Benevolent Terrorist
Many societies cannot do things because they are trying to preserve what came before. For anyone who has played video games or run a business, they know that things often have not just a capital cost but also an operational cost. Societies are the same: over time they accumulate many things that add operational costs. Often, these things cannot be removed despite their costs because doing so is not politically palatable.
A Benevolent Terrorist serves such societies by destroying the things whose utility no longer exceeds their costs. No such person has existed but many forces of Nature have functioned in their place.
- San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway was a nightmarish structure on prime land. Damaged in an earthquake, it was brought down and now the Embarcadero is a lovely place with tourists and businesses.
- Hurricane Sandy was necessary for the NY government to buy out Staten Island residents who refused to move despite living in a flood area. Once the hurricane happened, it became possible to buy out these homes and make that area wetlands to resist flooding.[1]
- The Blitz in London broke open the real-estate market in East London and the place improved from being slumlord central to public housing. It never really got better than gritty but it's in a much better state now.
One could imagine a human variant of this who, in the pursuit of some greater goal, causes a lot of short term suffering. Undoubtedly the Embarcadero Freeway being gone seems good. The suffering is hand-waved away because it's just Nature. But what if it were a person mimicking Nature? The outcomes would be the same and the experience would be the same so long as they were good enough to stay hidden. If there were a superhuman capable of creating the earthquake, it would seem that they should, and then stay quiet about what they did.
If they were discovered they would be reviled, of course, because it's one thing for things to be done. It's another for them to be permitted to be done. Once you do the latter, you're elevating a tool from Use Only In Emergency to standard operation. So this means that either:
- No one has discovered this creatively destructive tool to advance their society
- Nothing has come close enough to being important enough to be this bad of a guy
But someone like this could come to be. They might scorch the land and sea so that rocket launches are no longer held up by environmental concerns. The rocket launch company would be immune to criticism since they didn't do it[2]. This person could blow up all of America's historic buildings so that they may be replaced with things that are more useful to the present residents.
None of these things rise to the level required to be a much-hated martyr, though, so I can't see anyone doing it for that. And so far as our governments can handle overruling local authorities in egregious cases, maybe no such person will be needed. But what if America went to war and we couldn't make more shells because the factory in Scranton is historically listed[3]? Perhaps in anticipation of that, a true American patriot might look to destroying what historical facade exists so that the factory may return to protecting the free world.
If so, such a person would be reviled, since the counterfactual would never occur. No one would ever say "If they hadn't done this, we might have lost" and so on. Given the terrible act, perhaps it is right that we place such a high cost on performing it.
About the closest we have come is the Assassination of Shinzo Abe which led to reforms directed at the exploitative church that he used to evangelize.
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ This can go bad, as in Palos Verdes where local homeowners refused a buyout till their land fell into the ocean, at which point they were offered prices from 2022 (coincidentally the peak values their home attained).
- ↑ Unless Elon Musk were to say "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
- ↑ "But the buildings are on the National Historic Registry of Historic Places, limiting how the Army can alter the structures." Levy, Mark (2023-04-22). "US Army considers buying 155mm artillery shells from South Korea to bolster Ukraine's supply". Associated Press. Retrieved 2024-11-26.
