Posted on 10/18/2004 6:18:09 AM PDT by The Great Yazoo
Nowhere is the tyranny of visions more absolute than with issues involving safety. Attempts to talk about costs, trade-offs or diminishing returns are only likely to provoke safety zealots to respond with something like, "If it saves just one human life, it is worth it!"
That immediately establishes the safety zealot as being on a higher moral plane than those who stoop to consider crass materialistic costs. And being on a higher plane is what a great deal of zealotry is all about.
The vision of zealots is not just a vision of the world. It is a vision of themselves as special people in that world. The down side is that such a heavy ego investment makes reconsideration of the issues highly unlikely. Ego trumps mundane facts or dry logic.
If the recent hurricanes that have swept across the Caribbean and Florida prove anything, it should be that wealth saves many human lives. Deaths from hurricane Jeanne in the Caribbean have been in the thousands while the death toll in Florida was less than a dozen.
The difference is that Florida is far more affluent. Houses there can be built to withstand more stress. Ambulances can rush more people more quickly to better equipped medical facilities. It has been estimated that more than 95 percent of the deaths from natural disasters worldwide occur in the poorer countries.
How does this affect safety issues?
Safety laws and regulations all have costs -- not just money outlays but other restrictions that reduce the rate of production of wealth. If wealth is itself one of the biggest lifesavers, costly safety devices cannot automatically be considered justified "if it saves just one human life" when the wealth it forfeits could have saved many lives.
Everything depends on the particular safety rule or device. Some save many lives at small costs and others save few, if any, lives at huge costs.
Diminishing returns matter as well, though these are seldom taken into account by safety zealots.
Many dangerous impurities can be removed from water or air at costs that virtually everyone will agree are worth it. But there is no such thing as "pure water" or "pure air," so the only real question is how far you want to go in removing impurities -- and at what cost.
Impurities that are deadly at high concentrations can become harmless at sufficiently low concentrations. In extremely minute traces, even arsenic has been found to have beneficial effects. But the vision of "pure water" keeps zealots pushing for removing ever more minute traces of ever more questionable impurities, regardless of how much more it costs or how little good it does -- if any.
Alcohol takes huge numbers of lives every year, whether in automobile accidents, liver disease or innumerable foolish risks taken while "under the influence." Yet studies show that a very moderate daily intake of alcohol reduces hypertension and the incidence of dementia. Everything depends on how much.
Trade-offs and diminishing returns are not the stuff from which heady visions and dramatic crusades are made. For that you need goals to be reached "at all costs" and a clash between heroes and villains. This appeals to the young and to those who remain adolescents all their lives.
The realities of life force most of us to grow up, whether we want to or not. But for people protected from realities by being born rich, or by having lifetime tenure as academics or federal judges, maturity is optional.
Many of the most extreme safety and environmental crusaders are rich busybodies or academics and their students, and they are often helped by judges whose rulings allow them to violate other people's rights while pursuing their own vision.
The "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" have become a thousand reasons for lawsuits against those who produce anything that is not "safe."
Nothing is categorically safe. But few things are as dangerous as those who are pursuing a safety vision that ministers to their egos, with the costs being paid by others.
The basic problem is the moronic idea that a human life is "priceless"...which it is not. You can fairly accurately estimate the price range of a human life (I forget what the figure is) and the problem is people desperately trying to pretend you can't put a price tag on one.
Thomas is one of the clearest thinkers we have among us. I just love this man.
The ancillary concept is that everyone should have the most extensive health care no matter how expensive, no matter the quality of life after the health care.
Sowell bump.
What about air bags?
First we had seat belts, then shoulder harness/seat belts, then laws requiring us to wear them, and then in case we don't wear them we have to pays hundreds of dollars extra per car so that the vehicle is air bag equiped.
Then we have to put up with all kinds of warnings about the dangers of air bags for anyone in the front seat under five feet tall.
Thomas Sowell is the man. His book The Vision of the Anointed is wonderful. The way this man writes is out of this world. He breaks down the thought process of the totalitarian elites within this country.
If anyone hasn't read 'The Vision of the Anointed' you should buy it immediately. It was released in 1996, and every single day I see confirmations within the media that Sowell knows what he's talking about. For example, the catch phrases and gimmicks the anointed uses while dismissing any sort of conflicting evidence to get their programs implemented. The sympathetic one liners.
The optional reality chapter is beautiful.
I would agree that your human life is, in the eyes of the Almighty, a priceless, irreplaceable object. Likewise in the eyes of your family and friends.
That being said, you are going to die one day. We in the west have a marvelous infrastructure that keeps us from dying from stupid things like Cholera and dysentery. However, how much are you willing to pay to avoid one statistical death (which may or may not occur) from some obscure source?
Thomas Sowell is one of the greatest writers of our day.
Mr. Edd, I think that Strategerist is referring to the fact that insurance companies have placed "values" on human life. A young, healthy, robust married male with a good education and young children is "worth" more than a homeless, alcoholic old man, for example.
Find fault with the insurance companies, not with Strategerist. :-)
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