How to save a life, $47,000 at a time.
After the recent snowstorm, there was much complaining over what the city of Seattle did about it. Seattle got this.
Forty-seven thousand dollars to be spent on posters and umbrellas. Even if you spend seven thousand dollars on the posters, that's still ninety dollars per umbrella.
You can tell where I'd go with this. I think the idea is laughable and expensive, and is Seattle true blue: an expensive way to deal with a problem not in a straight-forward solve-it sort of way, but in a "let's spend money and not really solve it" way. So we got that done and set aside.
Special note should be made of Richard Sheridan of SDOT, who said "We're spending $47,000 for this pedestrian campaign, which is actually a small amount of money if we can avoid just one collision or save one life."
I say horse hockey. Anyone who goes to the "Spending X amount of money is really a small outlay to save a life." You can't prove that it will save a life unless you have an exact opposite control group anyway. The city could spend the $47,000 and buy some plows. Or salt. Or sand. Or de-icing solution. That would cut down on collisions and injuries and deaths, and would get Seattle's rainbow powered unicorn factories back up and coddling people in half the time. I think people who go to the "save a life" well do so because they can't win on the merits, and will attempt to claim the high ground when someone argues the point. "You mean you wouldn't spend that money to save a life? You heartless cad! I'm done arguing with such a person."
If the city of Seattle wants to buy crates of umbrellas that will block lines of sight and get lost or stolen and trampled or broken, I suppose that's their dime since I don't pay taxes in that city. But I know that they're deeply in the hole, and Not Spending $47,000 would be a good start.
I searched through my book stacks and found The Sizesaurus by Stephen Strauss. It is a collection of the various units of measure that you're likely to encounter, and those that serve as funny anecdotes, like the fraternity pledge who was used to measure a bridge by laying down all the way across. In one of the chapters, Mr. Strauss tells the story of some Canadian governmental effort that was pitched as either $500,000 or a quarter the price of a cruise missile. Terrific expense of money until North Korea starts getting too big for their britches. The $500 billion that it cost to bail out the savings and loan companies back in the 1980s could have instead been used to buy ten round trip taxi rides from Manhattan to Uranus, not counting for tip or damage done by asteroids.
Mr. Strauss tells another story and comes up with a value for a makework project; what if the unemployed were hired to move a 25,000 foot high pyramid of pureed pig dung? If each of three hired to move this mountain of nasty was paid the world average of $2.30 and they worked eight hours a day, it would take 24 million years and cost $60 trillion. The entirety of the United States National Debt is less than 0.25 PigDungs. A bargain! A steal at twice the price!
For the price of one PigDung, Seattle could either move that mountain (and keep lots of people out of the drunk houses and the alleyways) or buy 666 billion umbrellas. And who would deny the city that opportunity?
If you think I kinda went off the rails there at the end, you're right, I did. But that's proving a point. If one person can say that some figure of money can be used to do what that guy perceives as A Good because after all, he's backing it, then I think the people who are to be on the hook for that should compare what the guy's asking for against some sort of unmoving standard? Could you solve the next snowstorm for less than fifty grand? What if you bought a bunch of shovels, sand, and gave every bum in town a shovel, a hundred bucks, a swat on the ass and said "Get to work!" That would get the streets sanded leaving several thousand dollars to have dinner at El Gaucho and cover the wine tab.
When you let ideologues hold the checkbook, they will spend the money because it isn't theirs to start with. An attoPigDung worth of common sense can solve problems more than a femtoPigDung worth of bizarre marketing campaigns.
Forty-seven thousand dollars to be spent on posters and umbrellas. Even if you spend seven thousand dollars on the posters, that's still ninety dollars per umbrella.
You can tell where I'd go with this. I think the idea is laughable and expensive, and is Seattle true blue: an expensive way to deal with a problem not in a straight-forward solve-it sort of way, but in a "let's spend money and not really solve it" way. So we got that done and set aside.
Special note should be made of Richard Sheridan of SDOT, who said "We're spending $47,000 for this pedestrian campaign, which is actually a small amount of money if we can avoid just one collision or save one life."
I say horse hockey. Anyone who goes to the "Spending X amount of money is really a small outlay to save a life." You can't prove that it will save a life unless you have an exact opposite control group anyway. The city could spend the $47,000 and buy some plows. Or salt. Or sand. Or de-icing solution. That would cut down on collisions and injuries and deaths, and would get Seattle's rainbow powered unicorn factories back up and coddling people in half the time. I think people who go to the "save a life" well do so because they can't win on the merits, and will attempt to claim the high ground when someone argues the point. "You mean you wouldn't spend that money to save a life? You heartless cad! I'm done arguing with such a person."
If the city of Seattle wants to buy crates of umbrellas that will block lines of sight and get lost or stolen and trampled or broken, I suppose that's their dime since I don't pay taxes in that city. But I know that they're deeply in the hole, and Not Spending $47,000 would be a good start.
I searched through my book stacks and found The Sizesaurus by Stephen Strauss. It is a collection of the various units of measure that you're likely to encounter, and those that serve as funny anecdotes, like the fraternity pledge who was used to measure a bridge by laying down all the way across. In one of the chapters, Mr. Strauss tells the story of some Canadian governmental effort that was pitched as either $500,000 or a quarter the price of a cruise missile. Terrific expense of money until North Korea starts getting too big for their britches. The $500 billion that it cost to bail out the savings and loan companies back in the 1980s could have instead been used to buy ten round trip taxi rides from Manhattan to Uranus, not counting for tip or damage done by asteroids.
Mr. Strauss tells another story and comes up with a value for a makework project; what if the unemployed were hired to move a 25,000 foot high pyramid of pureed pig dung? If each of three hired to move this mountain of nasty was paid the world average of $2.30 and they worked eight hours a day, it would take 24 million years and cost $60 trillion. The entirety of the United States National Debt is less than 0.25 PigDungs. A bargain! A steal at twice the price!
For the price of one PigDung, Seattle could either move that mountain (and keep lots of people out of the drunk houses and the alleyways) or buy 666 billion umbrellas. And who would deny the city that opportunity?
If you think I kinda went off the rails there at the end, you're right, I did. But that's proving a point. If one person can say that some figure of money can be used to do what that guy perceives as A Good because after all, he's backing it, then I think the people who are to be on the hook for that should compare what the guy's asking for against some sort of unmoving standard? Could you solve the next snowstorm for less than fifty grand? What if you bought a bunch of shovels, sand, and gave every bum in town a shovel, a hundred bucks, a swat on the ass and said "Get to work!" That would get the streets sanded leaving several thousand dollars to have dinner at El Gaucho and cover the wine tab.
When you let ideologues hold the checkbook, they will spend the money because it isn't theirs to start with. An attoPigDung worth of common sense can solve problems more than a femtoPigDung worth of bizarre marketing campaigns.