It’s hard to do sociopolitical studies to see whether people prefer civil liberties at the price of terrorism and unemployment, or safety and job security at the price of privacy. In general, you don’t get the control group necessary to determine what is the cause and effect. However, one specific event in history shows us exactly what happens when one half of the country get the one option, and the other half gets the other.

Let’s give people a choice between two options. If we let them choose between having real, ravaging terrorism and rampant unemployment in one option, but with pride in upheld civil liberties, and complete safety – essentially no crime at all – and guaranteed jobs in the other, but where the price of this safety would be their privacy, which option would they choose?

Unfortunately, proper science requires that we duplicate the Earth and ramp up security in one copy, eliminating privacy in the process, and allow terrorism and market forces in the other copy, and duplicating the entire planet like that is slightly beyond the budget for this particular experiment. So we’ll have to settle for a thought experiment: the fictional country of Pretendia. Beautiful, fairly homogeneous, industrious country, with punctual, dutiful people and precise engineering.

And then we split it right down the middle, into West Pretendia and East Pretendia. In the country of West Pretendia, we introduce terrorism (real terrorism, as in determined political fanatics that shoot people to make a political statement), introduce all sorts of economic uncertainty with unemployment and some homelessness, but make a strong statement that people’s civil liberties – specifically their right to privacy – is sacrosanct. Meanwhile, in its counterpart East Pretendia, we sacrifice people’s privacy and some other civil liberties, but give them guaranteed employment, guaranteed food and board, and for all intents and purposes, a completely crime-free society.

Given this choice, where would people choose to move? The turnstiles between West and East Pretendia – which way would they turn?

If you ask any politician in the EU or US bureaucracy, they would have a clear-cut, dried and canned answer that would sound rock confident that they would absolutely guarantee people’s security at the cost of some privacy and civil liberties. But the reality is the complete opposite from what they would respond. People would move to the West. They would not only move to the West in droves, but would risk their lives to make this move, often losing the bet and dying to get to West Pretendia with terrorism, unemployment – and privacy.

We know this for a fact, because Pretendia is more than a thought experiment. It has existed. This exact experiment has taken place.

Pretendia existed, and her name was Germany.

People were fleeing the safe and serene East Berlin into West Germany, which had very real terrorists instead of the wheelchair grannies that the TSA harasses, and runaway unemployment and economic troubles at the time. They were fleeing in such droves that East Berlin erected a huge concrete wall and started shooting people who tried to move to the country with terrorism, but also with privacy and civil liberties.

Even shooting people who tried to move didn’t stop the tide of people trying. That tells you something about how people value terrorism versus privacy, how people value job security versus civil liberties – which one is really the more important, when push comes to shove.

From this experiment, or this outcome of WW2 if you will, politicians have learned absolutely nothing.