ILSM on Moral Hazard

ILSM sends in this post on Moral Hazard…

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Moral Hazard.

“Military madness was killing my country…….”

“Military Madness”, Neil Young, Crosby Stills Nash and Young

Anyone revising history about the outcomes of in Vietnam is encouraging moral hazard; sustaining corrupt, grossly incompetent “friends” who cannot survive without support from the US war machine is moral hazard.

George Washington’s warned us against standing armies and the associated moral hazard of foreign entanglements.

It is like you have a hammer and every thing looks like a nail. Now the US has half the world’s military and every issue needs to be done with the war machine, lest we lose interest in it.

Hitler, the great exploiter of moral hazard said armies are to be used and so pursued “liebensraum” to huge harm to all, including Germany.

Robert E. Lee surveying the carnage of his victory at Fredricksburg in Dec 1862 saw the moral hazard of war and said its carnage should limit the hazard. He said: “it is well that war is so horrible, else we would love it so”.

Hiding coverage of casualties and the wounded is a way to avoid exposing the moral hazards of the war machine.

The war machine moral hazard people generally think subsidizing health care for poor kids is a moral hazard, the poor would abuse health care resources, but think nothing of subsidizing dictators, corrupt and hugely unpopular regimes with US tax money and American lives.

The US “clients” in Cambodia and Vietnam were crooked and grossly inept. That they took the job of ruining their countries in the first place is an example of moral hazard. American magnanimity to support our “friends” regardless of how corrupt, criminal or inept creates a huge moral hazard.

These “clients” are “bailed out” by US soldiers’ lives and taxpayers money.

This is sort of like bailing out hedge funds peddling CDO’s and worthless ABCP.

The US must view propping dictators as moral hazard and stop it.

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This one was by ILSM.