On 5/31/2010 4:21 AM, Boris Liberman wrote:
On 5/30/2010 11:54 PM, paul stenquist wrote:
I didn't say that the fact that much of the cost goes back into the
economy is a reason to do this. I just pointed out, correctly, that
the cost per device times the number of cars isn't the true cost to
society. And I'm not necessarily in favor of regulation. Never have
been. But I'm in favor of truth and accuracy. Paul
I might as well go a step further and maintain that none of us can
actually produce a accurate and truthful assessment of
financial/economic aspect of this issue, unless we have some
professional economist among us. I for one, wouldn't dare say that
mere multiplication of number of cars however approximate it be by the
cost of this device is an accurate figure.
Boris
As someone who was trained to be an economist, I can tell you few of
them are even capable of making objective assessments, and even fewer
who can make those assessments do.
Lets look at the utility of this device.
According to Ask.com 230 children have died from being left in cars in
the US since 1998. Assuming for the sake of argument well take the
average number for a year. That works out to 23 children per year.
The population of the US was in July of 2009 estimated to be
307,006,550, (which is too damned accurate for an estamate in my
estimation).
Simple mathematics, (and I take no responsibility for absolute accuracy
on this I could be off by an order of magnitude), gives a result of
.0024 deaths of this kind per hundred thousand of population. Now lets
just think about that for a moment. Even if I'm off by an order of
magnitude on the low side, the odds of this happening are vanishingly
small, but since it happens finite, demonstrably so.
Now lets assume that each family of four owns one car. (Very simplistic
I know, but that's really how economists work, If I were really doing a
study I'd refine this considerably, but in the end my numbers wouldn't
be any more or less meaningful). That gives a rough estimate of
76751637.5 cars, (I wonder who gets the half car, with my luck probably
me). I'll dispense with how many cars per hundred thousand of
population, and leave that as exercise for those who actually give a
rats a**.
Now I'm going to put my engineers hat on for a moment, (software, but
still, I have held that title), and talk about costs. I figure the
device in question could be put together for about $10~$15 of off the
shelf parts, (engineers are always pulling numbers out of their a**),
but it will cost an order of magnitude more once assembled and installed
in a car, lets split the difference and call it $125.00, (now I'll don
my retailers hat and pull a few more numbers), but the final consumer
will pay an order of magnitude more... OK maybe not the full $1250,
maybe only half that. So lets say $600. (Yes, economists really do
work this way).
Now we have some "hard" numbers. this gives us a total cost of
$46,050,982,500. to society. The side benefits are beside the point.
Spending that kind of money will help the economy no matter how it's
spent, (I would do the math but it requires complex derivatives, and
really most economists don't understand it either). The actual stated
benefit would be to a very small percentage of the population.
We must remember that all cars won't have this "feature" now, in fact as
the average car lasts about 10 years all cars won't have this feature
for 10 years, and given that most devices that don't directly benefit
the driver fall by the wayside after warranted service expires a lot
that have it built in won't either.
For this we might save and I stress might save the lives of 26 children
a year. I say the money is better spent on cigarettes and booze.
--
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