Chris Whitlock writes in the Washington Post:
To which Robin Hanson replies:Jaber Elbaneh is one of the world's most-wanted terrorism suspects. In 2003, the U.S. government indicted him, posted a $5 million reward for his capture and distributed posters bearing photos of him around the globe. None of it worked. Elbaneh remains at large, as wanted as ever. ...
Since 1984, the program has handed out $77 million to more than 50 tipsters, according to the State Department. ... In 2004, Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) visited Pakistan to assess why Rewards for Justice had generated so little information regarding al-Qaeda's leadership. He discovered that the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad had effectively shut down the program. There was no radio or television advertising. ...
In 2004, Congress passed a law authorizing the State Department to post rewards as high as $50 million apiece -- a provision with bin Laden in mind. Last fall, Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) went further, introducing a bill that would raise the cap to $500 million. The State Department has declined to boost the reward for bin Laden, arguing that more money was unlikely to do any good and would only add to his notoriety.
(HT Alex Tabarrok)Let's see, billions spent via ordinary means, and millions offered in bounties, and it is the bounties they blame for Al-Qaeda's notoriety and failing to catch leaders? The billions are spent and gone, while the millions in bounties we only lose when they actually work. How then is this data suggesting we should prefer ordinary means to bounties?
2 comments:
I agree that the "ordinary means" seems to be failing more than the bounties.
That being said, I have heard people in the church who have visited the Middle East remark that one problem with these bounties is that they assume the people there are motivated financially the same way we would be in America or in another western country.
The fact is that people in Pakistan, Iraq, etc, often have very little concept of what a few million dollars is, or even for that matter, a few thousand or even a few hundred dollars.
Add to that the fact that many people in these societies are not trained to be nearly as materialistic as in the west, and to value personal loyalty and ties moreso.
So these bounties are a classic case of failing to understand the very nature of the people you are trying to motivate. In short, the people who come up with these bounties are creating incentives that they themselves would respond to, and not necessarily their target audience.
America needs to do a much much better job of trying to understand foreign cultures. Some of that will change for the better once Obama is elected president.
To add to my previous comment, won't it be nice to have a president who actually has a greater understanding of foreign cultures?
That is what Obama offers. The moment Obama is elected president and becomes the face of America to the world, the image of the US in the world will take a quantum leap forward.
In fact, just the way Obama will improve our international relations is reason alone to elect him.
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