I don’t think this is the right argument at all. The speeding ticket analogy in particular highlights the differences.
Let me offer you another analogy that I think is closer. If a town is building a bridge. They decide to build it faster and not following any of the existing standards. Experts write to them and tell them that doing so will result in fatalities. These people are not policy makers, nor do they have experience in the subject area. They ignore all of this and build the bridge exactly as they wanted.
Predictably, there are fatalities.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to say the elected officials of the town are responsible for those fatalities, in a way that if they had built the bridge following existing standards and code and there had been some baseline level of fatalities they would not be justified
If they built a bridge to the existing standard level of safety, but didn’t exceed the standards, are they responsible for the deaths if there’s an accident? Predictably more people will die if they don’t exceed the standards.
Governments make policy decisions all the time that cause deaths - often predictably! Setting police budgets. Setting how generous to make government-subsidized health insurance. Etc.
I’d prefer folks just argue something like “USAID programs lowered mortality (see what happened when we removed them) and accomplished other goals X, Y, and Z all for a relative pittance, therefore it was bad policy to do these cuts.”
[I’d be fine with assigning death responsibility for the bridge building government if they spent what they needed to spend to build a bridge of quality X, but they routed the money to their cronies who they know will build a lower quality bridge for the higher quality price. Then, it’s not really a policy decision to build the bridge at a certain quality level, balancing budgetary concerns.]
I’m basically saying there are laws about gross negligence and other types of reckless endangerment for a reason. People can be reckless, and that recklessness can make one responsible for the bad outcomes that happen.
I get the stance you’re taking but I don’t think it squares with our general intuition about moral responsibility vis recklessness and gross negligence.
Another example: parents can be held responsible for neglect or negligence, even though bad things happen unfortunately to kids all the time. The latter does not make the former impossible to assess.
I don’t think this is the right argument at all. The speeding ticket analogy in particular highlights the differences.
Let me offer you another analogy that I think is closer. If a town is building a bridge. They decide to build it faster and not following any of the existing standards. Experts write to them and tell them that doing so will result in fatalities. These people are not policy makers, nor do they have experience in the subject area. They ignore all of this and build the bridge exactly as they wanted.
Predictably, there are fatalities.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to say the elected officials of the town are responsible for those fatalities, in a way that if they had built the bridge following existing standards and code and there had been some baseline level of fatalities they would not be justified
If they built a bridge to the existing standard level of safety, but didn’t exceed the standards, are they responsible for the deaths if there’s an accident? Predictably more people will die if they don’t exceed the standards.
Governments make policy decisions all the time that cause deaths - often predictably! Setting police budgets. Setting how generous to make government-subsidized health insurance. Etc.
I’d prefer folks just argue something like “USAID programs lowered mortality (see what happened when we removed them) and accomplished other goals X, Y, and Z all for a relative pittance, therefore it was bad policy to do these cuts.”
[I’d be fine with assigning death responsibility for the bridge building government if they spent what they needed to spend to build a bridge of quality X, but they routed the money to their cronies who they know will build a lower quality bridge for the higher quality price. Then, it’s not really a policy decision to build the bridge at a certain quality level, balancing budgetary concerns.]
I’m basically saying there are laws about gross negligence and other types of reckless endangerment for a reason. People can be reckless, and that recklessness can make one responsible for the bad outcomes that happen.
I get the stance you’re taking but I don’t think it squares with our general intuition about moral responsibility vis recklessness and gross negligence.
Another example: parents can be held responsible for neglect or negligence, even though bad things happen unfortunately to kids all the time. The latter does not make the former impossible to assess.