|
|
 Originally Posted by Poopadoop
You might as well say 'if every time he drove into a tree he saved a squirrel he would have ran over had he stayed on the road'.
Sure. That being a reasonable proposition isn't something I intended to present.
I'd like to just make the case that if somebody proposes a law, maybe a good question to ask is "how do you know?"
It's like Sowell's three questions to any proposal:
What is the evidence
At what cost
Opposed to what
So, even if it makes quick-intuitive sense that it would be better for wearing seat belts to be a law, well, maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. We gotta quantify the costs associated to start to figure it out. And the costs are more than just what the government pays to enforce the law. The costs include things about what cops would otherwise be doing, what people would otherwise be doing, what car companies would otherwise be doing, and probably an unknown that at least attempts to adjust for unintended consequences, etc..
|
Reply With Quote