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"We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approxi
by asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
"We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year."
This is an interesting sentence. The authors say this like it's a bad thing. And I recognize there are economic risks to decreasing the birth rate. But I would not murder 57 children to cause 8,000 to be born. So I think it might be okay for these births to be avoided to save these lives? I mean it definitely should be considered in the tradeoffs but facially this seems like a reasonable trade to me.
- atomicnumber3 4y agoWeird how many real life scenarios end up as variations of the trolley problem
- asdfasgasdgasdg 4y agoYou know what got me thinking about it from that perspective was that absurd trolley problem website that was making the rounds a few weeks back. https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/ https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/ in case you're one of the five living humans who hasn't seen it.
- mcphage 4y agoI missed that one and I like trolley problems—so thank you :-)
- Dylan16807 4y agoIn the US, every 8000 births leads to a lot more than 57 infant deaths. So how far would you go with that trade?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 4y agoAre you referring to the infant death rate? According to Google it's only 5.4/1000, so it would only be 43.2/8000, not 57. But those deaths are contingent on the births happening in the first place, so the comparison is not apt. (That is, you as an infant being born pay the risk of infant death in order for the opportunity to be born -- the shot at existence. On the other hand, asking carseated children to stochastically pay with their lives for the opportunity of a sibling to exist is a different matter morally.)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Dylan16807 4y agoIt looks like I read too quickly and got the world numbers instead.
- jdgoesmarching 4y agoThe writers are from UW Economics and BC business school. Smaller future labor pools make economists sad.
- antonvs 4y agoI take it these economists don't believe in negative externalities.
- jacobsenscott 4y agoIt's almost as thought economists have never heard of immigration. The world wide population continues to grow.
- gfodor 4y agoNot regulating something is not the same thing as murder. We could do all kinds of regulation that would save lives but not doing those things doesn't mean we should think about it as murder.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 4y agoYou're not wrong. My language here was hyperbolic.
- mint2 4y agoI found their dissimilar wording peculiar the 8k gets the qualifier “permanent” but the 57 deaths do not. Glad to hear they would have been temporary deaths, perhaps similar to witches turning people in newts. I get they are talking about in particular year and perhaps want to emphasize the births aren’t simply delayed but the way it’s phrased is off putting
- theptip 4y agoI think “permanent” just means they were not deferred, in this context. If the births happened next year it would still be an 8k reduction in this year, but not a permanent one.
- mint2 4y agoYes that’s what I said… “ I get they are talking about in [a] particular year and perhaps want to emphasize the births aren’t simply delayed but the way it’s phrased is off putting”
- adrianN 4y ago8000 births invariably lead to 8000 deaths down the line.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thrown_22 4y ago>The authors say this like it's a bad thing. Children have become so expensive to raise in the west that there is _no_ country which is not in demographic collapse. This is being offset by mass immigration which only works so long as the developing world is producing a surplus of people. Something that is no longer happening. Because of laws like this we have set up a demographics time bomb where in any country richer than India there aren't enough women under 40 to give birth to a generation of the same size as the previous one. It's rather bizarre listening to people praise a model which is so unsustainable it produces more 80+ year olds than >30 year olds.
- coolspot 4y agoMeanwhile, Earth population has reached 8 billion people in 2022. The current average population increase is estimated at 81 million people per year.
- thrown_22 4y agoYes, that's what happens when people don't die in their 40s. Now what happens when the median age is over 50?
- pixl97 4y agoThen we get eventually get a population reduction. If you're an economist this is bad. If you're old, this ain't great. If you're interested in preserving at least a little bit of nature and the environment on this planet though, it's likely a good thing.
- thrown_22 4y agoAt some point you need birth rates to stabilize for a population to survive. This is not something that _any_ country with a GDP over $5,000 PPP is currently managing. The result isn't a population reduction, it is a population extinction. Too few births is just as bad as too many. It's just that you don't notice you've decided to go extinct until 30 years after the point of no return.
- ohuf 4y agoView it like this: 8000 happy parents vs 57 grieving ones.
- abracadabra_ 4y agoAs a parent to two small children, I'm not sure adding a third would increase my happiness.
- benj111 4y agoSome people think life begins at conception, some people believe that life starts when two people who love each other very much, decide they have room in their car for one. Different strokes....
- tpoacher 4y agoWhy stop there? If you mandate baby seats to all seats in the car for life you can reduce child deaths from car accidents by 100%!
- pjc50 4y ago> So I think it might be okay for these births to be avoided to save these lives? The deaths are involuntary. The choice not to have another birth is voluntary. This matters rather a lot, since a lot of the 20th century was spent arguing that contraception should be allowed at all on this basis. Maximising for number of people without considering their crowding leads to squalor, and legalizing and promulgating contracaption across the world has been one of the great liberating stories of the past 100 years. Now that women have choice, the situation becomes an economic one. If having more people around matters to you economically: you have to make it economically sensible for people to have children. Increasingly there's a cost of living crisis for everyone, and children are a subset of "everyone" that can't make their own income. Russia hands you a medal if you have lots of children; the UK cuts off child benefit after the second child, as part of an explicit "people shouldn't have children they can't afford" policy. I wonder if anyone added up the "births avoided" of the latter.