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le_mango t1_ithcx2r wrote

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

Okay, you've identified the author's appeal to pathos to be used as a corrective to the failures of logic to achieve ethical outcomes. Good for you.

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zanraptora t1_ithsedn wrote

Tell me about all the rational and ethically sound good done "for the children".

As we well know, productive and well-reasoned solutions often come out of base cries for our nebulous progeny.

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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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