Biden’s faulty logic: “If it saves one life” — at what cost?

I think the author gives Biden too much credit when he claims that he’s a serious student of public policy.

I think many people, perhaps Biden included, truly do not think beyond step one. They believe that if a study shows that banning a gun will save one person then the gun should be banned. They never stop to ask (and certainly never request any studies that would show) whether or not the ban would also cost lives.

This is why they pass laws to make playground equipment so safe that it’s boring. Never realizing that fewer kids playing at the park contributes to more kids getting obese and dying of diabetes and heart problems. But, hey, at least you saved one kid from falling off ‘dangerous’ equipment.

This is why they make drugs take decades to wend their way through the FDA approval process (even if the drug has already been thoroughly vetted in other countries) because it’s important to make sure it’s super safe so we can save that one person. Nevermind the thousands of people that could have benefited from the medicine if they had approved it.

If he’s correct that people like Obama and Biden understand this and then pass bad regulatory laws anyway because it plays well to the masses, he’s basically saying that they’re willing to sacrifice countless lives just because people are too dumb to connect their decisions to the people’s deaths.

JadeNYU on January 11, 2013 at 9:29 PM