No, you&#x27;re missing my point by saying &quot;you have to have the data,&quot; and it appears that you are missing some fundamental concepts in normativity.<p>You do not need data to make a moral argument based upon principle.  There is no conjecture involved.  (You could read some Kant on this, if you like.)  You need data only to determine a particular consequentialist ethics that involves a balance of good and bad outcomes often understood in lay terms as &quot;effectiveness.&quot;  I think most commenters here would agree that effectiveness is the wrong way to evaluate this system, since epistemologically we cannot know its effectiveness.  (... Although many doubt it could ever be truly effective in the presence of creative adversaries.)  We can only know that is it categorically wrong.