Link: The Eclectic Econoclast: 08/21/2005 - 08/27/2005.
John wonders if this statement by George W. Bush can be considered a representation of the economic term, sunk cost:
"We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for."PRESIDENT BUSH, on the American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the things that led me to becoming the person I am today was a disastrous bit of stock trading (or more accurately, lack thereof -- if only I had taken my own advice and sold SBAS at 12 5/8's... oh well.) which cost me a substantial amount of money (to me, at least). The road to figuring out what happened and why led to studying economics and all of the things I used to discuss here on a semi-regular basis. The one lesson I learned early on, though, the one mistake I didn't make was summed up by the following advice:
"Never throw good money after bad."
We may be hard-wired to consider the sunk costs and regrets of past decsions, but the path away from making the same mistakes (otherwise they wouldn't be regrets) is to admit what they were and move forward. Wallowing in guilt and/or obligation for errors past is the surest way to repeat them, and in my mind the worst kind of tribute to those who have given their lives for this operation.
This statement by Bush is what the Mogambo identified as "The cure for what is ailing us is more of it not less."
Einstien called this insanity. I call it time to stop chasing the dead and the wounded all the way to the bottom. The Dead Cat Bounce from the War on Terror is going to be a doozy!
Ta,
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