> Why do I have to pay taxes for schools when I don't have any children?
This is directly related because it is often brought up by people who argue similar things and used in the same way to say 'it doesn't affect me, so why should I pay the consequences'. Paying a tax that doesn't directly help you, and having to move or live in a neighborhood which has changed for the worse are directly comparable. You say "Presuming you wish to live in a given locale for the remainder of your years, having a civilized, educated, and literate workforce available to you is surely preferred to not having one", yet this is the very thing I am getting at. The person arguing 'why should they have to deal with it' is not taking in to account that everyone would have a worse quality of life because diseases like AIDS don't stop at junkies. Not having clean needles affects more than junkies.
> This is a waste of time thought experiment.
Really? You don't get how thinking about 'letting an innocent kid die so that many people can get helped' has anything to do with this? I really thought that one was self-evident.
This is not a comparable scenario. Presuming you wish to live in a given locale for the remainder of your years, having a civilized, educated, and literate workforce available to you is surely preferred to not having one.
> Another thought experiment:
This is a waste of time thought experiment. Healthcare professionals triage all the time. Society prioritizes various goals all the time. The US could be spending the entire military budget to develop healthcare treatments, but it does not, for myriad reasons. In real life, the 5 year old has died in the past due to lack of sufficient resources, and will continue to die. It does not matter if it is ethical or unethical, politically, it will be unpopular to sacrifice a whole community’s access to healthcare so one 5 year old can live.
In any case, bringing up unrelated examples does not advance discussions.