Tortured Logic: What Is It Good For?

by Gene Callahan

With a population of nearly 140 million people in an area roughly the size of Wisconsin, if there is a nation on earth to which the term "over-populated" applies, it is surely Bangladesh. Now, if the majority of those people were highly productive, Bangladesh might be prosperous, much like the densely populated cities of Singapore and Hong Kong. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The average life expectancy is only 55 years, the literacy rate is only 36%, and per capita GDP is $1290.

Clearly, a case could be made that the average Bangladeshi would be better off if there were fewer people in the country, especially if those remaining were the better-educated and more productive citizens. There would be more acres of farmland per person, diseases would spread less rapidly, educational resources could be applied more intensively, and the productive would not have to support the unproductive.

So, let's roll! Here's what I propose: We infect the population of Bangladesh with a deadly but curable disease. (Surely the US military has one in stock that fits the bill.) Then, we sell – but only to individual Bangladeshis, not to the government – the antidote at a price that we estimate perhaps 50% of the population can afford. The other half will be killed off. Not pretty for those who will die, to be sure. But actually my plan is quite moral, since those remaining will find they are better off. In time, they will come to see America as their benefactor, and will thank us for delivering them from their misery.

Does my plan sound monstrously evil? Does it seem to you that I've gone off the deep end? Well, it's entirely reasonable to our War Party, since the "logic" of my plan is identical to one of its common arguments for attacking Iraq. For instance, writing recently in National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg asks, "War: What Is It Good For?" He answers his question, "Quite a lot actually." He closes his article by pointing out the morality of his position: "The biggest favor the United States ever did to militaristic Japan was to crush it militarily. Our victory ushered in prosperity, democracy, and a productive peace. The Iraqi people would be lucky if we did them the same favor."

The logic of the War Party argument is the same as I outlined above for Bangladesh. It is fine to kill whatever number of people in an area one deems necessary, as long as afterwards, in one's own judgment, the people who are left alive are "better off." Hey, we have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, right?

Of course, one never asks the people in the area if they are willing to make the tradeoff. After all, we're doing them a "favor" by killing large numbers of their countrymen. Especially, one doesn't ask the people who are "lucky" enough to be the ones who get killed. Nor does one ask their grieving relatives and friends. So, there will be a few orphans left around who watched their parents ripped to shreds by a bomb. So, a certain number of parents will lose their children, a few lovers their beloved, some brothers their sister. As long as they have a higher GDP once the destruction is over, they'd have to be some sort of selfish crybabies to protest.

The moral abyss from which this argument emerges is demonstrated by the following simple fact: If the Iraqi people themselves were willing to suffer a few hundred thousand deaths to be rid of Saddam Hussein, he would be gone already. Therefore, it is clear that, in the Iraqi people's own judgment, living under Hussein is preferable to the chance of death present in attempting to overthrow him. What the people forwarding the "better off" argument are claiming is that, from their empyrean perches safely atop the New World Order, they are better able to judge what the Iraqi people should and shouldn't value than are the Iraqis. To bring about an order they judge to be preferable, they are willing to kill as many Iraqis as necessary.

The war fever of the neoconservatives rests on the same impulses that drove the socialist utopians of the twentieth century. It is an inability to tolerate the fact that the world is not arranged exactly as one would like it to be, and that other people may have plans and value judgments different than one's own. Ludwig von Mises captured their spirit forty years ago:

[They] are driven by the dictatorial complex. They want to deal with their fellow men in the way an engineer deals with the materials out of which he builds houses, bridges, and machines. They want to substitute "social engineering" for the actions of their fellow citizens and their own unique all-comprehensive plan for the plans of all other people.

Copyright © 2002 Gene Callahan

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