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Liberty vs risk equation I have often wondered if we could accurately and scientifically measure the risks of a free society and those impacts on determining wether or not a freedom is worth that risk.

1: Can we effectively measure liberty as a risk and if so what would that measurement look like.
2: Could we make it consistent enough to use as a tool to better balance the risks associated to liberty within a society.

Liberty is risky, we have the freedom to make decisions and live or die by those decisions as individuals and not just in ways that effect us as individuals but also within a free society. So how do we calculate the risk and liberty variable to both the individual and the society.

Pate49 6 Apr 23
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I'm not sure that there is a good answer that works for all parties. It seems to me that "Risk Management" equals "Regulation". But conversely, the lack of risk management seems to lead to "Socialize the Costs, Privatize the Rewards". Too much of either leads to a corrupt society and the only way out is with "Personal Responsibility"-- which is why it will never work.

Can you clarify the relationship between Risk management and regulation?

@Pate49 IMO, that's essentially what Risk Management is on a large scale. How else can you institutionalize it?

@jwhitten I’d disagree, by their nature yes they may share similarities, but they are different. Regulations create risk through noncompliance based on a secondary perspective that may have no value. Regulation is designed to inhibit all know associated risks where risk management is designed to inhibit specific risk vs action. Infact I’d argue that most regulation laws are and extreme version of risk management.

@Pate49 Okay, I'm listening-- what would you substitute for regulation in your theory of risk management?

@jwhitten No regulation at all, as I said risk management is focused on a single part of a larger whole. See the example I offered towards the bottom of the thread. I could be wrong in my observation or even wrong in my description of its potential measurement.

@jwhitten for context between the two, I worked in biotech manufacturing for 10 years. Very regulated industry. Many of the regulations caused more problems than safe solutions, but we had to comply with them regardless of their direct or indirect effects.

@Pate49 Okay, so how would 'no regulation at all' address / reliably mitigate risks and thus be considered 'risk management'? (Apologies for seeming pedantic, I am wanting to understand your view here).

@Pate49 No doubt, but I would posit that simply dropping all regulations would have been equally problematic-- unless.... 'X'... What is 'X' here?

@jwhitten Does it make more sense to you if presented as, if you look at regulations as a State driven concept rather than an individual concept whereas risk management is more focused as an individual concept rather than a State concept. I’m guessing maybe I need to break this overall concept down into its most simplistic forms and determine the definitions then rebuild it.

@Pate49 Okay, 'individual concept'-- Where is the 'mitigation assurance' part happening? And how do we know it happened? As an outside observer, let's say a potential consumer, how am I assured that the risks have been correctly identified, mitigated and/or resolved.

I guess what I'm not understanding here is how / where any of this departs from my original supposition in my original comment?

@jwhitten There is no assurance in either concept. You can never mitigate 100% of the risk under either concept. The argument is based on a lowest common denominator. Much like the gun argument at the bottom. I made a base calculation that may help with understanding. Calculating the number of deaths that are acceptable in risk from the individual to another party.
1 being the lowest that any one person dies as a result of the liberty should it be restricted?
100,000 being the number reached for a restriction of liberty at its maximum acceptance level. How do we calculate that number for each risk vs liberty variable? I must be having difficulty articulating the idea. It’s core works in my head, just having difficulty presenting the concept for others to understand. I’d also add that it could be measured both on the basis of each individual as well as societal.

@jwhitten I guess my main goal would be to offer an individual a way to calculate a choice that effects both themselves and those around them in a scientific manner. I’ll use cars as another example. Cars kill an average of 35-40k people per year. But while we make them more safe there is fewer people trying to ban them because they are useful and almost everyone has one. So the risk is in the use, they are dangerous but accept the risk because of their utility. But when you take a gun, which also kills people even in fewer number than cars there is far greater demand to limit or outright ban the freedom of owning one. So why is this? Why would individuals seek to limit one and not the other despite there being more deaths related to car use? Can we measure this discrepancy? Is there a calculation that could answer why an individual would limit one freedom and not another? Could we create a common calculation that could be used to measure the risk of any given freedom and wether or not it is worth that risk?

@jwhitten So take this example, and then present it to an individual. Let’s say they want to ban guns but not cars. So you present the calculation that either shows error in their logic or supports their reasoning. You could apply the same to Drugs, Alcohol, Immigration and many other aspects of freedoms and and their risks.

Take the immigration concept. If we allow 50 million immigrants into the country, a result of that leads to another 10k murders, rapes and violent crimes per year as a result. This is in addition to the current populations crime rates. Is the risk of freedom to immigrate worth the additional 10k murders, rapes or violent crimes per year? And how would a rational argument be made to either accept this result or deny the freedom of that action?

@Pate49 It's not so easy when you start to assess the risk to a consumer for say, buying one brand of baby formula over another. How do you determine whether or not you're buying a safe product? How do you gauge that risk? How do you mitigate it? How can you be certain that the company you buy it from is being honest and forthright about the ingredients it contains, their safety for infants, and yada yada yada. And more pointedly, how does someone without the personal means or education level to do their own homework / testing able to be assured of buying a safe product?

@jwhitten Valid question, not sure how it’s relevant to the topic but I’d say most people can’t or don’t have the time to do so. This is why I said risk management and regulation are separate concepts. Even regulation has its massive failures related to its utility. All federal and state agencies have lots of failures under their belt. My argument is based more on helping that individual make better choices and decisions. The focus of which is more based on freedom of action.

@Pate49 I responded to your earlier post before I saw this one.

So let's take your example of guns and cars-- the true number of deaths per year don't matter for discussion apart from magnitude, I'll accept your numbers.

So if we look at the value proposition for a gun, it's basically a dangerous item which is designed to kill, maim and intimidate, which can be used for personal safety and protection, and in some instances for hunting and acquiring food, and it can be used for nefarious purpose such as committing robbery, rape and murder-- to name a few. And we postulate that some number 'X' of the population owns one. I suppose there is one more observation, that it can be used against you if its found or taken away. Then there is the follow-on risks associated with being in or near a person who has or owns a gun, or being in a location where there is a gun. And the risk to children for finding a gun, etc.

If we look at the value proposition for a car, it's also a dangerous item, but it is not intentionally designed to kill or maim, but rather to carry and convey people and cargo from one location to another. It can be used for rescue, travel, in some instances lodging, tools platform, and a whole list of other utilitarian use cases. And we postulate that some number 'Y' of the population has one. It can also be used in a nefarious way to kill or to maim and in some cases to intimidate. It can also be misused and accidents and deaths do occur.

When you state that guns kill fewer people than cars you have to point out that there are orders of magnitude more cars than guns and in the hands of a far wider swath of the population. Another point to make-- which could be a nit-pick, but it's not for nothing, is that there is SOME portion of 'gun owners' who go specifically out of their way to use the gun to kill and maim people. I agree this is a criminal offense, but it is part of the overall death toll and danger from having them in society. I am certain that cars occasionally get used in a similar way, but I have to believe that the number of instances of that are severely less.

Though you could potentially make an argument for people using cars while under the influence of drugs or alcohol or otherwise impaired in some manner and the harm they cause as a result. It isn't a function of the primary use but it happens often enough that you would probably be justified in bringing it up and considering it relevant.

Finally, I'm sure there is some bright spot out there somewhere who could correlate all of this with various gathered statistics that would place a number on each potential concern and thus provide a quantified level of "risk" with respect to the number of cases that appear overall in any given segment of the population.

But I'm not sure how you could take those objective quantifiable statistics and somehow manipulate them through some subjective process which ultimately boils down to emotion-- e.g., how you "feel" about the relative "value" and/or some assessment of "utility" in ownership for that item in your life, e.g., the "liberty" quotient !?!?

That's the part that I am having a hard time with in this example.

@Pate49 In this example (of immigrants) you have (presumably) actual, quantifiable and verifiable numbers-- statistics-- you can use to compute the attendant rise in risk, if any.

So, after we look at immigrants-- and I'm not saying this is your original angle, but just following the example-- should we then look at crime stats by race? Age? Gender? What is the 'risk to freedom' in, say... allowing single men in the age range of 16-28 loose and roaming the streets? How far do you want to take this concept?

What if we find there is a huge correlation in death-- i.e., 'risk to freedom' in eating hamburgers-- what do we do about that? And it isn't just 'risk to freedom' really, we're also talking about rise in cost to the taxpayer-- to the individual for various programs and policies.

@Pate49 Ah, I misunderstood where we were in the conversation. Okay, scratch that then.

@jwhitten Perfect, that’s a barrier I was missing, quantification of those other variables. Great feedback on these last posts, I’ll have to dissect them further. I’d also add to your point that I don’t think you’d have to manipulate the numbers. Offer them at face value, ultimately it’s the individual who must decide what to make of the numbers and how they’d interact with them in their final decision.

@Pate49 Yes, but if your goal-- which I thought it is what you wanted at the outset-- is to come up with some quantifiable determinant which is correlated with 'Liberty' aka 'Risk to Freedom', you'll have to find a way to crunch those numbers or else you're still talking about subjectives-- 10 times 'emotion' equals.. ??

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Total liberty should always exist at the federal level. The individual then has the power to mitigate their own risk by choosing their associates in business and social settings. Assholes will be 'outed' by the group. You are still held to the behavior standards of your community.

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It can be hard to quantify something subjective.
But I can certainly see that one could plot a graph of liberty vs. risk on any particular issue.
The one you mentioned, guns comes to mind as does decriminalizing drugs.

I think the hardest thing to plot / grasp is how much people value people put into liberty or security.

What might be interesting is... since some states ban things that other states allow... we might have 50 risk vs liberty laboratories.

Do you see a way to remove the subjectivity or a way to take a real scientific approach to its measurement?

@Pate49
I'm not a scientific method kinda guy. Not that I don't believe in it, I'm not sufficiently educated in it.
With social science... perhaps the most difficult part of the analysis process is finding an entirely neutral qualified observer. And I'm neither of those.

@An_Ominous I think we’d be hard pressed to find such objectivity these days. Either way I appreciate the perspective.

@ObiRonMoldy I don’t think it really needs to be that precise. It’s more a logic question to some degree. Variables are very important but at some point you have to say that’s enough before making a decision. Maybe we could use IBMs new quantum computer lol

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An example: When mitigating the risks of freedom are those risk negated when transferred to another party such as government or do they still exist just at a different level or are we merely transferring those risks to another person or persons on our behalf. Such as guns, take away the freedom of guns by the individual to negate the risk but that risk is then passed onto police. Does the risk increase or decrease both for the individual who gave up the liberty and for the party now responsible for it?

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