No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn

[Asher]

It seems to me that he's not actually being ghoulish, you just got his Kuci-senses tingling when you said "not a question of economics" and now he won't let go until you admit economics play some role in the decision.

Are you not reading either?

I've said several times economics play a role in the implementations of systems like public health care. They do not play a role in determining what is moral (as in, what is right and wrong).

This is genuinely not a difficult concept. Does any American at all understand it?

[Hauldren Collider]

Please do not regurgitate obvious econ/business 101 to me.


HC, now you're just being condescending. "opportunity cost" is a 9th grade social studies concept.

All of this goes unsaid, as it's part of the feasibility. Unfortunately for your case, it is bull****. If the US spent money keeping their own people healthy rather than angering muslims and shooting Afghanis and Iraqis, the US would be better off. The opportunity cost of public healthcare in the US comes down to decreased "defense" spending. And by "defense" spending, I mean "offense" spending with stupid, needless, expensive wars on the other side of the world which only serves to generate more international ill-will towards your country.

So is your key observation that the US government isn't very good at spending money effectively?* It's a good thing you're around to let us know about this, Asher!

That doesn't mean that there aren't better ways of spending what is currently allotted to defense than public healthcare.

*GUYS I HAVE A GREAT IDEA. LET'S INCREASE THE SIZE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. OBAMA 2012!

[Asher]

Asher, he's being condescending because you managed to avoid understanding concepts that are obvious to middle schoolers.

Not at all. I understand all of these issues very well. I'm just not detailing all of the specifics because
1) It has nothing to do with my point
2) It's tiresome
3) You and HC are incapable of understanding there is more to life than numbers, models, and economic theory. You're not mature people yet with well-rounded life experiences. It'd be like explaining calculus to a three year old.

[KrazyHorse]

Perhaps this is a minor note but:

Fiat Money (which is what all modern currencies are since no one is on a "gold standard"*) is an artificial convention invented by man with no intrinsic value in and of itself.

That modern societies have been formulated in such a way that this intrinsically worthless convention can be valued more highly than human life (or the basics most necessary for human life in the case of shelter) says a lot about our system. And yes, the convention of money is fantastically useful and its invention and use has allowed us to create a materially vastly superior system to what would likely exist without it but at the end, we still have the choice of sometimes remembering what money is and isn't and we do have the capability to make decisions that keep this truth in mind.

* and money based on a gold or silver standard is still inherently worthless, as both of these metals are sometimes useful but hardly necessary for human life.

Good lord

[Asher]

So is your key observation that the US government isn't very good at spending money effectively? It's a good thing you're around to let us know about this, Asher!

That doesn't mean that there aren't better ways of spending what is currently allotted to defense than public healthcare.

Well, that depends if you're a moral, Christian nation. Which the US is not.

Considering that with comparable tax rates, Canada takes care of its citizens while maintaining a healthier economy, I find your vacuous argument about having better things to spend the money on quite hilariously callous.

[Kuciwalker]

It would depend on the life, no?

I very much doubt that any one person's contribution to society is more valuable than that much oil, though maybe it's possible. But let's assume for a moment that the life on the other end of the balance scale isn't Einstein or Martin Luther King, etc.

Simple thought experiment: Tomorrow you get a call telling you that the entire oil supply of the United State for the next year will be terminated unless you kill HC by the end of the day. Will you kill your brother?

Are you asking if I would do the right thing at great personal cost to myself*? That seems a very different question from "what is the right thing to do".

*while that's not actually what you said, you were intending to suggest I sacrifice something of great personal value

[GePap]

It bothers me that you don't. Valid economic thinking enables more lives to be saved than your pathetic emotional reasoning that you pretend to be "morals".

Any "economic thinking" that makes empirically flawed assumptions (as much modern economics does) is hardly worth following.

Besides, this event would not have happened in many other societies with the same overall level of wealth and comfort, so it is not in fact a debate on whether we as a society follow good economic management, but the importance which we allocate to good economic management (whatever that is) in comparison to other values.

I agree with Asher that economics, while important, needs to be kept in its place - as a thing to help make humans more comfortable, not as a crutch to justify sociopathic behavior.

[Hauldren Collider]

Any "economic thinking" that makes empirically flawed assumptions (as much modern economics does) is hardly worth following.

By the same token you would argue that the weatherman is useless because he's sometimes wrong? Or that Isaac Newton's laws of physics were useless because they are incomplete and use EMPIRICALLY FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS?

[Asher]

It bothers me that you don't. Valid economic thinking enables more lives to be saved than your pathetic emotional reasoning that you pretend to be "morals".

My how ignorant you are...

Valid economic thinking does enable many, many things. Fortunately, valid economic thinking is why Canada has public healthcare.

Canada's public healthcare system is more efficient. We spend far less per capita on health care than the US does, which enables us to spend that money elsewhere. And what do we get for it? A longer life expectancy, to boot.

I think if you actually looked into this issue into more depth than what you hear on Fox News and what your dad or rich school has told you, you'll have a far broader understanding of reality. Public Healthcare is more efficient. What kind of valid economic thinking does not take into account economic efficiency?

[Hauldren Collider]

My "rich school" is about as liberal as they come, Asher. I'm the exception there.

Also I don't watch TV news, didn't I tell you that like five times?

[Asher]

Well, it's your dad then.

[Kuciwalker]

Are you not reading either?

I've said several times economics play a role in the implementations of systems like public health care. They do not play a role in determining what is moral (as in, what is right and wrong).

This is genuinely not a difficult concept. Does any American at all understand it?

The thing that you don't seem to understand is that the question of morality is the question of what we ought to do. It's not the question of "what it would be nice if we could do, and we should do if the tradeoffs aren't too big". "What should the budget for our universal health service be" is obvious a question mostly of economics, but morality has to have some input on it because we can almost always save more lives by allocating some extra money. We have to get some idea of when to stop spending money - and to do that, we have to get some idea of when saving the extra lives isn't worth the extra money - and from that, we have to admit the idea that we can freely compare the value of lives and money. And from that virtually every large-scale moral question becomes amenable to pure economic analysis.

[Asher]

The thing that you don't seem to understand is that the question of morality is the question of what we ought to do.

Fail. This is what you do not understand.

Morality is defined: concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct

You fundamentally do not understand morality. You're talking about something else. You're not thinking at the high-level, which is unsurprising because it's operating at a level that does not involve economics. "Right" or "wrong" are concepts that exist independently of money. What is right is not always possible -- I understand that; it's obvious. That's not the point.

To say something is moral doesn't mean something is always practical -- it just means it's the right thing to do.

[GePap]

I very much doubt that any one person's contribution to society is more valuable than that much oil, though maybe it's possible. But let's assume for a moment that the life on the other end of the balance scale isn't Einstein or Martin Luther King, etc.

I would agree, but then there is hardly any imaginable circumstance in which anything would actually threaten the entire supply of oil to the United States, so what exactly was the point of the question in the first place?

I do think that the worth of what was destroyed in the fire was much greater than the fee that the homeowner needed to pay, so as a society we ended up poorer because of this action.

Are you asking if I would do the right thing at great personal cost to myself*? That seems a very different question from "what is the right thing to do".

*while that's not actually what you said, you were intending to suggest I sacrifice something of great personal value

Nowhere did I mean to imply that keeping your brother live was the "right action" (I have plenty of reasons to think that killing him would be the preferable outcome for society) - the question was meant to show that its easy to make dry pronouncements about what should be done based on models but in the end, models aren't a substitute for reality, which is what we human being inhabit.

[Asher]

Example of "valid economic thinking": Senior citizens are burdens on our society, and should be put to death.

"WHAT? You take issue with this?"

At what point is keeping senior citizens alive feasible?