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Comment by intrepidhero | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, wow. No mention of external costs makes this an incredibly naive analysis. What's the name for the fallacy of getting distracted by dollar signs to the point of ignoring downsides? "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" is a truism for a reason.

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It sets out to address a very specific question, and does so relatively concisely. I like that it doesn't get distracted and try to address every possible question.

It's worth understanding the incentives of the businesses profiting from tobacco to help understand how it is so pernicious to society. I don't think the author is wrong to highlight the profits to businesses.

I think it's fine for the article to have a focus, profitability in this case. It's an interesting thought experiment after seeing how many people profit at each stage in the tobacco supply chain to then consider how pervasive tobacco was despite all the downsides.

Why should a profitability analysis include external costs when no one in the cigarette supply chain cares about the external costs?

What are the external costs?

Healthcare is the big one

Who gets the profit vs who pays for the costs?

Smokers pay more for healthcare, at least in the US. That's an internalized cost, not an externality.

You misunderstand what externalized means. Externalized cost means external to the manufacturer. It is a phrase used to refer to a method os extracting profit while harming society/humanity/the world. It literally means a cost born by someone other than the one profiting.

The health cost is externalized for the producer because it is shifted to the consumers.

Whether someones profiting or not has nothing to do with it. A negative externality is simply any economic activity that imposes costs on an uninvolved party.

Cigarettes actually are a net reduction in overall cost. They mostly kill people before they get old enough to have really expensive conditions.

It also significantly reduces costs in terms of social security.

I suspect that is a myth. Treating lung cancer isn't cheap.

But dying before you collect social benefits is. Plus you have to consider the additional taxes smokers pay. In the end on average smokers are a net benefit to society financially.

But you have to take into account lost productivity, not only from people who died, but also people with varying degrees of illness such as Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. So I’d like to see a source for the statement that smokers are a net benefit to society.

To me it sounds too much like one of many myths the tobacco industry spread.

Here’s some research:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199710093371506

I think if you factor in not just healthcare but benefit payouts and additional taxes paid we find smokers are persecuted minority that more than pays their way. And they have a good chance of really suffering those last 10 years of their shorter life.

That study still ignores lost productivity from smokers. If you are on sick leave, you don’t pay taxes, and if you are dead you pay neither taxes or for insurance.

I think most people get sick from smoking at or near retirement age. Early 60’s seems like when lung disease begins to become noticeable.

So these are the years people go from productive to a net societal expense as they collect social security and Medicare.

I guess we don’t really know. But I think it’s probably true that smokers don’t end up costing society anymore than non-smokers overall.

Saying that, smoking is a ridiculous thing and I’ve seen how it not only steals years but makes those final 10 years progressively worse and torturous.

Uh, do you know what COPD ICU end of life treatment costs? I have first hand experience. It’s not cheap.

Such a claim requires impossible amounts of hard evidence to make.

There's a lot of casual smokers who never become that pack-or-two a day kind of extreme addict one can clearly attribute their smoking to their lung/mouth/throat cancer.

But they are still more likely to develop some kind of ailment from their lighter smoking, as it's equivalent to frequently subjecting your body to a poison that enters the bloodstream. Especially since it's not necessarily going to be a respiratory cancer, attributing cause becomes ambiguous enough to to make all the stats unreliable at best.

Consider the fact that some american cities ban wood burning fireplaces/stoves as a public health measure. And that's diffuse atmospheric smoke, nobody is sucking directly from the stacks day after day, year after year.

This is obviously false. As people die of lung cancer and emphysema they generate astronomical costs on the healthcare system. Health insurance then spreads that burden widely so healthy Americans pick up the tab. (assuming of course that markets would accurately reduce the cost of health insurance if costs of healthcare were to drop)

Healthy people that beat cancer 5 times and 20 other aliments and croak at 90 are really expensive. Not just in terms of healthcare they consume but social benefits like social security, assisted living, etc.

An obese person dying of a heart attach in their mid-50’s is a net positive to society since they have consumed limited health resources, collected few social benefits, and have contributed many social dollars.

Smokers die young before they collect most social benefits, plus they pay so many taxes. Smokers are a net benefit to society much like lotto players.

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