Steve Janke: Cukier is pushing what is known as the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Steve Janke, of Angry in the Great White North blog fame takes exception to Wendy Cukier's latest last minute rationale for saving the bloated registry. Cukier's idea that, oh well, the money's been spent, is justification for keeping on spending on a program with no definable benefit other than setting up Canadians for confiscation. Endless access to information requests have yet to highlight any discernible need to keep the registry going.
Janke writes:

"The Conservative government in Ottawa has the long-gun registry in its sights. What was supposed to cost a few million has cost over a billion, and for all that, it is not clear what contribution the registry has made in fighting crime (I'm being diplomatic in my wording here). If the registry had cost half the originally predicted amount, defenders would say Canadians were getting a well-managed bargain. Strangely, though, defenders of the registry say the vast cost overruns are also a reason to keep the registry...

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Cukier is pushing what is known as the sunk cost fallacy:

Many people have strong misgivings about "wasting" resources. This is called "loss aversion". Many people, for example, would feel obligated to go to the movie despite not really wanting to, because doing otherwise would be wasting the ticket price; they feel they passed the point of no return. This is sometimes called the sunk cost fallacy. Economists would label this behavior "irrational": It is inefficient because it misallocates resources by depending on information that is irrelevant to the decision being made.

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