nathaniel

Cannibalism does not add value to our society, due to our cultural norms. We do use dead bodies for non-nutritional purposes. Trade in tissues is not yet commonplace, but our legislature and our society is gradually coming to understand the immense cost of our culturally derived restrictions on it. Such as death in patients waiting for organs due to insufficient supply. In a fully functioning tissue market, once you pay it's your responsibility. I suspect the cannibals would be priced out of the market by legitmate patients, but I don't see any harm in leaving the scraps to them. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Yes. Like pollution and poop, DUI has benefits. It's transportation after all--it is commerce. People value it, or else they would not persist in doing it despite all the inherent costs and the legally induced risks associated with getting caught. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

You speak nothing of the benefits of pollution, as you spoke nothing of the benefits of drunk driving. Is that due to ignorance or malice toward society? Aphasia? It's poop, it's bad and it's ugly. You can't talk about health and sanitation until you get over it. Poop is good because it is the byproduct of a functioning and healthy society. We speak not of carelessly minimizing poop or regulating the exact level, but of ensuring its efficiency and balance against the needs of the rest of the body. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Yes, southern CA, the pinnacle of ecological society. Even though you can't see the mountains from the 15th floor of the Marriott Newport Beach, it's still a resounding success! Wait, how do we know that the levels we have are the best levels? What is the criteria? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It has a strong predictive quality for the US economy, something like 3-6 months worth of prediction iirc. But it fluctuates a lot, there's a lot of noise in the reading so it's pointless to get worked up about day-to-day changes. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Circular. Not an established good in the US, although it is practiced elsewhere. We do have fireworks tho. Now this is a delightful analogy. Purely ex ante pollution controls were a dismal failure. The only way we've been able to put any sort of control on pollution is to enter it into a civil process, such as emissions trading, by which the beneficiaries and benefactors of pollution come to terms on the cost that one has on the other. Would you propose a DUI fatality trading system? How much do you suppose a fatality would go for? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If you could have a guaranteed 100% save your butt from anything reserve for only $100,000,000, would you tax the drunks so you could have it? We need protection from people who would tax us for their own risk insensitivity. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Yeah it's a bit of a taboo as well. That also makes it fun. "I can't believe what I just read." "Won't somebody think of the children!" "You would cry too if it happened to you." My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

You can count the total number of moving infractions on my driving record with zero fingers--I'm one of the people that doesn't particularly like a BAC even as high as .08 because of the subjective experience. I do think there's a big philosophical aspect to ex ante regulations that's substantially contrary to our founding social principles, apart from the economic implications which are in turn substantial. It's a naive and costly way of thinking, that we can improve society by them. And I think that it draws an amusingly PC-compatible reaction from a usually PC-hostile crowd. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

You would tell millions of people that they cannot choose for themselves, in the total absence of justification. That is contrary to the interests of a free society. Tort law exists to balance the costs and benefits of one citizen's actions on others, and it is rather effective. Apart from the faults introduced by our present corrupt DUI laws, why would tort law not suffice to balance the ups and downs of intoxication as it balances the ups and downs of most other aspects of society? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That's not an accurate characterization because the correlation of level with risk diminishes as the level. We would not debate a BAC of 40.08 because it would kill without exception. Perfect correlation. Correlation at 40.08 does not make correlation at 0.08, and certainly not causation at .08. I suppose there is a level at which BAC does become causatively harmful beyond our benefit, but I do suspect that the threshold of causation is so high that it is generally irrelevant. The debate is lopsided in that while .08 demonstrably has physiological effects, those effects are manageable for the vast majority of so-called drunk drivers. The level .08 has come to mean pure evil in our culture and in our legislation, when it is demonstrably not causative in and of itself of anything particularly harmful, and it is demonstratively beneficial. We should instead focus our laws and sanctions on deterring things more tightly causatively entwined with injury and death, such as actual failure to conduct a vehicle safely rather than preconditions which slightly elevate the risks of such. You could think of it in terms of reasonable doubt--our criminal system currently abolishes reasonable doubt due to what seems to be puritanical hatred of alcohol. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Likewise talking, listening to music, eating and drinking soft beverages, using GPS or looking at a map, doing one's makeup, being under 25 and male, reaching for objects, road signs and advertisements, etc. Using a cell phone is a curious case, not least because people compare it to driving drunk and it's starting to be outlawed in places. I wonder if the penalties for using a cell phone while driving will be the same as the penalty for DUI. Would that be fair? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

16000 is a number derived by assuming when alcohol was present in any accident that it was the causative factor vs other causes such as speed, recklessness, someone else's fault, etc. That grossly overstates the true risk. We went over that already. It's circular reasoning. Alcohol is the cause because by assuming alcohol is the cause the numbers go way up. That could be an UNintentional misunderstanding, .08 is the relevant fixed number. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Aha, now we are getting somewhere. If millions of people could drive without brakes, blindfolded, or at 90mph through a school crossing without hurting anyone or breaking anything, and proportionately few did hurt anyone or break something, I'd have grounds to reconsider. In this case, the theory is not supported by fact. The theory (that a fixed BAC causes an unacceptable level of risk) was tenuous to begin with...let us dispense with it and be on our way. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If you assume that to start off with, circular logic will bring you back there. Why do you think it is so to start off with? Apart from your assumptions, that is. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I don't pretend to know or care exactly how it is manifest. I think such details are irrelevant, because the behaviour is sufficient to establish that the value is so, independent of the form it takes. It would be irrational if it was made without full information...but it's a stretch to me that most people would doubt either what causes intoxication or its physical and legal consequences. I think in most cases it's a rational decision. That would be driving recklessly, which is a separate mode of criminality. Most drunk drivers do not drive recklessly, I contend, based on the sheer numbers of DUI arrests vs deaths/injuries. Drunks probably drive recklessly more often than sober drivers, for all I know, but that is not sufficient reason to indict the whole lot. Those who drive recklessly should be punished irrespective of their BAC, and those who do not should not be punished for recklessness, again irrespective of their BAC. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think the number of dead should be balanced against the benefit derived from the activity. Hospitals kill people too, with deadly infections such as MRSA. I don't call for their outlaw when they cause death because they also bring benefits. Drunk driving doesn't heal a person like a hospital, but I think there's a strong case to be made that it's a benefit to the driver, else people wouldn't do it in such large numbers. For they risk so much under our bent legal system to do it, and the penalties are widely known. Indeed, the decision to drive drunk is made rationally when someone drives to a party or to the bar without a designated driver, not just after they've consumed several drinks. The decision is made again when they get into their car after drinks. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

With millions, perhaps tens of millions of drunk drivers and only low thousands of deaths caused by them each year, you would require a low threshold indeed to outlaw an activity. Where would you put the threshold of probability of killing for an activity to be criminal? Presumably it is greater than zero, for you would allow sober drivers, and sober drivers yet manage to kill people. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

What else do you expect from weak correlation between low BAC and accidents? Alcohol can be a causative factor in an accident, and legal definitions aside alcohol can be present and not be a causative factor in an accident. It's unfair to the police of New London to put them between reality and legality. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

All drivers are threats to society. Just by putting your car on the road you risk things like mechanical breakdown and human error that can result in property damage, injury and death. The tort system was created to resolve these issues, why do we need an additional layer of criminal enforcement against .08? BAC is an imprecise measure and it catches millions of people yearly who would not have hurt anyone, although a (small) proportion of the people caught would definitely have caused damage or injury or death to themselves or others. It is a real instance of fining and imprisoning ten inculpable people so that one guilty person might not go free. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

In Illinois it is. On the books it says not whether you caused an accident while at .08, simply whether you are involved determines your culpability for aggravated charges and thus your responsibility for civil damages. What you describe is the way it should be, justly and intuitively. The law is unjust, imo. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

What if the tables were turned?--if a .08 driver is in an accident caused by a sober driver (say, the .08 driver was tboned by the sober driver because the sober driver ran a red light) in which the sober driver is killed. Do you, the .08 driver still deserve manslaughter/aggravated dui (class 4 felony in IL) charges even if you obeyed all non-dui traffic safety laws to the letter, and deserve to pay all related civil penalties? If you were the .08 driver you would surely regret the laws on our books, for it allows a truly criminal sober driver to drive recklessly, crash into you and transfer all the penalties and responsibility to you. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

What you say and what you do are two different things. This is a well known economic problem, it's generally better to look at what people do vs what they say (esp on the internet :) My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Wait do you mean Bulgarians or Britons? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Depending on how you look at the data, people express on average that the value of a life is around 5-10 million USD. Posner uses $7m in his blog on the topic, Becker uses $5m. How much is spent on saving one life by drunk driving? ie, how many dollars lost by incarcerating people or by forcing people to stay home, drive slower, or misdirected by forcing people to take cabs and underconsume? Do you have any sense of the figure at all? It's quite dishonest to pretend there's no cost to regulating drunk driving--just as there is a cost to people when they are injured by a drunk driver, there is a cost to screwing up people's lives who would not have caused any damage to themselves or anyone else (statistically speaking this means most drunk drivers). My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?