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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (188960)5/21/2004 2:10:58 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 1576989
 
You are ignoring the theorem. The one who has less to lose will take greater risks

That depends on whether the losses are a percentage or not. The man with a million dollars is much more likely to risk $1000 then the man with $1500. Perhaps the man with a million dollars is less likely to risk 100% of his money then the person with $1500.

In this case both parties risk everything. If the "rich man" could avoid risking everything then it would make sense for him to do so, but he can't, so the fact that everything is at risk pushes him to "play the game" harder not to be soft and let the other side dictate how the game will play out. And the rich man has more resources to devote to the fight.

To use another analogy if there are two starving men and one piece of bread, the man with the gun and $1000 in his pocket (Israel) might have more to lose then the man with nothing, but that doesn't mean he is more likely to give up the bread. I'd like to see them work out some way to share the bread. To the extent that the bread is economic resources and not just land I'd like to see them find a way to bake more bread. Hopefully that will happen but I don't see any sign that it will happen soon.

If one person has $.05 and the other $50k, who do you think will be more willing to lose all to get what they want? You've used econ. theory before with re. to agric. subsidies and other subjects. This is no time to be abandoning it.

Economics is better in describing how people react to market signals and to distortions of the market signals then it is at predicting the results of violent conflicts. Economics deals with production and exchange of goods and services.

The most valuable thing they have to lose are their lives.....and what's Israel going to do.....kill them all? Unlikely.....Israelis are very sensitive to the issue of genocide for good reason.

The Palestinians probably can't actually win by force, but if they became enough of a threat to defeat and "ethnically cleanse" or commit genocide against the Israelis then Israel would face losing everything and would use the resources it has to prevent that, with extreme brutality if necessary. The fact that the Palestinians have less to lose matters in conflicts where the person with more to lose can easily back out. But if a poor guy pushes a rich guy to the brink and puts the rich guy at risk of losing everything, and the rich guy has no way of backing out then the poor guy's lack of "things to lose" won't matter much. When the poor guy comes to kill the rich guy the rich guy's bank account won't prevent him from fighting back.

I would say that the Palestinians are feeling a lot more pain, but we hear less griping because 1 - They are a bit more used to it, 2 - Griping against Hamas and the PLO is probably not very healthy in the Palestinian controlled areas.

You're rationalizing......where's the poster who is a strong believer in logic?

That's not rationalizing. Its speculating based on the limited data that are available. It might be illogical if I went went beyond statements like "I would say that..." and "...is probably", to statements like "Is is true without any doubt that the Palestinians feel far more pain then the Israelis.", but I made no such statement.

That's 7 million to Israel's 5 million.

Now what were you saying about the population shift not being enough?

I was aware of the facts when I made that statement and I stand by it. The shift in relative population is not fast enough to cause a major shift in the balance of power. That doesn't mean it isn't an issue that should and does worry the Israelis. Minor shifts in the balance of power are still important, esp. continuing minor shifts.

Tim
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