Re:Study Reveals U.S. Consumers and Economy Lose Billions to...
by AnthonyMouse on Sunday December 16, 2018 @03:48AM
(#18692333)
> Two things, one: why does everything need to be perfectly optimized? And two: You're assuming that intangible benefits aren't useful. Is money all that matters?
Intangible benefits are difficult to quantify, but that's no excuse for assigning their value as infinity and assuming they justify any cost. Or for wasting resources unnecessarily.
You could try to estimate the intangible value in QALYs or some other made up thing, but it's usually best to just estimate it in monetary terms, because money is fungible and well-understood. If you lose $5000, that's $5000 you don't have to spend on fighting climate change or education or cancer research or whatever other productive use it could have been put towards if you hadn't wasted it.
And if you get $5000 in intangible value by spending $4500, you're still wasting $4000 if the same intangible value could have been produced by spending $500.
Intangible benefits are difficult to quantify, but that's no excuse for assigning their value as infinity and assuming they justify any cost. Or for wasting resources unnecessarily.
You could try to estimate the intangible value in QALYs or some other made up thing, but it's usually best to just estimate it in monetary terms, because money is fungible and well-understood. If you lose $5000, that's $5000 you don't have to spend on fighting climate change or education or cancer research or whatever other productive use it could have been put towards if you hadn't wasted it.
And if you get $5000 in intangible value by spending $4500, you're still wasting $4000 if the same intangible value could have been produced by spending $500.