Time slipped away from me – Part 1 of this is now almost 2 months old. Refresher that it was about Treehugger wanting to reduce traffic deaths to zero and I pointed out that it is impossible. Traffic deaths, in context of the US population (40K / year) are so low in a population of 340,000,000, it’s not even in rounding error territory. I thought I had made it clear enough, but no, I guess not. It seems to be a constant theme with these Utopians that believe no one at any time should suffer any harm at all from anything.
Like I said, a Utopian fevered dream that they truly believe that they can fix every single issue that mankind encounters – they will mandate that there will never be a foul or harm that cannot be mitigated. Even though I pointed out “at what cost”. And Grokster Ian recently pointed out:
You can protect people, or you can protect their rights. You can’t do both. And we forget that at our peril.
Commenter Dixie Dean went off down that road of the first clause – protect people first (like Lloyd over in TreeHugger). It’s a constant thing with them – always about the physical harms (and sometimes the psychological ones) and never about Rights. Not even a glimmer. And nary a glimmer of what “the other side” may want, either. But Rights, those Rights, are hardly a dot in their rearview mirrors. They just don’t care. But they are all about the other. They will not even engage when Rights come up unless it is something new that they claim is a Right.
It’s something that we HAVE to bring up at each and every debate. We can’t let them redefine them to suit their Narrative and we CANNOT allow them to redefine it as something that we all have to pay for (like having a phone is a Right, having housing is a Right, that healthcare is a Right, et al. They aren’t as a Right is standalone and innate to YOU – not a collective right, either. But I digress.
I know that I will be scolded with negative responses — I don’t care; I am 72 years old, love the USA, served in the US Army for 3 years, and truly want to see life actually improved in this country for everyone — but why must we attack personalities on these issues? Safety on public roads in the USA is neither a red nor blue issue. It is a human issue. True improved safely on US roads will benefit everyone in the country, whether one is Republican, Democrat, Green, Monarchist, Communist, Dixiecrat, etc. Or am I a has-been, failed, third rate, soon-to-die old man with nothing competent to add to this discussion?
Well, if it is on the wrong side of the argument, yes, it is a failed argument and we all should point it out. Sure, humans are involved and ideology shouldn’t matter. But even as he directed the above at me and making the implication that I went all political (because I had effectively said that former Mayor, former Democrat Prez candidate, and now affirmative action (Gay) SecTransportation Petey Buttigieg was incompetent), my entire comment was about Risk / Cost ratio. So I repeated it:
My response?
Risk vs reward. How much will it cost to achieve the result Lloyd wants – zero deaths? It’s nice to say, nicer to have – but as economists put it, they study trade-offs because of scarcity.
What are you willing to trade off to COMPLETELY ENSURE that no one dies in a traffic accident? Time? Money? Ease of Travel? As I said to Lloyd (who, I dryly note has gone silent):
You said 20K in the first half of 2021 – double it for the sake of argument to 40K. In a country of 340,000,000 people. That risk statistic, simply put, a ratio of 0.0117%.
That’s not even in “rounding error” territory.
Life IS Risk. The only time risk is eliminated from your life is AFTER you start your dirt nap (or oven nap, your mileage will vary). You CANNOT eliminate all risk in the struggle for a Utopian end point.
And those that think they can will find quick enough they’ve actually created a dystopian doomsday.
Protecting people is fine – but we all have to admit that we wouldn’t spend $10 Billion in taxes to save one traffic death, right? And before someone gets their panties in a knot about that, we do that risk/reward calculation all the time – it’s called “insurance”. Highly paid actuaries compute risk factor vs cost all the time. In fact, there are lots of people who work for those insurance companies whose only job is risk mitigation – consulting with companies to point out where their danger points are. Fix those and you can save a lot of money. So it is part of our system.
But what about Ian’s point: People Protection vs Rights. What was our Government conceived to do?
That correct – the latter. So I cringe when so-called Conservatives say that the Proper Role of Government is to protect people. Sure, in war time, that holds true.
But that’s not its primary role.
