Update on Suicide Bombers and Life Insurance, Bryan Caplan ...

by Bryan Caplan

This discussion seems more like a shouting match than a constructive debate.

No participant is/was/will ever be a suicide bomber or has had any contact with them (if I am wrong, please correct me). In light of this, exactly where are you getting your data from? What are you using to predict how long suicide bombers have to think about their decisions to become suicide bombers?

I agree with Prakhar that this is unlikely to be constructive.

The fact it's discussed at all seems to me to be one of the weaker points in Superfreakonomics. While it's attention getting, I'd venture to guess that reliable data on suicide bombers is quite scarce. So any conclusion that gets reached is not going to be very robust.

How would one compare it to baseline life insurance coverage rates for people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, where suicide bombings are quite a bit more prevalent.

And just anecdotally, at the height of the tactic's use in the Iraq War, the actual bombers were often, though not always, quickly recruited from the ranks of the physically and mentally disabled.

Does anyone familiar with the 9/11 case know how long it took them to move from theory to practice?

From what I read at the time (and I haven't done serious investigation, so things may have changed), the leader of each group of hijackers knew what the plan was, but the followers thought that "hijacking" was the main goal, after which they would get various "demands" met. After they were in the air and had taken over, they found out that it was about crashing into buildings.

Two comments:

"Since the intent of suicide bombing is murder, it should fall under the criminal activities clause."

That is not exactly true anymore than the intent of war is murder or the intent of turning off the respirator for a coma patient is murder. The death of people might be the immediate goal (or means to the goal) but it is not the overall intent.

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