Political Economy of Risk Control

The optimal level of risk is never zero. Otherwise nobody would ever get up in the morning and get out of bed. But even staying right there is risky (remember those goblins under the bed when you were a little kid!) When you drive from home to work you risk of dying is non-zero. When you fly from New York to Los Angeles your risk of dying is non-zero. When you cross a traffic-heavy street your risk of dying is non-zero. When you ride a bike your risk of dying is non-zero. Why, then, do most of us act in these types of situations as if the risk were indeed zero? The answer is because it is sufficiently low, that for practical purposes we can act as if it were zero, although we know that theoretically it’s not. After all, people die in car crashes and as pedestrians every day, they also die, although much less often in plane crashes, and some of them (hundreds) even perish hit by lightning every year! Seven people in the US die of bubonic plague annually! Yet, we don’t get scared every day of going out because we might get hit by a car, or by lightning, or fall from a bike and die of concussion, or end up like fourteenth century Europeans, decimated by plague. In most non-controversial everyday situations individuals are good at managing the risk level of their own behavior.