The hundred thousand 4
A few weeks ago I read a reference to the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed more than 100,000 people—indeed over 200,000. Because of my physics background, I think in orders of magnitude, so the number that stuck was 100,000. Before I could stop it, a thought entered my head: Sure, 100,000 people died, but at least they weren’t very important people.
This is a heretical thought, of course. You’re not supposed to think that some people might be worth more than others. But I find it fascinating, especially given where it led me. My next thought was to ask, how bad would it be if 100,000 random people died? Apart from the rather selfish realization that one of the hundred thousand might be me or someone I care about, I concluded that it probably wouldn’t be much worse. Then the most interesting thought occurred: What if you could choose the hundred thousand?
It’s this question that reveals just how wrong it is to assume that everyone is “equal”. If you could choose the hundred thousand, just imagine how much you could damage the world. A committee of top thinkers could probably come up with the best list (first rule: no one on the committee gets put on the list!), but even a list off the top of my head would be so vastly worse than 100,000 people dying in Indonesia, it’s truly awe-inspiring.
You could start by wiping out the United States federal government. Regardless of what you might think about the Bush administration, at least everyone agrees that they’re in charge, but it wouldn’t require burning more than a hundredth of our 100,000 to kill everyone in the line of succession to the presidency, and then some. While we’re at it, we should wipe out the heads of Europe, China, Japan. We could use a few hundred more to wipe out everyone who knows how to run Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, and a few thousand more to off the CEOs of the Fortune 500 and all of their plausible successors. We could destroy the top of the chain of command of most of the world’s armies with just a few tens of thousands at most, and it probably wouldn’t take more than a few thousand to bring the global oil infrastructure to its knees.
In short, if you could choose the hundred thousand, it would result in total and utter chaos. Trillions of dollars of value would be wiped off the world’s stock exchanges overnight. In the aftermath, there would be famine, disease, war—with an eventual death toll dwarfing the original 100,000. It would probably take decades or centuries to recover.
All this recalls Ayn Rand’s view that there are only a very few people who really move the world. Of course, many people on the list wouldn’t count as Randian prime movers—Lord knows W. isn’t one—but it’s amazing to think just how few people you need to ax before the whole system comes to a grinding halt.
What do you think? Who should be on the list of the hundred thousand?
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your scenario overplays the importance of these individuals simply because of its cataclysmic nature. moreover, these fortune 500 execs and elected/appointed officials aren’t in office because they’re the very best people who could do their jobs. you discount the randomness involved in where people end up.
chances are that many of those poor people who died in the tsunami, had they been born in the US or another developed country, could take those jobs. but they were born in indonesia, which apparently makes them “worth less.”
warren buffett once said, “If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru, you’ll find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil.” the reverse is also true.
an alternate view, from ethicist peter singer: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/magazine/17charity.t.html?pagewanted=1
maybe there really are only a few people who “really move the world,” but most of them got there by a mix of luck and determination, and there are plenty of others who could take their place.
I don’t disagree with you—that’s why I said “All this recalls Ayn Rand’s view…” instead of “All this substantiates…”
Most people wouldn’t choose to create anarchy. If I would have to choose 100.000 people.
Erll—I think you missed the point of the thought experiment. Obviously, most people, if forced to kill 100,000 people, would seek to minimize the damage, but that’s not a very interesting thought experiment at all, since surely there are that many people on the brink of death anyway.
When I say What if you could choose the hundred thousand?, I mean How much worse could it be if you could choose the victims, compared to 100,000 tsunami victims or 100,000 randomly chosen people? That is, I think, a much more interesting question.