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The Market For Martyrs
Hat tip Dissecting Leftism
Abstract
Despite its presence within all religious traditions, extreme self- sacrifice is by no means easy to explain. We rightly view most people who seek pain or death as mentally ill. Yet studies refute the seemingly obvious conclusion that religious self-sacrifice is likewise rooted in depression, obsession, or other forms of irrationality. Economic theory suggests ways in which many forms of sacrifice (such as restrictive diet, dress, and sexual conduct) can help groups produce collective goods and services otherwise lost to freeriding, but self-sacrifice aimed at injuring others has yet to be adequately explained.

Injury-oriented sacrifice can be modeled as a market phenomenon grounded in exchanges between a relatively small supply of people willing to sacrifice themselves and a relatively large number of “demanders” who benefit from the sacrificers’ acts. Contrary to popular perception, it is on account of limited demand rather than limited supply that markets for “martyrs” so rarely flourish. Suicidal attacks almost never profit the groups best equipped to recruit, train, and direct the potential martyrs. Once established, however, a market for martyrs is hard to shut down. Supply-oriented deterrence has limited impact because:
· In every time, place, and culture, many people are willing to die for causes they value.
· Policies that target current supplies of martyrs induce rapid substitution toward new and different types of potential martyrs.
Demand-oriented deterrence has greater long-run impact because:
· The people who sacrifice their lives do not act spontaneously or in isolation. They must be recruited, and their sacrifices must be solicited, shaped, and rewarded in group settings.
· Only very special types of groups are able to produce the large social-symbolic rewards required to elicit suicide.
· Terrorist “firms” must overcome numerous internal and external threats, and even when successful they have trouble “selling” their services.
· Numerous social, political, and economic pathologies must combine in order to maintain the profitability of (and hence the underlying demand for) suicidal attacks.

Extract
"It is the contrast between violent Islamic militancy and non- violent Christian activism that deserves our attention, not the few strained similarities. And here again, demandside market factors hold the key. Among the evangelical Christians and orthodox Catholics in America, many millions view the act of abortion as murder, the acceptance of abortion as immoral, and the legality of abortion as grossly unjust. Anti-abortion theology is fully-developed and routinely preached in churches all over America. And tens of thousands of anti-abortion “true believers” already devote substantial portions of their time and money to anti-abortion activities. Thus the potential supply of militant anti-abortion “martyrs” is vast.

But the actual supply remains effectively zero, because no Christian organizations have entered the business of recruiting, training, and launching anti-abortion militants. The absence of effective demand is certainly not rooted in Christianity’s unshakable attachment to non-violence. Rather it reflects contemporary realities – social, legal, economic, and political – that make religiously-sponsored violence unprofitable for American religious “firms.” Any church or preacher advocating anti-abortion killings, much less planning them, would suffer huge losses in reputation, influence, memb ership, and funding, not to mention criminal prosecution and probable imprisonment. Disaster would likewise befall religious firms seeking to profit from virtually any form of criminality or violence in America and, indeed, in much of the world.

The “market conditions” insuring the non-profitability of religious militancy exceed the scope of this paper but merit careful study. Nevertheless, changing market conditions provides the only true solution to the problem of suicide bombing and militant religious radicalism. Other approaches (such as targeting firms, leaders, and recruits) raise operating costs and induce substitution but leave in place the underlying demand, and hence the underlying profit opportunities, associated with this line of business. This does not mean that the only effective policy goals are tantamount to turning the Middle East into a vast region of prosperity, democracy, capitalism, and liberty. After all, suicide bombing scarcely exists in numerous countries and regions that enjoy none of these blessings. Insights from economics and the sociology of religion help us understand why the “martyrdom” market can flourish only when numerous exceptional conditions combine. Moreover, they suggest that relatively small changes in those conditions may dramatically disrupt the market. The imperative is to understand the market well enough too identify the relatively small structural changes and activities most likely to reduce cooperation within terror firms, increase damaging competition between firms, and undercut the firms’ ability to collect payment for services rendered, and above all diminish the underlying demand for those homicidal services."
Posted by: tipper 2004-04-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=31002