David B. Shemano wrote: >I think every sentence in your paragraph is factually wrong.<
Please explain, with some details. I never claimed to know the law (I'm sorry to brag!), but I do know how corporations behave. > ... as we have discussed before in other contexts, while it is easy to > emotionally attack cost-benefit analysis depending on specific context and > circumstance, cost-benefit (including life valuation) is an inherent part of > decision-making as a general matter, and will be true no matter what the > economic system. < I, for one, did not attack cost-benefit analysis (at least not here). Rather, I attacked the narrow scope of the cost-benefit analysis that I presumed that Ford applied. > The fact that we don't require car passengers, as opposed to motorcycle > riders, to wear helmets, even through we know for certainty that people will > die as a result, is ultimately a cost/benefit decision. < This says something about how "we" value human life. It says nothing about how _Ford_ valued life when they made the Pinto decision. > I just don't understand Michael's out of hand dismissal of cost-benefit >analysis. There can certainly be disagreement on how to input and value the >costs and benefits, but without cost-benefit analysis, how do you measure the >benefits of a rule? How do you choose a rule? How do you argue a rule is >better or worse? How do you compare a proposed rule to alternatives?< The problem with cost/benefit analysis (for me) is that in many cases, costs and benefits cannot be aggregated. We can list the effects of a decision that may be beneficial and those that may be costly (with some necessarily subjective idea of the probability that these benefits and costs will be realized) but then the usual way to add them up is to use market prices. But as serious economists know, those prices do not correspond to true opportunity costs. Alternatively, we could use shadow prices calculated on the basis of the maximization of a specific number measuring our goals. But no democratic society could quantify its goals as a single number to be maximized. There is no "social welfare function." So we are left with _vectors_ of costs and benefits. Then, it's up to each individual to attach his or her own weights to these vectors. Then, these views can be aggregated by democratic vote. In a large society where some sort of representative or delegative democracy prevails, we can think of first-approximation methods to try to get as close as possible to the truly democratic approach. One method that could be used is to do alternative cost/benefit analyses with different weighting schemes. Different groups in society could propose different weights. With one parenthetical qualification added, Shane is right when he says that > In practice [in our society,] cost-benefit is nothing but a mathematical-sounding disguise for arbitrariness.< In a democratic society, a qualitative cost-benefit analysis (without arbitrary aggregation) might work, as sketched above, as long as no-one pretends that it's scientific or objective. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
