TheOnlyVertigo t1_itirgz7 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:05 PM

Reply to comment by Simple_Rules in A Proposal to Price Everything in the Currency of Child Lives Not Saved by phileconomicus

And let’s be honest, corporate and government inaction leads to the vast majority of, to borrow their metaphor, dead children.

I mean, at a local level, you can try to be as conscientious as possible, but at the end of the day, the changes you as a consumer make, when an individual or even small collective, is a drop in the bucket compared to the real source of global change needed to resolve any of this.

Basically the article wants people who are already aware of the problems that plague the world right now to feel even more hopeless.

I look at it like being stuck on a speeding train as a passenger. Sure you could probably get the train to stop if you get every passenger to help stop the train, but the conductor is locked in the engine, with the throttle on full, complaining that the passengers aren’t doing enough, and telling them that they need to do more to slow the train down. And to make matters worse, they’ve got other people on the train convincing majorities of the passengers that either nothing is wrong, nothing can be done, or that they themselves are the sole blame holder.

FrmrPresJamesTaylor t1_itisizk wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:13 PM

I say we put this nonsense to bed, there are 2.2bn children on earth and for the very reasonable price of $4k per head (or $8.8 trillion) we can save them all and return our focus to less important matters.

Simple_Rules t1_itjg3y1 wrote on October 24, 2022 at 2:15 AM

The funniest part is that this article is trying to make an economic argument without even pausing to consider that since aid programs are underfunded, they are obviously serving the most easily saved children first.

Each child doesn't cost exactly the same amount of money to save, and the current estimates presumably are based on trying to save the most easily saved children.

I bet you that number doubles or triples or quadruples real fast, once you actually start seriously spending money on it.

TheOnlyVertigo t1_itit7h5 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:18 PM

I’d love for it to be that simple.

But no complex system is, and the onus is on all of us to contribute to resolving the problem, and since the true ability to control public policy, on a global scale, is effectively out of the hands of the overwhelmingly vast majority of us because of competing groups that want the power to manipulate everything in their favor, we are basically screwed.

FrmrPresJamesTaylor t1_ititxk4 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:23 PM

Yes. Sorry, I was just ridiculing the concept by raising the fact that the sum total cost to “save all children” is actually within reach (it’s about 25% more than the US federal governments current year-to-date expenditure).

TheOnlyVertigo t1_itiu36s wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:24 PM

My bad. Misunderstood your point.

FrmrPresJamesTaylor t1_itiu6s5 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:25 PM

No worries! It was probably too “low effort” for this sub to be completely honest.

TheOnlyVertigo t1_itiug0o wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:26 PM

It’s easy to assume someone may be taking an opposing view of what you say on Reddit these days, given the sheer level of trolling you run across, I made a hasty conclusion.

I’m probably too dumb for this sub myself, but I like to think I’m at least a little bit intellectual on occasion.

Simple_Rules t1_itjfq0v wrote on October 24, 2022 at 2:12 AM

Of course, absolutely - that's the point of arguments like this. They all, ultimately, boil down to well paid stooges trying to convince you that you have an equal share of culpability and blame for the horrors of the world.

The goal of this article isn't to convince you to buy one less coffee. It's not to convince you to go on less cruises. The goal of this article is to make it so the next time you read an article about how Apple is forging iPhones directly out of the bones of orphans and kittens or whatever, you just go "meh but I can't complain or I'd be a hypocrite", as if your morning cup of coffee has made you morally equal to a board of directors who have done the math and figured out that if they throw literal babies into a literal wood chipper, they'll sell 2% more iPhones next year.