Examples of opportunity cost abound in the real world. There is an opportunity cost to me writing this article, the value of the research I would otherwise be accomplishing. (Sadly, this article is nearly costless for me.) There is an opportunity cost to starting Dustin Pedroia for the Red Sox, the value of starting their backup Xander Bogaerts. In both of these examples, and every other example I’ve seen, the alternative option is positively valued. But there is nothing in the definition or intuition of opportunity cost that forces the outside option to be valuable.
This brings us to the question of what to do about the chemical weapons attack in Syria. I can think of a million reasons why we should not respond by bombing Syria: we will almost surely kill innocent civilians; we will risk escalating the civil war into a pan-Syrian regional war; we will risk ushering the Islamist rebels into power. Unfortunately, I can also think of a million of moral, political, and financial reasons why we should respond by bombing Syria. Therein lies the rub.
The question is not whether bombing is a good option; it most clearly is not. The question is instead whether it is a “good” option relative to the option of ignoring an evil act by an evil government. Honestly, I have no idea whether it is the better option or not, but I do know that deciding how to proceed is neither an easy nor obvious decision.
The situation reminds me of a West Wing quote where Toby Ziegler says that, “there’s nothing about this that doesn’t stink.” One way or another people are going to be killed; one way or another there will be suffering; one way or another the situation will cost the United States money. But the fact that there is no good solution does not mean there isn’t a best solution.
