Making Tradeoffs

It's getting crazy around here, what with guest coming in for the 4th of July weekend. Blogging will be light for a while, but when I get the chance, I will post a few things. I have a short window of opportunity right now, so I thought I would post Absolute Values and Growing Government published by the Townhall.com Staff yesterday. This was taken from a Townhall.com blogger named Andrew, who should be proud of some truly excellent writing.

Do you ever have one of those epiphanies where you just have to say "Huh"? I did yesterday, though because of the craziness going on now, I didn't have time to post about it. I had it when I read this Townhall.com piece. Go read the whole thing. A little taste though:

The truth is quite simple: All values are relative, and all are subject to a cost-benefit analysis. Though many arguments exist against this, and some may even sound plausible, a little bit of thought will show that, despite the seemingly plausible arguments, there really is no such thing as an absolute value.

I have expressed it differently. I have expressed the idea as worshipping the creation rather than the creator. Some of my readers are apparently agnostic or atheistic, and did not care for my formulation. This formulation should speak to them, then. It also expresses a conservative ideal of the golden mean.

For example, Life is precious, and we should not waste the great gift God has given us, and by extension we should not waste the lives of others. Thus self defense is an exception to the rule that you "shall not murder." Because the murderer has demonstrated by words and deeds his intention to kill, you have the right to defend yourself. Pacifism in the face of a murderous attack is just as wrong as initiating such an attack.

Peace is a good thing. With peace comes the prospect of prosperity, and in its absence, no prosperity is possible. Liberty is also a good, but some liberty must be surrendered to have peace. However, if too much liberty is demanded, peace is no longer possible for those who treasure their liberties. But the Declaration of Independence said it far better than your poorly endowed scribbler. The Continental Congress said:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Similarly, every person wants a clean environment, but at what cost? We in the United States have achieved a remarkably clean environment over the last 40 years. We have done so because we have been more prosperous than other countries. Less prosperous countries can simply not afford to put the amounts of money that we have into reducing the environmental effects of that prosperity. But we have come to the point of diminishing returns, and one has to weigh the costs of lost opportunity against the possible gains.

Frankly, I do not see the gains.

The environmental literature is littered with scare words. When you see someone say that this or that "might" cause a disaster, or "could" cause such and such to happen, it should send a red flag up in your mind to ask what are the actual probabilities of that undesirable thing happening.
For example, they say that if you smoke cigarettes, you "could" get lung cancer. To scare you further, they point out that smoking a pack a day doubles your risk. Wow, you better quit. But wait, what is the risk of getting lung cancer? Well, it turns out that the risk for a non-smoker is 7.5%, meaning that you have a 92.5% risk of dieing of something else. So, double that and if you smoke you have a 15% risk, meaning that you still have an 85% chance of dieing of something else. So, a smoker weighs the good of his life against the pleasure (a good) of smoking, and decides to take that risk. Now I am not defending smoking here, but pointing out a common way that society is buffaloed into spending money in support of Left wing causes.

So, what are we risking with Waxman Markey? Well here we are making a $9.4 trillion bet that "if" anthropogenic global warming exists, we will be able to cool the planet by hundredths of a degree in 2050. Does that look like a trade off you would make? After all, heating and cooling your home are goods, easy transportation is a good. Remember that there are no absolute goods, only relative values. Would you spend your hard earned money on a flim-flam scheme like this one? What opportunities might you be passing up in order to have this good? Is it worth it? I say it isn't.