first place.
Any benefit you claim for increased spending in some government agency could easily be countered by a claim that failure to have spend the money on war would have led to XYZ bad things. You will not believe that such bad things would have happened and they will not be convinced that they would not. Thus you will both just talk past one another.
Plus you will get bogged down into the argument of "what if" spending. If we double research money the government spends on cancer research will we halve the time it takes to find a cure (assuming a cure is the goal, and it is achievable)? How about AIDS research ? What if we spent more on road safety to limit deaths? Clearly programs like education, defense, the Smithsonian, NASA, farm subsidies, and so on are not as important as saving just one more life! Right?
If the idea is that life is so valuable that saving lives is worth any financial cost, then the only logical thing is to ban all forms of transportation, since all have a finite, nonzero probability of death . . . as does just getting out of bed in the morning, as does staying in bed in the morning . . .
There are no guarantees in life, and just because we might be able to do something with more funding does not mean it will happen. In fact we might cause more problems (just as someone in a big software project how helpful it is to suddenly have your team size double and deadlines get cut in half).
Someone else has read "The Mythical Man-Month," I see . . .
Just spending more on something does not result in the benefit of that program going up.
Viz, public schools.
While at the same time the "pro-war" supporter can point to real world changes that have happened. If all you counter with is theoretical what ifs, you will have a weak and unpersuasive argument.
Opportunity costs is part of economic theory that tries to help businesses decide how best to allocate available capital. It is not exact, it involves lots of guess work, and it only really cares about return on investment in pure financial terms. Trying to apply it to desired policy outcomes is not going to be a perfect fit.
In the end I think that you will find few people who supported the war swayed by the opportunity costs argument. Just like I doubt anyone who supported the war could use the "opportunity costs" of NOT going to war to change your mind.
John _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
-- Ronn! :)
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