Torturous Economics
Last night I attended an event at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) where the writer James Bovard gave a talk entitled “Civil Liberties Under Attack in America.”
http://www.fee.org/events/detail.asp?id=6289&page=1&t=0
His talk detailed many of the reductions of our liberties that have occurred under the current Bush administration, as a result of the “War on Terror.” He said nothing that really surprised me, as I have kept somewhat abreast of the new rules suspending habeas corpus and allowing suspects to be tortured as long as no one actually calls it torture. What did surprise me was what happened in the Q&A period afterwards.
The crowd at FEE is very much pro-liberty. They are a mix of Libertarians and “Goldwater Republicans” - much as one might expect from an organization focused on economic knowledge. They may not all be strongly libertarian persons - but they certainly are not, for the most part, neo-cons.
The first question was something like “Would you be in favor of torture if the suspect knew something that could save the life of your own wife and child.” Mr. Bovard didn’t really answer the question. Instead he did what politicians and other media interview savvy people always do. He just re-stated his case - talking about the bad things that can and have happened because of torture.
What surprised me was the reaction of the crowd. Now some of them might have just been jumping on him because their strong sense of proper rhetoric balked at his ducking any direct response to the posed question. However, I got the feeling that many of them were actually pro-torture in some cases - that they found this rhetorical question compelling - believed that it pointed to justification for torture in some cases.
Now my own feeling was that torture is about as bad as it can get. What do we cringe from when we examine the atrocities of authoritarian states past, if not the thumbscrews, hot irons, and other implements of pain that have been used to elicit false confessions and implicate innocent people? Yet here was a collection of what I would guess to be, on average, strongly pro-liberty people, and some reasonably large fraction of them seemed as if they might be conceding that torture had some good uses.
So I put my judgment on hold and decided to reconsider the issue - at least sleep on it. It is part of my personal philosophy that I should always be willing to reconsider anything. This includes even items of high emotional impact, with a lot of past bad examples, like the idea of giving over the power of torture to our government.
Upon consideration, I came to some interesting conclusions. No, I did not decide that giving our government the power to torture people was a good idea. But I decided that the “what if your family was involved” question is not really the red herring I had previously thought. It is actually a gateway into examining the way in which our personal and public value judgments compliment each other.
I realized that the big problem with the usual arguments against torture is the fact that torture absolutely can and does work in some situations. There is no denying that if someone knows something, and you start pulling out their fingernails, they will tell you what you want to know. (At least very probably.)
The usual anti-torture argument says, yes people will talk, but you will get bad information. If the subject doesn’t know what you want - he will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear - not necessarily the truth. If the people conducting the torture want something to be true that is not, it is guaranteed that they will have their expectations confirmed by the all too willing subject of the torture session.
These arguments certainly point out the down side of torture, but unless they can actually prove that the costs of torture ALWAYS outweigh benefits of the situation - they can not be completely convincing. This is something that they can never do. Some hypothetical scenario can always be set up in which the cost benefit analysis will end up justifying torture.
When I ask myself the question, “If your wife’s life were involved would you be ok with torture?” I must honestly answer “yes, torture the bastard.” But does this make torture something I should condone - something that I should allow my government to do? After thinking this through I am now quite confident that the answer is “No - we should never, as a society, condone torture.”
Is this hypocritical? I don’t think so, and I will show you why.
Lets look at it as a problem as an economic valuation (Something that people who attend a function at FEE should appreciate.)
Economically, the ideal policy on torture would be one that prevented torture when the expected loss of value was greater then the expected gain, and allowed torture when the expected gain was greater than the expected loss. This perfect solution would mean that in the hypothetical “ticking atom bomb” problem, where torturing one good suspect might save millions of lives, that the torture would happen, but that torture would not happen with low probability suspects where the rewards would be low, and that torture would never happen regularly enough to warp our society into one of where a paranoid government propped up its conspiracy theories with false confessions.
This means that the ideal policy would indeed have torture happen in some cases.
However, I would argue that the closest we can come to this perfect solution is a public policy that prohibits torture and strongly punishes anyone that does it. In fact, I believe that punishment should be commensurate to the crime. Those responsible for torture should expect to personally receive a proportional loss of value to that they cause to their torture subject(s).
The reason this works, is because when the stakes are high enough - for example, when someone in our military or police, who is sworn to protect us, believes that torture can truly save millions - they will do it even knowing that they will be later punished. Good men will sometimes break good rules with full expectation that they will be punished. They will break those rules when their own well being is less important to them that the possible bad they might prevent through their personal sacrifice.
The punishment should increase as the harm increases because this provides effective economic signaling . If people who are willing to break a rule are always punished to the level that the rule is broken, they will be willing to do harm only as much as they feel is warranted by the probability that it will actually help. I will concede that the correct level of punishment need not necessarily exactly equal the harm done - the signaling works as long as punishment scales proportionately to harm - but an eye for an eye certainly has emotional appeal.
This same principal could be applied to many questions about whether harm is justified for the greater good. The answer is the same - the harm may indeed sometimes be justified, but should still be strongly punished. The punishment guarantees that the person committing the offending action really believes that the ends justify the means. They demonstrate this clearly by being personally willing to pay the costs associated with those means.
If the person making this decision is correct, and the harm that they inflict does in fact lead to a greater good, the temptation is that the punishment not be applied. However, for the price signaling to work correctly, it must always be believed that the punishment will happen - therefore it must happen.
You are not a hypocrite for both demanding that torture be prohibited and punished, while at the same time being willing to use it to save the life of your family - at least not if you are willing to sit down in that same chair after you are done with your victim, and let him go to work on you. (Or suffer some other punishment that amounts to similar loss of value.)
I would certainly be willing to subject myself to torture, if I thought it would prevent that ticking bomb from killing a large number of people. I believe that most people would. Anything less will always be a judgment call based on how much pain would be involved and how much harm might be prevented, but the solution to that economic equation should, on average, produce positive value when the person making the choice is willing to personally pay the given price.
The ends may well sometimes justify the means - but punishing those who are willing to go to those ends is the only way of assuring that this is likely to be the case.
I think Mr. Bovard would find it pleasing to note that this conclusion indicates that George W. Bush should still be punished for crimes committed, regardless of any argument that the things he has done are necessary evils.
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June 29th, 2008 at 8:42 am
What I would answer back if I were making a point against torture and were asked such a question from the audience is that I would answer this hypothetical question truthfully if the audience member would answer me a few questions back just as honestly about what he would do in certain extreme, hypothetical situations.
First of, my truthful answer would be, yes, I would probably torture someone I know is holding my family somewhere if I thought I could get it out of them that way. At least I think so. These kind of questions are a little bit like asking, “what would you do in the line of fire in a war?” Evidence suggests that people just don’t know what they would do until they’re in the situation, so I can only surmise at this point.
Now my own questions to the audience member:
1) Would you torture the bastard?
(I’d expect the answer, “yes.”)
2) Assuming they have caught someone who is acting innocent but which reliable sources are 90% sure is a sociopath who has your family suffocating in a hole in the ground, would you torture that guy? Even if the other 10% chance is that they are truly innocent and doesn’t know what is going on at all?
What if the chance of their being the person you’re looking for is 75%? Or 50%? Or only 15%? What’s the magic number to you that would make you decide to torture them?
3) Let’s assume a scenario in which someone else’s family were in peril and for some reason authorities think you have something to do with it, even though you don’t. Let’s assume you were tortured and left to rot in a cell for a long, long time, in the hope that you would finally talk. Let’s assume that eventually you were let out because the mistake was discovered, but you’ve already gone through Hell for nothing.
Would you forgive the authorities for their mistake? Would you agree that, even though you were innocently traumatized, that the need for it was evident at the time? Would you let it slide? Or would you forever bear a grudge and hate the people who hurt you with the best of intentions? Would you imagine taking revenge on them every night? Would you take revenge on them?
This is how I would handle it…