Sunk costs

Gary North, no LRC:

Voters today are making mental calculations about costs and benefits. The politicians are, too. The voters look at the death toll. The politicians look at the opinion polls.

The death toll will rise. This is the central, unchallengeable fact of all wars. So, every politician who takes his country into a war had better have a long-term strategy to offset the inescapable political reality of the death toll.

(...)

The voting public thinks: "All those troops have died. We dare not lose. This would turn those deaths into a gigantic meaningless sacrifice."

This argument works to one side's advantage in every war. Before it finally ceases to be believed by the other side's supporters, it works until the public finally recognizes the meaning of the doctrine of sunk costs: the past is past. The past cannot be changed.

In economics, this principle of analysis applies to losses already sustained by an investor. The investor – emotionally unwilling to acknowledge the finality of his bad judgment – clings to the hope that he can "get even" by sticking with this bad investment. He stays the course. If it rises, he imagines, his decision to buy will be vindicated. This is all nonsense, says the economist. Had the investor waited to buy at today's lower price, he could have bought in cheaper. There is no escape from the economic fact of the loss.

(...)

It is exactly the same in every war for at least one side. The voters hang on to their belief that going to war was a good idea, that all those deaths were not in vain. But eventually they realize that more deaths cannot resurrect the dead troops. They know this in theory from the beginning, but they do not know it emotionally.

Contagem (à hora deste post):

• Mortos - 2.123
  
  
• Feridos - 15.704

Fonte: Antiwar.com