No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn

[Dinner]

Well... This thread has gone to hell.

[giblets]

I believe the EPA's measurement is done by examining what kind of wage premium is necessary to convince people to work in dangerous professions over less dangerous professions (that require equivalent levels of skill/training/etc) and divide that by the difference in risk of death. It's not perfect, but it's reasonably clever and better than picking numbers out of your ass.

Note that this makes a key assumption that the intrinsic value of a life is equal to the value that the individual assigns to it.

edit: ok KH you win

Well, I wouldn't think that a suicidal person's life has a negative intrinsic value.

[Arrian]

Eh. Emotionally, I'm with Asher & GePap here. My logical brain, however, asserts (rather strongly) that Kuci is correct.

-Arrian

[Asher]

Well, I wouldn't think that a suicidal person's life has a negative intrinsic value.

Suddenly the simple heuristic Kuci uses becomes a lot more complicated.

He is, of course, referring to the general case, which is what his job necessitates.

Which is also why I think he and I disagree so much. I'm not interested in the general case at all. I just worry about myself. I like to do what is right or wrong by my own morals, not by building an economic model and attaching an arbitrary value number to all of the outcomes and piping it through a "grand utility calculator".

He thinks my method is stupid, but I think it is right. I still think it's fundamentally wrong for the richest nation in the world to deny preventative medicine to millions of poor children because their parents can't afford it. I don't care what the simulations or heuristics say. Sometimes, as a society, we should pay a premium if being good people necessitates it.

[Jon Miller]

Actually, I don't necessarily think that there is an alternate system which is better.

They were already out there, had already done a lot of the work. They required to continue to do work to keep the one house safe and let the other burn down. Obviously a system where everyone paid in would be better.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Suddenly the simple heuristic Kuci uses becomes a lot more complicated.

He is, of course, referring to the general case, which is what his job necessitates.

Which is also why I think he and I disagree so much. I'm not interested in the general case at all. I just worry about myself. I like to do what is right or wrong by my own morals, not by building an economic model and attaching an arbitrary value number to all of the outcomes and piping it through a "grand utility calculator".

He thinks my method is stupid, but I think it is right. I still think it's fundamentally wrong for the richest nation in the world to deny preventative medicine to millions of poor children because their parents can't afford it. I don't care what the simulations or heuristics say. Sometimes, as a society, we should pay a premium if being good people necessitates it.

I agree in principle.

JM

[KrazyHorse]

They were already out there, had already done a lot of the work. They required to continue to do work to keep the one house safe and let the other burn down. Obviously a system where everyone paid in would be better.

JM

That is not at all obvious to me.

[Jon Miller]

That is not at all obvious to me.

Well, what are the costs?

The risk changes, for an additional house. The time really doesn't, they need to watch a bit to make sure it doesn't go out of control. The response also doesn't change, they still needed to come out to protect the neighbor.

So of the three major elements (personnel time, personnel response, personnel risk), only one is really being saved by allowing people independently to decide about fire coverage. It is an important one, and obviously they need to encourage everyone to pay in and thus reimburse them better for their time/risk/response.

JM

[Kuciwalker]

Among other things, if everyone pays then it becomes harder to correctly determine the price.

[Hauldren Collider]

Well, why devote resources to feeding and housing senior citizens if those resources could instead be invested in, say, more education so people can produce more stuff? Then there's more good.

This point has been brought up before. INCENTIVES. If people don't get anything in return for their work, THEY WON'T BOTHER TO WORK. This is why socialism and communism fail, and why the idea of killing people once they stop producing is retarded because why would you work hard enough to support yourself in retirement if you are never going to get to retire?

[Asher]

So why is public support for retirement an incentive, but public support for health is not?

What good is your retirement if you are dead?

[Hauldren Collider]

It's not PUBLIC support for retirement, I'm talking about private savings. Which allocate resources towards old people.

[Asher]

It's not PUBLIC support for retirement, I'm talking about private savings. Which allocate resources towards old people.

Why the **** would you be talking about private savings in the context of public policy?

People can do whatever the hell they want with private savings.

[Hauldren Collider]

Why the **** would you be talking about private savings in the context of public policy?

People can do whatever the hell they want with private savings.

Not under gribbler's scenario. I assume he meant essentially "why don't we just steal all the old people's life savings and spent them on young people". If he's asking why don't we just stop giving old people social security and medicare, oh I agree, that WOULD be much better spent towards education.

As for basic welfare for old people who can't support themselves and have insufficient savings, I totally agree with that. I would keep it small enough that people are still highly motivated to save, but even the Romans, who didn't give a flying **** about the poor, understood that it was important to have SOME level of welfare if for no other reason than to prevent open revolt. This is not to say that I would recommend as low levels of welfare established by the Romans.

[Asher]

Not under gribbler's scenario. I assume he meant essentially "why don't we just steal all the old people's life savings and spent them on young people". If he's asking why don't we just stop giving old people social security and medicare, oh I agree, that WOULD be much better spent towards education.

As for basic welfare for old people who can't support themselves and have insufficient savings, I totally agree with that. I would keep it small enough that people are still highly motivated to save, but even the Romans, who didn't give a flying **** about the poor, understood that it was important to have SOME level of welfare if for no other reason than to prevent open revolt. This is not to say that I would recommend as low levels of welfare established by the Romans.

So the reason most societies don't ship their old people out on ice flows to die isn't due to morality (right vs wrong), but it is to prevent revolt? I think it's pretty clear the reason society supports senior citizens even though they're net drains (privately and publicly) is due to morality. It's one of those things people should not choose whether to do or not based on complex economic models.