then, what if you found out the bat exterminators were RELEASING bats into your
house, so that you would continuously need "bat removal" service? -vmann
Now, just imagine if you contracted with a company that promised to get rid of
bats, and after six years, you had 14,000 bats in your house instead of the
original 300. Would you consider this success? Would you gladly pay the bill
for another six years? Would you believe the company's excuses for why the
problem has gotten worse rather than better? .
And what if instead of making a contract with you, that same company stole the
money from your bank account to pay itself for the services it was allegedly
offering you? Under those conditions, you might rightly conclude their
"service" is a worse threat to your security than the bats themselves. You
would be right.
----- Original Message -----
From: Mises Daily Article
To: Mises Daily Article
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 10:15 AM
Subject: What Homeland Security Really Means
What Homeland Security Really Means
By Jeffrey Tucker
Posted on 5/8/2007
Subscribe at email services, tell others, or Digg this story.
Photograph by Julia Grace Tucker, 2007
The upshot was that it was a bat, which, despite the prevalence of bat
revisionism, is a spooky, nasty, disease-carrying, malicious threat to peace
and contentment, made all the worse by its elusive, nocturnal habits.
But this wasn't at all obvious at first. It began as little more than a
peculiar sound, noted by a visitor to our home. It sounded like a woodpecker
but not as steady and sharp, so it couldn't be that. I dismissed the
observation. Noises are everywhere. Not to worry.
The next night, at 1:30 a.m., my 12-year old daughter came running from her
room, terror in her pale face, complaining that a bird was in her room. It was
hitting the door and the wall so hard that it seemed like his bird skull would
crack, or so she claimed.
Now, a bird in the house is not an unusual problem. It is just a matter of
shooing it out the window. So on went the lights, and the mystery began: there
was no bird. I moved objects around the room for 20 minutes and still no bird.
I concluded that she was dreaming, poor dear.
The next night the visitor came fleeing from her room at 1:30, complaining of
the same. The signs were the same: wide eyes, white with terror, the look of
someone who has felt an ominous presence. I turned off all the lights, open the
door, and put the porch light on, on the theory that the bird would be
attracted to light and fly away.
Now, all the clues were before me but it wasn't until after this commotion died
down that the realization dawned on me. Let's see: mysterious noises, reports
of a bird that flies at night but disappears when the light is on, the sense on
the part of all who experienced it that they had been in the presence of
something terrifying.
A bat! Now, we've been scolded for decades that bats aren't really that bad.
They are clean and cuddly, like hamsters with wings. They don't rip your hair
out: "Bats don't want to get tangled in your hair anymore than you want that to
happen." And they aren't "likely" to be carriers of rabies. Umm, sure. So why
do they fly with their mouths open exposing horrid teeth? Oh, that's just so
that they can catch their dinner, silly! And then this site tells us that "Not
all bats are vampires."
Yeah, well, to heck with these revisionists. If only 1 bat in 50 is a
rabies-carrying vampire that gets tangled in one's hair, that's a good enough
reason to treat them as grave threats. If they are indeed an endangered
species, I'm not conducting any candlelight vigils.
(As an aside, someday someone will have to explain to me why, in the
progressive/governmental view of the world, we are supposed to be deathly
afraid of mercury, asbestos, and trans fats, but we are supposed to adore
wolves, snakes, and bats!)
My plan for bat removal was that everyone should sleep with a tennis racket.
When the bat comes around, whack it with the racket and, when it is
disoriented, step on it and kill it. The kids pointed out that they would not
be sleeping with hard shoes. So my workaround was to keep hammers in every
room.
My daughter thought this was ridiculous and uncool. She googled around and came
up with some alternative plan that she predicted would be infallible.
Everyone went to bed as normal, and so far as I knew, it was just another
night. The next morning I learned what the night had actually brought. The bat
came back. My daughter had been prepared with a specially made bat shield, a
tupperware container, and a digital camera to snap images. The battle began at
1:30, in low light, and ended 15 minutes later.
The threat had been chased away and the family safe from the threat. Our
homeland was secure! And of course she blogged all about it.
All during the great bat saga, there were politicians parading on television
asking us to vote for them because they would do the best job of maintaining
our nation's security against vague foreign threats to our well-being.
But this idea of "national security" is just about as mythical as the notion
that some elected official with no fiduciary interest in our personal
well-being can do anything to bring it about. Security is a microeconomic
issue. Threats to person and property come in very precise forms. What gives us
homeland security is not a swaggering occupant of the White House but locks on
our doors, reliable insurance, a gun in the closet, or a daughter with a good
technique for catching bats.
The key to feeling secure is good management of precise threats. The solution
is carefully calibrated based on matching risk level, data of time and place,
and making contracts with people who have an interest in bringing about the
desired result. There is also a need for constant trial and error, since the
nature of the threat is ever changing.
$25
"Security is a microeconomic issue."
There is an interesting pattern to the problem of treating security as a
macro-political problem rather than a micro-technical problem. Lew Rockwell
reports that with every increase in the war on terror, the incidents of
reported terror have increased.
Now, just imagine if you contracted with a company that promised to get rid of
bats, and after six years, you had 14,000 bats in your house instead of the
original 300. Would you consider this success? Would you gladly pay the bill
for another six years? Would you believe the company's excuses for why the
problem has gotten worse rather than better?
Not likely. But there is something about the idea of "national security" that
compels us to take leave of our senses and not apply normal standards of
success and failure.
And what if instead of making a contract with you, that same company stole the
money from your bank account to pay itself for the services it was allegedly
offering you? Under those conditions, you might rightly conclude their
"service" is a worse threat to your security than the bats themselves. You
would be right.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey Tucker is editor of Mises.org. Send him mail. Comment on the blog.
[Print Friendly Page]
Mises Email List Services
Join the Mises Institute Mises.org Store
Home | About | Email List | Search | Contact Us | Periodicals | Articles |
Games & Fun
FAQ | EBooks | Resources | Catalog | Contributions | Freedom
You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe (by email) | Settings | Report Abuse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.5/793 - Release Date: 5/7/2007 2:55 PM
