The foregone alternative

Economists have the concept of the cost of anything being the loss of the most attractive foregone alternative. There has been a sacrifice, an opportunity cost. we hope that in all decision making, the most valuable is chosen. Even if it is other attractive alternatives will have been sacrificed.

Yesterday the Daily Telegraph reported David Davis reporting some work done by the Taxpayers Alliance on the costs of surveillance in our society.

The estimate is that about £800 per household is being spent on surveillance. This includes £19 billion for the planned ID card system and £500 million on CCTV.

The figures are difficult to grasp for those of us who are watching the pennies, but if we say that £300 million could build and equip a hospital (- my own guess, and I could be way out), £4 billion to build an advanced aircraft carrier, the true cost of surveillance could be measured in hospitals which could have been built or aircraft carriers which we are going to have to do without.

As David Davies says, CCTV film generally has little value, - many criminals have already worked out that much video film is of the wrong quality to be used in court, and wearing a hood will reduce chances of identification.

Whether experts are correct, that ID cards will prove to be a huge waste, or opportunity cost, time may tell us. What is true is that they have already used up scarce resources, threaten our freedom and may easily be by-passed by criminal elements.

What Davis points out is that failures in the criminal justice system have reduced our security. If we could exclude people who are a threat to security, not release those who are dangerous and also not lose important data by mismanagement, then the vast expenditure on surveillance could be reduced and give the possibility of constructing or renewing hospitals or equipping our troops as they deserve.