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Comment by john01dav | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that what you call "statistical murder" needs to be handled differently, I see problems with doing so that need to be solved. Namely, what counts?

Your example of statistical murder is prioritization can be abstracted as profit over life. A first thought might be to condemn any prioritization of anything over life, but this leads to likely unwanted consequences: it is illegal to drive, ever; it is illegal to feed someone food that is not of the optimal health for their particular situation, ever; it is illegal to sell a product, even used, that California has determined a carcinogen. All of these are related to leading causes of death: traffic accidents, low quality food causing obesity and its myriad of consequences, and cancer. We could use improvement in all of these cases, but such absolute bans go too far.

So, how do we determine when it is legitimate to prioritize something over life, or when it's statistical murder?

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    So, how do we determine when it is legitimate to prioritize something over life, or when it's statistical murder?

A necessary first step is to hand that decision over to someone who does not personally gain from choosing death. Life-or-death care almost certainly needs to be a government-run, single-payer system.

If giving another kid their cancer meds means one less gold-leaf-covered item in the presidential ballroom, so be it.

> If giving another kid their cancer meds means one less gold-leaf-covered item in the presidential ballroom, so be it

I agree. I want to expand on this and make my question more explicit. In my previous post I tried to give one extreme (where we clearly do not want restrictions on behavior). This is the other extreme (where we clearly do want restrictions on behavior). There must be some line drawn in between in order to enforce either of these extremes (that we clearly want to enforce).

We have that in canada and it does not work that way at all. Single payer turns into a big en(ugh line item that there is political "otivation to limit supply and it all goes to crap just in a different way than it has in america. The solution is way simpler: ensuring there is enough supply that price raising bs fails. That gives you a bunch of different ways to get to the solution that will all work vut they all have ensuring enough supply to limit shenanigans at their base.

> Life-or-death care almost certainly needs to be a government-run, single-payer system.

> If giving another kid their cancer meds means one less gold-leaf-covered item in the presidential ballroom, so be it.

Why do you think a government would choose to cover an additional kid’s cancer medications rather than an additional luxury for government workers? You’re placing a ton of faith in governments.

At least with private companies there is choice (normally). And private companies do not directly wield government power (normally).

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