Choices have consequences – and costs. But why should, according to Prof. Thomas Sowell, only Government determine if it is “too much for you”?
Emphasis mine:
However much we may agree with sweeping rhetoric about safety, or even vote for those who use such rhetoric, nevertheless when faced with choices in our own lives we weigh incremental safety against incremental costs. We may consider it worthwhile to avoid one chance in six of getting killed from playing Russian roulette, but not worth it to pay a thousand dollars to avoid one chance in six million of getting killed by some fluke occurrence. Indeed, if the cost of avoiding one chance in six million is merely an inconvenience, some may still refuse to pay for it. In short, even those who talk about safety in categorical terms – “if it saves just one life, it is worth whatever it costs” – actually behave in their own lives as if safety is an incremental decision, based on weighing costs against benefits, not a categorical decision.
-Prof Thomas Sowell ( Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One)
Add to that this concrete example: Seatbelts. They’ve been commonly around since the 1960s. They demonstrably help save lives (not all, but certainly far from zero). They’ve gotten smarter, too, being less restraining during everyday riding but snapping into action when a crash has happened.
Yet, many refuse to wear them. They believe the inconvenience or the uncomfortableness of a seat belt outweighs the risk.
From AAA:
In most circumstances, the risk level is low until you are elderly. I cannot help myself – and this is an area where Government wants to reduce risk to nil and therefore bribes States with “their peoples’ own tax dollars” to make it mandatory for those people to buckle up.
Instead of making that choice for themselves, Government takes that choice away – the “if it only saves one life” boondoggle.
You can’t erase all risks in Life, and trying to do so becomes logarithmic as those last few people are “saved.” And, of course, it will never end because there will be those folks that will insist on not buckling up.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
