[TaylorAlexander]

Yep. My fear at this point is that even with large scale disaster, we won’t respond with sufficient scale to avoid large scale suffering. We’re not responding for climate change. We’re not responding for student debt. We’re quick to respond with $40B for war, but what can we do for the every day people? I’m just not seeing much.

[bumby]

I think the difference between your examples is timescale.

People are generally good at responding to acute, existential threats. We don't seem nearly as good at managing abstract ones that occur over long timescales. I just don't think we're wired to think about risk accurately in that way and, let's face it, most decision are made at an emotional, visceral level.

[TaylorAlexander]

I would also say that defense contractors are some of the largest donors to the political class (not sure how they rank in media spending) and politicians have an incentive to solve near term crises and ignore long term crises. I would not say this is purely down to human “wiring” but the real world political structures we have today (which in theory can be changed).

I should also note that, regardless of how one feels about him, two things about Bernie Sanders are that he didn’t accept any SuperPAC donations and he was very willing to put effort in to eliminating student debt and alleviating climate change. So such platforms are not unheard of.

[bumby]

I think this is part of the issue, but we may disagree about the magnitude. As a counterpoint, "Retirees" are the second largest political donors behind the financial system and yet the retirement system is perpetually in peril.

My comment about our "wiring" is about how we are bad at estimating risks. We likely evolved to think causally rather than statistically and, when coupled with highly emotional risks, it tends to skew the accuracy of risk assessments. Climate change is not as emotionally charged as, say, terrorist attacks so it will tend to get lower priority in an individual's mind.

[throwawayboise]

You didn't see much response to COVID? We spent more on COVID relief and response than we spent on WWII. $40B is a rounding error in what we spent on COVID.

[TaylorAlexander]

I think you’ve misread what I said. I said “My fear is… we won’t respond with sufficient scale to avoid large scale suffering.”

With a million dead and millions more financially ruined, I think it’s fair to say we didn’t prevent large scale suffering. And to be clear my issue isn’t just with direct spending - a few more stimulus checks would have been nice but wouldn’t solve the larger problem - I think we needed better consistency from the government on risk profiles and the importance of masks, as well as more mask mandates and travel restrictions, and finally better testing infrastructure. Some of that is direct spending but much isn’t.