3 ms·

Would you be OK to tax killing people instead of banning it?

• eru 2y ago
  In practice, we already tax/fine companies for killing people. So I'll bite the bullet, and say: yes, of course. Ideally, a large part of that tax would go towards (the estate of) the victims. That's more productive than locking people up: that's just a straight up loss for society. We also already tax stochastically-killing people; or in some cases, we don't even tax it and just allow dangerous activities. Eg we allow people to drive cars and we allow people to run coal-fired power plants. Going from a small percentage chance to a larger percentage chance (nothing is certain) is not a qualitative difference, only a quantitative one.