It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare; but in the end you still have to deal with monetary budgets that represent limited societal supply of labor and resources.
You may try to take a moral high ground and say that people are more important than $X million, but those money also represent potential housing, cancer treatment research, green energy investment, etc that won’t be financed. You cannot get away from measuring value of time and toil of people, at least implicitly. Why not then make it explicit and be mindful of it?
Also in an American context “saving money” or other “efficiency gains” anrguments appeal to a broad group of people and can build consensus. You don’t need just one message, you can have different messages for different audiences to sell them on the idea.
Also for the GP you shouldn’t call people out for having an email domain listed if you are too fearful to have yours listed. Be nice.
> It sounds very nice and morally fulfilling to denigrate any numerical calculus of welfare
Many of those "numerical calculus" measure only savings in time, fuel, etc and attribute ZERO value to saving lives, improving quality of life and even improving mental health. Such calculations are not pragmatic, they are highly ideological.
Not everything must be about increasing profits, but being responsible with the public purse to the benefit of all is a worthy goal. Of course, if you do that you quickly find many car-oriented projects shouldn't have been built in the first place.
Also:
* It is unkind and unhelpful need to make personal attacks based on the poster's national origin or religion.
* A Catholicism-oriented email provider doesn't mean they're from the US. For instance, they might live in Ireland, another country with horrifically bad urban design and a lot of Catholic people
> * A Catholicism-oriented email provider doesn't mean they're from the US. For instance, they might live in Ireland, another country with horrifically bad urban design and a lot of Catholic people
I'm sure you're aware since you live here, but for the benefit of other HN users, Catholics in Ireland and Catholics as perceived by US media are quite different. US media perceives Catholics as one of the more conservative and devout Christian variants, and my understanding is that even within Catholic institutions the US branches are considered much more conservative than Rome. However, between the decline in the Catholic Church's societal influence and the various abuse scandals that led to that, your median self-reported Catholic in Ireland is much less religiously focused than the imported born-again churches and actual overt religious devotion is much less common in Ireland overall.
So even living in Ireland, with the census figures claiming the Catholic share is as high as you mention, I too would assume anyone who is actively and outwardly religious enough to seek out an email provider on that line is American or at least influenced by American religious culture. Add to that that our population of devout Catholics are aging, so are also not the demographic who generally seeks out niche email providers anyway.
Certainly, but my point is that it's still entirely possible they're not in the US. Plenty of Catholics throughout the Americas for one thing.
Also if you come to the midlands you'll find a huge number of "Jesus I Trust in You" sacred heart posters all over the damn place. I've been asked if I'm C or P more than I ever expected. Our neighbours told us they were Catholic within literally 10 seconds of meeting us. They tried to suss out what we are by asking where our kids go to school - they fancy themselves clever. But maybe that's what I get for moving to Offaly.
The calculation given is probably not right, but every european (and ideally world-wide) infrastructure project will have a cost to benefit analysis. Even if just to decide on which project to build next.
