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Since the shortcuts appear to all be about cost minimisation, there would seem to be every reason to think that a zero-profit government monopoly would have han
by wyattpeak 8y ago
Since the shortcuts appear to all be about cost minimisation, there would seem to be every reason to think that a zero-profit government monopoly would have handled things differently.
- jjeaff 8y agoHow much more money should we be willing to spend to save those 20 lives a year? A million per person, a billion? A trillion? How many lives could we save if we put that money elsewhere?
- wyattpeak 8y agoYou're moving the goalposts. You asked "what makes you think this would be any different". That's what makes me think it would be different. The question of cost isn't at issue.
- rz2k 8y agoProbably somewhere between 60 and 200 million for the yearly lives lost. More than would mean the money is better spent on safety elsewhere such as better safety features on highways. Less than that, and spending on safety elsewhere becomes wasteful compared to spending on power infrastructure safety. The "value of a statistical life" has less to do with making thing whole in terms of not caring about deaths than it has to do with efficiently allocating safety spending. Then you have percentage of the yearly wildfires attributable to PG&E. So some percentage of let's say a couple billion in fire fighting per year, and maybe 10-50 billion in property lost. Anyway, the point is that it isn't a slippery slope discussion, and it isn't impossible to come up with an approximate number.