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People are cheering at this, but what if we raise the stakes a little: The government lined up 50 random people and executed them, to appease a foreign governm

People are cheering at this, but what if we raise the stakes a little: The government lined up 50 random people and executed them, to appease a foreign government that was holding 500x people captive. We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? Scape goat. Since it is property, the engineers probably assumed they'd be sued, and I bet they knew exactly what they were doing, and it was still cheaper than the alternative. If you like this, then you should also support eminent domain, where the government can take whatever it wants to make the neighborhood better. It definitely irks me when people say "oh they're just energy sector republicans", as if political disagreements makes anyone less deserving of rights under the law. Equality, people, is something you must enforce ESPECIALLY when you don't like the person receiving equality. This was a true thing to say to racists in the past, and to republican haters of the present. To really get side-tracked: Is it okay to hate haters? Are you justified to do to them what they do? No, I would say love your enemy, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. Your gifts will be like hot coals on his head.

rootlocus 9y ago
> We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? If we'd be talking paperclips vs paperclips would that be morally similar? Or is the monetary value of houses somehow large enough to justify a similarity to human lives?
- danschumann 9y ago
  Lets say you lose 10000 dollars worth of paper clips. Big deal, buy more. But if you lose 10000 dollars worth of photos, computers, files, etc, it is a big deal because they are harder to replace.
  - parenthephobia 9y ago
    People are harder to replace than houses.
    - thedaemon 9y ago
      There are more people born each day (400,000 a day) than there are houses built each day (4,657 a day). So I'd say no, houses are harder to replace than people.
      - NiceGuy_Ty 9y ago
        You can replace a house to the extent that the old residents are happy with the new house. You can't really replace a deceased family member with someone else.
      - mdemare 9y ago
        I'm pretty sure more than 1.7M houses get built every year worldwide.
        mcbits 9y ago
        If you count "dwellings" or "housing units" then surely yes. Many/most of those will be apartments and multi-tenant buildings rather than houses per se. And then there are all the "houses" built from salvaged materials in poor countries. Not sure if you'd want to count those. A person living in such a structure would still be considered homeless in many places.
      - jwilk 9y ago
        Where did you get these numbers?
    - octothorp3 9y ago
      People are self replicating, houses are not. Give them sufficient food and time, and there will soon be too many of them. It would be more accurate to say 'People are more emotionally attached to people than houses'.
  - rootlocus 9y ago
    You're just arguing that houses are worth more than paperclips, but on another metric: sentimental value / effort spent. Even so, none of those things matter (photos, computer files, etc) when you balance them with a human life.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    If they are harder to replace it is likely they are worth more than $10,000. Maybe only to the people involved, but it's likely that a fairly accurate dollar value could still be assigned to the loss.
lostboys67 9y ago
You could say it serves them right (rich people) for building in a flood plain - it's normally the newer less nice areas that get flooded in the UK - as in the past they where considered to risky
- jasonmaydie 9y ago
  technically every location can become a flooding plane if you build a man-made dam in that geographic location
  - freeloop3 9y ago
    technically not true because there needs to be water to dam for the plane to be flooded.
- Dirlewanger 9y ago
  Seriously. I know one generally shouldn't blame victims, but it is their fault in this case. Humanity's hubris needs to be checked every once in a while. I hope the federal government prevails (though admittedly it doesn't look good for them).
- an_account 9y ago
  One thing not mentioned in this article is that there has been a lot of new housing development inside of the reservoir (upstream). So they had to start releasing water earlier because they couldn’t let it fill up as much as originally planned when the reservoir was built.
thescriptkiddie 9y ago
> We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? What makes you think that any kind of property is worth as much as a human life?
todayiamme 9y ago
> The government lined up 50 random people and executed them, to appease a foreign government that was holding 500x people captive. We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? Scape goat. Since it is property, the engineers probably assumed they'd be sued, and I bet they knew exactly what they were doing, and it was still cheaper than the alternative. I feel that the central thesis of your comment that the government is this faceless entity that has decided through force to violate lives and is thereby reprehensible to be something that's counter to the facts of the matter and the case at hand. From the article, it quickly becomes clear that they were trying to avoid catastrophic failure by diverting water to a historic food plain; > “If we don’t begin releasing now, the volume of uncontrolled water around the dams will be higher,” Colonel Lars Zetterstrom, the Corps’ Galveston district commander, was quoted as saying. “It’s going to be better to release the water through the gates directly into Buffalo Bayou.” The danger was that the water would flow uncontrolled into homes located upstream from the reservoir, crest the reservoir walls downstream, or crack a section of the Barker dam that was under repair. Had either dam failed, the Houston Chronicle later wrote, West Houston would have been left with “a week of corpses by the mile.” In one cases, the failure would have been sudden and would have killed an unforeseeably large number of people. In another, they could act to preserve lives, but damage property that can be later rebuilt. They chose the latter, and I believe this was the most moral and correct response to the situation at hand. Why aren't these people heroes for making this call? The Government in this case acted exactly as it should; as an entity that is meant to be representative of and beholden to its citizens and chose an action that preserved the lives of citizens over arbitrary property value that can be repaid through other means. There is no version of this scenario that plays out well for anyone at all, but the fact that they minimized harm while reducing the risk of catastrophic failure shows that the system does work as intended. After all, homes can be rebuilt, but as far as I can tell, people can't be brought back from the dead.

rootlocus 9y ago

> We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? If we'd be talking paperclips vs paperclips would that be morally similar? Or is the monetary value of houses somehow large enough to justify a similarity to human lives?

danschumann 9y ago
Lets say you lose 10000 dollars worth of paper clips. Big deal, buy more. But if you lose 10000 dollars worth of photos, computers, files, etc, it is a big deal because they are harder to replace.
- parenthephobia 9y ago
  People are harder to replace than houses.
  - thedaemon 9y ago
    There are more people born each day (400,000 a day) than there are houses built each day (4,657 a day). So I'd say no, houses are harder to replace than people.
    - NiceGuy_Ty 9y ago
      You can replace a house to the extent that the old residents are happy with the new house. You can't really replace a deceased family member with someone else.
    - mdemare 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure more than 1.7M houses get built every year worldwide.
      - mcbits 9y ago
        If you count "dwellings" or "housing units" then surely yes. Many/most of those will be apartments and multi-tenant buildings rather than houses per se. And then there are all the "houses" built from salvaged materials in poor countries. Not sure if you'd want to count those. A person living in such a structure would still be considered homeless in many places.
    - jwilk 9y ago
      Where did you get these numbers?
  - octothorp3 9y ago
    People are self replicating, houses are not. Give them sufficient food and time, and there will soon be too many of them. It would be more accurate to say 'People are more emotionally attached to people than houses'.
- rootlocus 9y ago
  You're just arguing that houses are worth more than paperclips, but on another metric: sentimental value / effort spent. Even so, none of those things matter (photos, computer files, etc) when you balance them with a human life.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  If they are harder to replace it is likely they are worth more than $10,000. Maybe only to the people involved, but it's likely that a fairly accurate dollar value could still be assigned to the loss.

lostboys67 9y ago

You could say it serves them right (rich people) for building in a flood plain - it's normally the newer less nice areas that get flooded in the UK - as in the past they where considered to risky

jasonmaydie 9y ago
technically every location can become a flooding plane if you build a man-made dam in that geographic location
- freeloop3 9y ago
  technically not true because there needs to be water to dam for the plane to be flooded.
Dirlewanger 9y ago
Seriously. I know one generally shouldn't blame victims, but it is their fault in this case. Humanity's hubris needs to be checked every once in a while. I hope the federal government prevails (though admittedly it doesn't look good for them).
an_account 9y ago
One thing not mentioned in this article is that there has been a lot of new housing development inside of the reservoir (upstream). So they had to start releasing water earlier because they couldn’t let it fill up as much as originally planned when the reservoir was built.

thescriptkiddie 9y ago

> We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? What makes you think that any kind of property is worth as much as a human life?

todayiamme 9y ago

> The government lined up 50 random people and executed them, to appease a foreign government that was holding 500x people captive. We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? Scape goat. Since it is property, the engineers probably assumed they'd be sued, and I bet they knew exactly what they were doing, and it was still cheaper than the alternative. I feel that the central thesis of your comment that the government is this faceless entity that has decided through force to violate lives and is thereby reprehensible to be something that's counter to the facts of the matter and the case at hand. From the article, it quickly becomes clear that they were trying to avoid catastrophic failure by diverting water to a historic food plain; > “If we don’t begin releasing now, the volume of uncontrolled water around the dams will be higher,” Colonel Lars Zetterstrom, the Corps’ Galveston district commander, was quoted as saying. “It’s going to be better to release the water through the gates directly into Buffalo Bayou.” The danger was that the water would flow uncontrolled into homes located upstream from the reservoir, crest the reservoir walls downstream, or crack a section of the Barker dam that was under repair. Had either dam failed, the Houston Chronicle later wrote, West Houston would have been left with “a week of corpses by the mile.” In one cases, the failure would have been sudden and would have killed an unforeseeably large number of people. In another, they could act to preserve lives, but damage property that can be later rebuilt. They chose the latter, and I believe this was the most moral and correct response to the situation at hand. Why aren't these people heroes for making this call? The Government in this case acted exactly as it should; as an entity that is meant to be representative of and beholden to its citizens and chose an action that preserved the lives of citizens over arbitrary property value that can be repaid through other means. There is no version of this scenario that plays out well for anyone at all, but the fact that they minimized harm while reducing the risk of catastrophic failure shows that the system does work as intended. After all, homes can be rebuilt, but as far as I can tell, people can't be brought back from the dead.