"The Precautionary Principle and Global Warming"
Some people like it, but the Precautionary Principle is profoundly un-economic. I would guess that most of the people who like it are the same kind of people who don't understand the concept of scarcity.
From the precautionary principle, shouldn't we incarcerate people who have a high risk of committing a crime? The crime rate might go down.
Posted by: Brad | December 28, 2009 at 01:09 PM
Brad, it's not the high risk that counts, it's *any* risk. A better way to formulate the Precautionary Principle is: Never, ever do anything at all for the first time. That is, unless you fully and totally understand every single danger that anything new might occur due to that new thing, you shouldn't do the new thing at all. Since there is just about no conceivable new thing that doesn't carry some risk, no matter how small or distant, then we should never, ever do anything new.
It's an idiotic principle for idiots, charlatans, and con-men.
Posted by: JorgXMcKie | December 28, 2009 at 06:44 PM