Schmidtz

Schmidtz’s piece is one of the few readings we have had that seems to takes other arguments more seriously, and understands that things are not simply black and white. His support of Cost Benefit Analysis is well placed, as is his skepticism in it. Though I agree that there are benefits from CBA Full Cost Accounting, such as the public’s ability to scrutinize and provide input in, Schmidtz does not address the issue of value enough. To be clear though, CBA, if done properly, does offer a chance for greater equity, environmental protection, and other goods. To denounce CBA in every aspect implies turning a blind eye to another tool that may help people makes good decisions (not a definite), something that makes no sense.

The other issue I have with CBA concerns values. Schmidtz makes reference to this, but he does not seem to give the idea enough weight. He falls back on the fact that we are simply human on several occasions. We are not evil, just human. Does that imply we naturally do not act fully accountable? If that’s the case then there is a great deal of work ahead of humanity.

I got a bit side tracked, but another point I wanted to mention regards the case of the neighbor with the barking dog. It says he’s not evil for keeping his neighbors up at night, since he was not fully accountable. In this case, and many others though, I believe he (or a she) is fully accountable though. The point here is that the others do not react when they have the ability to do so. One last thing to mention is the use of the Ontario Hydro case. Schmidtz final mentioning of this is that the prospects of public accounting made Ontario Hydro rethink what they owe the environment. There could be a multitude of other reasons this happened that Schmidtz does not mention, ranging from tax breaks, a new CEO, new legislation, a bad series of PR, and more. Schmidtz should not presume so much.