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> But installing that guard rail for a one in a million chance that something bad happens is money better spent elsewhere Just for clarity -- guard rails, wher
by mlyle 3y ago
> But installing that guard rail for a one in a million chance that something bad happens is money better spent elsewhere
Just for clarity -- guard rails, where we choose to place them, probably cost $500k to $2M per life saved over their lifetime, while the value of a statistical life in the US is >$10M. This comparison ignores costs of non-fatal outcomes (injuries, disability).
It seems like we should be deploying more guardrails, even though their marginal return would be less than our current average.
- kevindamm 3y agoThe problem the article poses is actually not one of diverting costs, despite how GP's metaphor would indicate... It's that with fraud, only the most draconian systems can be effective at stopping all fraud. In the above metaphor, it's more like guard rails are already in place, the speed limit is 1/10th a reasonably safe velocity, and the only way you can stop the remaining death-every-decade is to make everyone walk the road instead of driving it, and guarded so that you don't encounter any strangers along the way either. Very safe. But now nobody even wants to take this road. But it's so safe! Zero deaths, no injuries, ever. Sure, the expenses/value argument can be made, too, but that's not ultimately what makes it nonzero. Even if you had limitless resources to apply to the anti-fraud, the only way you're getting nonzero fraud is if a large amount of legitimate customers are inconvenienced or outright denied as well. This is due to how easily fraudsters can still find processes and marks to make it worth their time, and regulations + policies are ever evolving to keep up, but a lot of it comes down to a cost/benefit analysis by the business. The internet just scales this up by several orders of magnitude too.
- mlyle 3y agoSure, I was commenting just on guard rails. If you want to know what I think about the topic of the article, my earlier comment is more informative. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38906842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38906842
- yardstick 3y ago> while the value of a statistical life in the US is >$10M Take the wealthiest top 10,000 Americans out of the equation, and what’s the value of a statistical life in the US? $10M seems to be a weird number in my mind. Edit: Well that was a fascinating rabbit hole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#:~:text=In%20Western%20countries%20and%20other,US%247.5%20million%20in%202020 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#:~:text=In%20W....
- robertlagrant 3y ago> Take the wealthiest top 10,000 Americans out of the equation They are much less likely to be the recipient of all the money spent on entitlements, no? A giant bucket of money is spent on regular Americans.
- bigger_inside 3y agowhat? no. Government money is a direct pipe to transnational corporations and the billionaires that run it. Welfare payments are peanuts compared to it.
- robertlagrant 3y agoYou're confusing two things. If the government pays for healthcare, that is for people, but goes to organisations to implement what's being paid for.
- bigger_inside 3y agolike trillion dollar bank bailouts, subsidies awarded through ruinous competition among jurisdictions, trillions and trillions of dollars of defense spending for which the government will invent endless wars.. like that?
- robertlagrant 3y agoIf you like, you can look at the data[0] I'm looking at. 15% on defence; 67% on health and related; education; social security; etc. [0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
- concordDance 3y agoI would like to emphasise that the parent has said "where we choose to place them", so they're not contradicting the grandparents metaphor, just giving an interesting FYI.