Still gonna probably do it on my secret twitter or my secret blog, but to start, let’s watch a video of Milton Friedman wrecking a young socialist with facts & logic https://twitter.com/yungneocon/status/1318352657887731712

The kid is caught off guard because he’s:
1. Using an isolated case, whereas the mf MF talks about abstract principles
2. Talking in moral terms & assuming everyone shares his moral views
3. Talking in cardinal & absolute not ordinal & marginal terms

Each in turn:
1. We can, of course, use an ad hoc standard for determining every case we have, but this is unwieldy and means we basically can never come to agreement, we only have this or that provisional ad hoc assessment & which one we choose is arbitrary

there is therefore merit in assessing abstract principles first even if they are just ones of provisional agreement. We can’t just assume them. And if we don’t agree on these it’s very hard to have a real conversation, this leads us to (2)

2. Assuming everyone is using a moral framework, let alone the same one, is a recipe for disaster—the two are talking in totally different languages, but because of the latent assumptions, they can’t place what the issue is. Why should this or that thing matter more?

This is a central question of (1) and it leads us to (3)

3. MF is discussing a universe of choices under scarce resources, uncertainty & disputes of principles & morality, where things can only be compared against other actually existing things of which the combos are vast

This takes us to (4) and to another issue, which is an implicit slippery slope argument, namely, it is implied that what he’s saying is that ‘it’s all fine & good to make this assessment, but now we have to do that for all assessments which we plainly can’t do’

This amounts to a motte & Bailey & slippery slope argument because no one denies that we can’t do everything, the question is about which things to do. Unfortunately, due to issues 1-3, the questioner cannot rebut this.

If there are scarcities of resources, time, space etc, conflicts of interests, information uncertainties & disputes of preference & metric, it is true that we can’t do everything & eventually we have to make choices between alternative uses of resources.

a usual example given is comparing something like saving sailors lost at sea when those resources, it invested in road safety, would save 100x the people, and save other costs down the road.

But this always brings up the next issue when people say “but we shouldn’t have to measure peoples lives in money !” Or something to that effect. Or, on twitter, they cite the Dril drunk driving meme.

Unfortunately, this is, in context, a bullshit argument, and as long as leftists make it, they will lose. Why? Because they have accepted the premises of a system which *necessitates* said metrics, comparisons & policy choices.

As long as we have a state & government with an economy run by EITHER market OR central planning OR a mix of both, then such evaluations are necessary & unavoidable. The USSR made them as much as the US EPA or CBO or corporations make them.

You can’t talk about state policy or conduct an economy in the context of uncertainty, asymmetric/incomplete information, scarcities, disputes of preference & metrics, & alternative uses of resources & focus within a specific available context set without Said metrics.

In other words: no state or government or market or central planner can, in any realistic world, do without metrics such as those assigning value & cost to a human life. It is a necessary feature of them.

Said calculations have occurred in every state & market/planned economy since time immemorial, albeit, often in an obfuscated fashion, because it was considered morally reprehensible to say so explicitly.

But just as Christianity & Islam both got rid of bans on interest by using intermediaries, OR by using complex property, accounting & financial mechanisms that incorporate interest & risk in a non explicit form, so too even states & markets that denied it, used said metrics.

And, that, of course, is what this thread would be about if I were to write it on the main TL & not my secret twitter lol