Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James Cox on December 20, 2012 at 11:51am

Dear Blaine:

Yes, that was my point, in a round about way. A minor correction, I would have used 'absurd', not 'ridiculous'. But with the growth of gated communities, this might not be far off.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on December 20, 2012 at 2:25pm

If we put $10K on 20 school desks in the same school they'd feel obliged to have some sort of security. Not for children? The life of a child isn't worth as much?

Permalink Reply by Reggie on December 20, 2012 at 4:35pm

Specious reasoning.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on December 20, 2012 at 6:06pm

Didn't have enough time to expand on that thought? I repeat: 

If we put $10K on 20 school desks in the same school they'd feel obliged to have some sort of security. Not for children? The life of a child isn't worth as much?

Why not actually respond this time.

Permalink Reply by Reggie on December 21, 2012 at 9:38am

I responded once before when you posted this silly comparison. Why do I need to repeat myself over and over if you either ignore it or fail to read it?

But since you are here, now, I'll spend a quick moment on it.

It is specious reasoning because you assume all things are equal when they are not. Cash is a great tool because it is liquid, meaning it spends easy. What are you going to buy with a kid? This is the same lesson art thieves learn the hard way. That $10 million dollar they just stole? Guess what? It isn't worth shit to them.

Go ahead and try taking a child somewhere and using him or her to buy something. You'll find that in almost every situation, you couldn't get a pack of gum for a kid. Then you can self-righteously berate the shopkeeper for devaluing the worth of a child as he dials the police.

Good enough this time for you? I'd hate to displease you. And let me know if you need me to do anymore of your thinking for you. If I have time, I'll lend a mind.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on December 21, 2012 at 10:56am

They are both high value items. In fact, a child is probably higher value because (to put it in market terms) a parent with the resources would likely pay much more to a kidnapper than just $10,000..

Permalink Reply by Strega on December 21, 2012 at 1:15pm

I know people who would pay that to get their pet poodle back, but how far off-topic do you want to go?  From other remarks you've made on this thread, I got the feeling you wanted the topic to stay in quite a narrow band. 

Reggie appears just to be saying that the kidnapping concept is not comparable, either in nature or by monetary comparison.  And it isn't - you have much better points raised in other postings - I don't think this one is really worth the effort of dissecting.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on December 21, 2012 at 1:28pm

It's on topic to wonder why we'd take more serious steps to safeguard money than children.

Permalink Reply by Reggie on December 21, 2012 at 10:23pm

I don't disagree that in certain terms that a child is worth more than any amount of money, especially to a parent. But the reason we guard money and children differently is because of the liquidity of one versus another.

If you steal money, everyone recognizes the value of the money and will honor that value. Kidnapping a child? Well, now you have a market of the parents only (or traffickers). Plus you have just endeavored on a much, much riskier course of action than just simply grabbing cash off of a desk. The economics don't add up. If you can't easily move something you have stolen, it is not worth nearly as much. The harder it is to move, the less a price you can command. Buyers start assuming risks and most aren't willing to risk criminal records. I used art thieves as an example because the same principles hold true with that scenario. Most art thieves don't initially realize that they won;t be able to sell their loot to anyone for even a fraction of the purported worth.

Sadly, there is a market for children and human trafficking is still a very real problem. But this is driven by organized crime syndicates that know better than to grab children from suburban schools.They prey on runaways and other individuals that won't be missed as much.

Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on December 21, 2012 at 3:07pm

RE: "I'd hate to displease you." - yeah, that often worries me a lot too --

Permalink Reply by Reggie on December 21, 2012 at 10:25pm

Your emoticon displeases me.

Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on December 21, 2012 at 4:44pm

Given unlimited resources, I'm sure people would make unlimited investments in their children, but unlimited resources don't exist. The issue here is not the value of children; it is the value of your proposed investment. Looking at it retroactively, sure paying ten thousand dollars to bring a child back from the dead is a pittance. Looking at it on a broader scale, laying down that ten thousand dollars beforehand would have been a bad investment on a longshot.

Could we say that preventing deaths is worth the longshot investment? Most likely not. Even if we placed preventing death and injury as the penultimate priority, children are statistically far more likely to die from other causes such as child abuse or childhood disease than they are from classroom shootings, both of which are causes which also require substantial monetary investments at present time.

I cannot say where the best place to spend money truly is. The point is simply that we are not weighing the value of children; we are weighing the value of potential investments on which we have a finite amount of resources to spend. 

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