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>Even if you're not being as much of a colossal arse as the headline of this story, which do you think is a better thing for money to be spent on? The problem

by Levitz 4y ago

>Even if you're not being as much of a colossal arse as the headline of this story, which do you think is a better thing for money to be spent on? The problem is no first world country is anywhere near finding itself in such position. Resources are limited, but more often than not the problem lies in the allocation of those resources. If Canada can spend thousands of hundreds of dollars on bringing a giant rubber duck to a festival, it ought to be able to provide a goddamned stairlift.

ben_w 4y ago
None of what I wrote, nor the rest of this comment, is meant to defend the veterans service agent in this story. I'd agree the problem is resource allocation. But also, my understanding is that basically every country has some problems funding healthcare right now — at a government level, it's not one stairlift but all stairlifts collectively, it's not one malaria net but the continuing existence of malaria, it's not one overweight person but the consequences of half the population being obese, not one person who needs oxygen at the beginning of an respiratory infection but an entire pandemic overwhelming the national supply of ICUs simultaneously, not one person whose condom broke but the entire HIV+ population as a whole, and so on. We can, and have, picked a few things to totally eliminate, leaving us more to spend on the rest, but at the same time there are many issues we can't ignore in the short term just to speed up the permanent elimination of other issues. But yeah, a $100,000 inflatable duck has an opportunity cost of saving 20 lives. I have literally no idea if that kind of thing generates more locally to make up for that cost — art inspires people in general, but I don't know how to quantify that in quality or quantity of lives, because while utilitarianism claims it can do that it leaves too many variables unspecified to actually do anything. Likewise, even if you're inhumanly cold-blooded about human suffering, sports and athletics competitions drive public fitness, whereas blasé attitudes to encouraging people to kill themselves leads to other social harms (this is why I'm not comfortable with the decriminalisation of assisted suicide despite the fact that I believe the various desperately ill people who are suffering greatly say they want it as an option).

by Levitz 4y ago

ben_w 4y ago

None of what I wrote, nor the rest of this comment, is meant to defend the veterans service agent in this story. I'd agree the problem is resource allocation. But also, my understanding is that basically every country has some problems funding healthcare right now — at a government level, it's not one stairlift but all stairlifts collectively, it's not one malaria net but the continuing existence of malaria, it's not one overweight person but the consequences of half the population being obese, not one person who needs oxygen at the beginning of an respiratory infection but an entire pandemic overwhelming the national supply of ICUs simultaneously, not one person whose condom broke but the entire HIV+ population as a whole, and so on. We can, and have, picked a few things to totally eliminate, leaving us more to spend on the rest, but at the same time there are many issues we can't ignore in the short term just to speed up the permanent elimination of other issues. But yeah, a $100,000 inflatable duck has an opportunity cost of saving 20 lives. I have literally no idea if that kind of thing generates more locally to make up for that cost — art inspires people in general, but I don't know how to quantify that in quality or quantity of lives, because while utilitarianism claims it can do that it leaves too many variables unspecified to actually do anything. Likewise, even if you're inhumanly cold-blooded about human suffering, sports and athletics competitions drive public fitness, whereas blasé attitudes to encouraging people to kill themselves leads to other social harms (this is why I'm not comfortable with the decriminalisation of assisted suicide despite the fact that I believe the various desperately ill people who are suffering greatly say they want it as an option).