Craig Haynie wrote:
With regard to babies and seniles, I might agree, but if someone refuses to
join a group that builds sewers and provides public health programs, then you
cannot say that these systems would help him.
Of course they help him! They keep him from getting sick, or living in a
city that stinks of sewage. (Many Japanese cities lack sewers, and
believe me, the stench makes you miserable in summer.)
For that matter, people did countless things before you were born that
help you now, such as discovering the cure for smallpox.
You cannot possibly acquiesce to every beneficial act in public health
or public education or research done on your behalf because there are so
many you could not learn about them all if you did that full time.
For if HE thought these types of public services would benefit him, then he
would voluntarily join the program.
Not necessarily. Many people prefer to reap the benefits of programs
such as building sewers without paying for them. That is why we must
have taxes.
But no group provides services of any kind without extracting a cost,
and the cost/benefit calculation must be available for everyone to use
when deciding whether the benefit outweighs the cost.
It is impossible to measure the cost benefit of things like research
because you never know if it will work or not. What has been the benefit
of cold fusion research up to now? Zero! Not one penny saved, not one
person helped. What was the benefit of discovering penicillin for the
first several years, before they figured out how to manufacture it?
None, and there was no guarantee they would figure out how to make it.
It is impossible to measure the benefit of sewers because you cannot run
a counter-factual history and see how many people die from disease with
the sewer, and you cannot put a quantitative number on the misery of
living with the stench of sewage.
Countless programs help you even though you do not even they exist.
If I don't know the program exists, then I don't know the cost.
No one knows the cost, and no one knows the benefit of most things. As I
said, you would have to run a counter-factual history. If you want to
know the benefit of sewers, try living in Japan in August. Then tell me
what exactly it is worth to you -- in dollars and cents per day -- not
to have to smell sewage. If I offered to pay you to undergo that for one
day, for $100, you would probably say yes. Would you be willing to do it
for a lifetime in return for a very minor reduction in your taxes -- the
amount you would save in sewer construction? I doubt it.
Your model of the world assumes that it is easy to put a dollar value on
things, or do a precise cost-benefit analysis. Suppose, by some magical
future time-viewing machine, you learned that your child would die from
an accident at road crossing, which might have easily been prevented
with a stop light. Would you be willing to pay the tax for that
stoplight? Of course you would!!! The problem is, we cannot know the
outcome of any action, or which stoplight will save which life, so you
cannot possibly know if the benefit will accrue to you, or to someone
else, or to no one. You would have to be omniscient to know such things.
Many people can find one or two political programs that they
like, but also find many, many more which they detest. This is what
happens when thousands of people each vie for political power, each with
a different 'program' that they want to impose on everyone . . .
Most government programs are entirely beneficial and uncontroversial,
for things like food safety, or Social Security. You cannot run a high
tech society without standardization and a huge investment in commonly
owned and publicly owned facilities, such as the Internet. In 1700 most
of the buildings and other things you saw in a town were owned by
individuals. Today, just about all of the dollar value of the things you
see around you are owned by the government or corporations. One
hospital, for example, cost as much as several hundred houses, whereas
in 1700 a hospital was just another building, costing little more than a
barn. We cannot have modern medical care without hundreds of millions of
dollars in buildings and equipment. We must have expensive
infrastructure, which is mostly hidden from view, but still costs a lot
of money.
No one likes to pay for this stuff, but I promise you, if you could go
back in time or live in a third world country for a week, or even in
Japan, you would see the wisdom of paying a much larger fraction of your
income for things outside your house and outside your immediate control,
such as hospitals and the Internet and the sewage treatment plants.
There's no way for you to know if any program will benefit me because
you don't know my values.
There is no way YOU can know if any program will benefit you because you
cannot live in a parallel universe where that stop light, or that
emergency room, or that food safety inspection was not available, and
you died as a result. The movie "It's a Wonderful Life" is a fantasy,
but instructive.
This [machines putting people out of work] is speculation, but if it turns out
to be true, then let's change
it together, through voluntary cooperation without threats of violence
being imposed on those who disagree.
Everything that happens in a democracy is the result of voluntary
cooperation. You vote for the people you agree with. If they win the
election, we get things your way. Otherwise, you may have to move to
another country, if you prefer living without modern hospitals, or you
enjoy the stench of raw sewage.
I think the effects are mechanization and computers is well beyond mere
speculation. We must find a way to transition to a society in which
human labor has no value, and people do no work. It will take decades to
do this, and we cannot have people starve while it happens. The best way
to deal with this is an open question, but saying that it is mere
speculation so we do not have to deal with it is not a viable answer.
For that matter, global warming is mere speculation in a sense, and so
is cold fusion. Nothing is sure until it is done -- until it arrives in
front of you and you can see it. In the case of global warming it would
insane to wait for that. In the case of cold fusion, it will not arrive
unless we spend money and devote effort to it, with no guarantee of success.
- Jed
