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> I don’t really see the point of risking poisoning people as a way of dissuading tax dodging especially when alternatives exist. You're not disagreeing with w

> I don’t really see the point of risking poisoning people as a way of dissuading tax dodging especially when alternatives exist. You're not disagreeing with what I wrote. > In the same way we don’t put solid barriers on roads unless people walking need to be protected Not true. We also put up barriers when people driving over the line would merely be a nuisance, e.g. in parking lots or to keep people from entering closed areas.

noduerme 5y ago
Those nuisance barriers you mention are often intended to cause limited damage. For example, water barrels in a gore point or the gates of a parking garage which are made out of wood and intended to snap off. The problem with the first sentence of your initial post is that you seem willing to justify some degree of death if it serves as a deterrent, even though you later claim that if other options are equally good deterrents then they should be used. This leaves open the possibility that if bittering agents don't deter as well, poison may be a reasonable choice. Yet the only thing we're talking about deterring is tax avoidance. In which case poison seems completely unreasonable. This leads one to suspect that you believe there are other public goods brought about by deterrence which would equal the weight of an occasional poisoning.
- jessriedel 5y ago
  > Those nuisance barriers you mention are often intended to cause limited damage. For example, water barrels in a gore point or the gates of a parking garage which are made out of wood and intended to snap off. Some are, and they may indeed be preferable to ones that cause worse damage, but some are not. The correct choice depends on the risks involved and the costs of the various methods (e.g., concrete requires less maintenance than wood). > This leaves open the possibility that if bittering agents don't deter as well, poison may be a reasonable choice. Yet the only thing we're talking about deterring is tax avoidance. In which case poison seems completely unreasonable. This is a good line of inquiry, but your blanket conclusion is wrong. Again it depends on the details. If bitterants are 90% effective but methanol is 99.9% effective, corresponding to $100M vs. $100k worth of alcohol in the black market, then this must be weighed against the statistical value of life, which is ~$8M in the US, and the number of people killed by the poisoning. The poison isn't a punishment because it isn't being drunk by people who we intend to have drink it (which is no one). The poison is being accidentally drunk by people who don't know it's there, which is exactly the opposite of what's intended. That's what makes those poisonings accidental side effects, rather than penalties. In contrast, "man traps" (booby traps intended to harm or capture trespassers) are generally illegal because their effect (bodily injury and/or, effectively, kidnapping) are illegal because they unjustly inflict consequences on their intended targets.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    > this must be weighed against the statistical value of life Must it be? There are a great many regulations concerning safety devices and procedures that government and industry shell out for which cost more to industry than the statistical value of lives saved. Safety compliance is an added cost to virtually every aspect of commerce. You seem to suggest that any cost of compliance beyond the actuarial value of lives taken by noncompliance is unwarranted. But in this case we're going much further, since the addition of methanol is not merely a lax safety regulation but an added cost to manufacturing which serves no purpose other than to make the product less safe. Consider safety caps on pill bottles, or seat belts in cars. Both those things had to be forced upon manufacturers, because the cost to manufacturers of fighting civil litigation - which we can assume both operates upon and inflates your $8M figure - didn't provide sufficient economic downside to spur costly implementation. Their existences are both examples of life being valued by society as more than its actuarial value, or value provable in court. If, as a libertarian would, you argued that companies should never pay for any safety regulations beyond the dollar value of the internal and (maybe) external costs inflicted on the public by their products, implying that the value of human life should be reduced to a dollar figure, even then it would make no sense to pay more just to make a product more dangerous. I feel like you mean your statement to be objectionable. And I feel like we're getting to the root of why your statements in this thread have generated such a bad feeling; your disdain for life is coming out. We could get into a discussion of the actual value of human life versus its average value in economic output - including the externalized costs manifested in social disorder and rebellion when life is snuffed out by neglect or malpractice. But again, this is why I think the motive for adding poison to products is suspect, and can't be attributed only to economic motives. It implies a hatred of humanity. Indeed, the value proposition for many governments to add methanol to industrial alcohol isn't based at all on actuarial tables, but on "moral" judgments. In Iran, the lacing of all industrial alcohol with methanol is part and parcel of the religious ban on personal consumption of ethanol, and it led to more deaths during the pandemic than the virus itself. So perhaps there, it could be justified economically by saying that the life of someone who indulges in drink is worth a negative actuarial value; but this is economics shaded by fanatical belief, and must not be taken as a proxy for the true value of life.

noduerme 5y ago

Those nuisance barriers you mention are often intended to cause limited damage. For example, water barrels in a gore point or the gates of a parking garage which are made out of wood and intended to snap off. The problem with the first sentence of your initial post is that you seem willing to justify some degree of death if it serves as a deterrent, even though you later claim that if other options are equally good deterrents then they should be used. This leaves open the possibility that if bittering agents don't deter as well, poison may be a reasonable choice. Yet the only thing we're talking about deterring is tax avoidance. In which case poison seems completely unreasonable. This leads one to suspect that you believe there are other public goods brought about by deterrence which would equal the weight of an occasional poisoning.

jessriedel 5y ago
> Those nuisance barriers you mention are often intended to cause limited damage. For example, water barrels in a gore point or the gates of a parking garage which are made out of wood and intended to snap off. Some are, and they may indeed be preferable to ones that cause worse damage, but some are not. The correct choice depends on the risks involved and the costs of the various methods (e.g., concrete requires less maintenance than wood). > This leaves open the possibility that if bittering agents don't deter as well, poison may be a reasonable choice. Yet the only thing we're talking about deterring is tax avoidance. In which case poison seems completely unreasonable. This is a good line of inquiry, but your blanket conclusion is wrong. Again it depends on the details. If bitterants are 90% effective but methanol is 99.9% effective, corresponding to $100M vs. $100k worth of alcohol in the black market, then this must be weighed against the statistical value of life, which is ~$8M in the US, and the number of people killed by the poisoning. The poison isn't a punishment because it isn't being drunk by people who we intend to have drink it (which is no one). The poison is being accidentally drunk by people who don't know it's there, which is exactly the opposite of what's intended. That's what makes those poisonings accidental side effects, rather than penalties. In contrast, "man traps" (booby traps intended to harm or capture trespassers) are generally illegal because their effect (bodily injury and/or, effectively, kidnapping) are illegal because they unjustly inflict consequences on their intended targets.
- noduerme 5y ago
  > this must be weighed against the statistical value of life Must it be? There are a great many regulations concerning safety devices and procedures that government and industry shell out for which cost more to industry than the statistical value of lives saved. Safety compliance is an added cost to virtually every aspect of commerce. You seem to suggest that any cost of compliance beyond the actuarial value of lives taken by noncompliance is unwarranted. But in this case we're going much further, since the addition of methanol is not merely a lax safety regulation but an added cost to manufacturing which serves no purpose other than to make the product less safe. Consider safety caps on pill bottles, or seat belts in cars. Both those things had to be forced upon manufacturers, because the cost to manufacturers of fighting civil litigation - which we can assume both operates upon and inflates your $8M figure - didn't provide sufficient economic downside to spur costly implementation. Their existences are both examples of life being valued by society as more than its actuarial value, or value provable in court. If, as a libertarian would, you argued that companies should never pay for any safety regulations beyond the dollar value of the internal and (maybe) external costs inflicted on the public by their products, implying that the value of human life should be reduced to a dollar figure, even then it would make no sense to pay more just to make a product more dangerous. I feel like you mean your statement to be objectionable. And I feel like we're getting to the root of why your statements in this thread have generated such a bad feeling; your disdain for life is coming out. We could get into a discussion of the actual value of human life versus its average value in economic output - including the externalized costs manifested in social disorder and rebellion when life is snuffed out by neglect or malpractice. But again, this is why I think the motive for adding poison to products is suspect, and can't be attributed only to economic motives. It implies a hatred of humanity. Indeed, the value proposition for many governments to add methanol to industrial alcohol isn't based at all on actuarial tables, but on "moral" judgments. In Iran, the lacing of all industrial alcohol with methanol is part and parcel of the religious ban on personal consumption of ethanol, and it led to more deaths during the pandemic than the virus itself. So perhaps there, it could be justified economically by saying that the life of someone who indulges in drink is worth a negative actuarial value; but this is economics shaded by fanatical belief, and must not be taken as a proxy for the true value of life.