I always like the clip of Friedman taking Donahue to the cleaners over his mindless, bleeding-heart positions.
why is that not a surprise? I don't think you get why he's wrong. Aside from yourself, it's not rational behavior to put a price on someone's life. Whether it be 1 or 1000. If you want to get technical there's also an opportunity cost to the ppl that lost that person. Milton's head is stuck too far in a book (among other places) to fully realize that.
And thats exactly why you are wrong. Everyday you put a price on your life...when you decide to drive to work you are saying that those daily wages are worth the risk of dying in a car accident. When someone decides to become a police officer they are putting a price on their life. Now if you say that a life is priceless then by definition if 1,000,000 need to suffer to save one life it would be worth it correct? The kid is arguing something different , he is saying that Ford needs to make the risks clear not that life is priceless but he worded it wrong. Say the part cost 2,000,000 then it would not make sense for Ford to recall it for 180 lives , which the kid openly admits. His thought is correct his argument is not
friedman is a much better debater as he should be,but he twisted the kids idea around and eventually took it to tobacco ,, a straw man tactic,you can't argue with the strawman ,he's not in the room,he went one step further and got the audience to agree with the straw man,peer pressure, he came back to the kid and dismissed him,again using taping time and voice durability as another strawman,again straying from the subject, it was more about winning the debate than the subject,(principles or money involved)
I get Friedmans point. I just don't agree with it. 13 bucks is not a lot, to save lives. Friedmans argument only makes sense when the cost of safety erases profit or competitiveness. To suggest an additional 13 bucks on the Pintos sticker price would have bankrupted Ford or tanked the Pinto, is nonsense.
And that's where you are wrong. Individuals have a right to put a price on their own lives. No individual has the right to put a price on OTHERS LIVES, without their consent. And that's what Ford did. They withheld key information on the Pintos safety from consumers. Now if Ford had told consumers beforehand, the Pinto was a great, cheap car with a faulty gas-tank that could blow-up, Ford wouldn't be liable. But because they sold a product under fraudulent pretenses, where the risks were known, but not disclosed, Ford was sued for damages, and rightly lost. What Lee Iacocca did was unconscionable. The choices before him were thus: 1) Increase the sticker price of the Pinto by a measly 13 dollars 2) Eat the cost of gas tank redesign by 13 dollars, per car 3) Some combination of 1 and 2. 4) Keep the faulty gas tank, hide the safety data, and subject thousands of lives to a firey death. He chose #4. I would not chose#4. Would you?
Who are you to tell a car company what makes cost sense? One good reason why american liberalism is ruinious. Most people cannot understand Freidman's point, that there is a price on our lives because we live in a world of finite resources. The childish retort 'how dare you put a price on human life' means for instance an open ended and economically ruinious gov't health care. Liberals will put an infinite price on human life as long as it isn't their own money. Later the reality forces a rationing unfair to all.
at the other extreme we have a liberal crown jewel which shows what happens when idiots like Moore get their way, and yes grown ups do have to put a price on human life ... http://www.nofluoride.com/asbestos.cfm