Whaddya know. Thompson said something that didn't make me want to beat him
to death...
I have a different threat model. I suggest that incompetence is _often_
deliberate and, at least to those who orchestrate such things, is designed
to leave or provide cracks in arbitrary systesm that will be expoited.
This may be defensible in cases where someone wants to encourage child
molesters to expose their operations to sophisticated intelligence and
surveillance activities, but is harder to defend when such policies affect
the integrity of the money supply, or the transportation infrastructure,
or ....
I've reached more or less the same conclusion. Or at least, incompetence may
not be deliberate per se, but the byproduct of a system that needs to appear
to care but is otherwise silently incented not to. Checking bags in the NYC
transit system is the ultimate example of this: Completely, absolutely
pointless in the face of a determined foe. (Meanwhile, of course, there's
all sorts of state shennanegins that are possible through such an
arrangement.)
The obvious question is how much 9/11/01 is an example of this. For me, the
conspiracy theories just don't quite add up (close though) but a moderately
sharpened Occam's razor leads one to believe that some 'deliberate' holes
were left open, which bin Laden, et al exploited. (I actually still believe
that Bush didn't expect that level of damage, however.)
As for the integrity of the money supply, I must succumb to temptation and
question whether the Stalinst model of a demand economy (servicing an
endless war on terror) hasn't been looked at by folks such as Wolfowitz,
Cheney and so on.
-TD
