👇🎯 In re: my unpopular opinion/deeply firm belief that our politics would actually be much healthier if we talked more openly & explicitly about the deaths directly caused by bad policy choices - ThreadSky

mcopelov.bsky.social • 318 days ago

👇🎯 In re: my unpopular opinion/deeply firm belief that our politics would actually be much healthier if we talked more openly & explicitly about the deaths directly caused by bad policy choices

Reposted from Kevin M. Kruse

Free article idea for any reporter — try to get a rough count on the deaths caused by each state’s rightwing agenda.

Comments

mudsludge.bsky.social•318 days ago

Agreed, and expand that to how we regulate companies that destroy people too. On a side note a podcast called ripple went deep into the Deep water the horizon oil spill and how the decisions made by the government and BP probably killed and crippled people involved

sraars.comrades.social•317 days ago

The owners of the country don’t want that.

tackmanbabcock.bsky.social•318 days ago

I’d be interested if you have a theory(s) about how we’ve arrived in such a weird arrangement, where the bodycount of various policies either isn’t germane or isn’t a polite subject.
What pressures have led to this?

mmlarthur.bsky.social•318 days ago

First thought: @epopppp.bsky.social's "Thinking Like an Economist," which shows that the longer-term outcomes (like death) of policies simply aren't conceivable in the type of economic cost-benefit analysis that is the bread & butter of policy development today.

conjugateprior.org•317 days ago

I'm not sure that's it. They're very conceivable; the development economists and QALY-slingers are happy to argue about them. What they certainly *are* is really hard to identify in practice with actually existing data (which tbf often doesn't exist because there's no appetite for the answers)

mmlarthur.bsky.social•317 days ago

Read the book--the argument isn't that they are inconceivable, it's that they are excluded from or marginalized in policy analysis due to a thought process that ignores moral values, prioritizes efficiency above all, & doesn't provide space to look at impacts beyond ~ a decade (even when we can).

conjugateprior.org•317 days ago

I read it when it came out, thanks. Working in a policy school I also recommend it fairly often. While the focus is only US development, it's an interesting and influential case.

I note the book offers one example of change to consider longer time horizons (NPV), but that's the style in action:

conjugateprior.org•317 days ago

One thing I really like about the book is its clear-eyed view of alternatives to 'the style'. In particular the dubious idea of morality as constraint rather than consideration in the policy process (left) and how the style itself gets instrumentalized for moral agendas, e.g. under Reagan (right).

tackmanbabcock.bsky.social•317 days ago

Academics use QALY and DALY certainly. There seems to me to be a huge disconnect between these being legit topics of discussion in academia with almost no acknowledgement of the domain of scrutinising harm to health and life in the media reporting on policy

jlshannonhouse.bsky.social•318 days ago

Not long ago I learned the term "measurability bias" which also means bias towards being measurable in the short term and I find it is a useful concept

mcopelov.bsky.social•318 days ago

I think it is a byproduct of the media's desperate need to pretend both parties are "the same" (i.e., normal, pro-democracy, interested in governing), despite all the signs. You can't do this & cover politics as theater if you have to write, "Trump killed millions of people by ignoring Covid" etc.

ranamar.bsky.social•317 days ago

Similarly, talking about gun deaths (which have now surpassed automotive deaths as the leading cause of dying young) is a live wire.
... and now that I think about it, many people probably don't want to hear about the causes of automotive-related deaths, either.

mcopelov.bsky.social•317 days ago

In re: "we should have done this with GWB & Katrina, Trump & Puerto Rico, Trump & Covid, etc. etc.":

https://bsky.app/profile/fouryearsagotoday.bsky.social/post/3kq5eqntjaw25

meetzow.bsky.social•318 days ago

I don't personally like that obituaries play coy about OD and suicide deaths for this reason

judigunn.bsky.social•318 days ago

Legitimate wish. Tough to implement: (a) reporters are not epidemiologists (b) reporters (the good ones anyway) hate dealing with counterfactuals. Especially hard now with widespread gutting of newsrooms.
All that said, I agree. Car-centric suburbs. Ubiquitous urban guns. Militarized police. BigAg.

przildenirbrasil.bsky.social•318 days ago

Dios te bendigas

jlshannonhouse.bsky.social•318 days ago

I don't think that is unpopular

jlynch13.bsky.social•318 days ago

WaPo did one just today

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