le_mango

le_mango t1_ithv5jg wrote

One example I can think of would be the efforts to eradicate childhood disease through widespread vaccination campaigns. However I wasn't defending the position of the linked piece's original author, simply pointing out that identifying he is appealing to emotion doesn't make his position a fallacy.

I happen to not agree with Wells' suggestion for making it clear that economic costs are entangled with human costs through this particular Swiftian tongue-in-cheek measurement change, but agree with him thematically that the positivism of modern economic practice uses semantics and misdirection to obscure human suffering and moral breaches.

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le_mango t1_ithd2lw wrote

"Questionnaire"
by Wendell Berry
How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.
For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.
What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.
In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.
State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

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