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Even if you're not being as much of a colossal arse as the headline of this story, which do you think is a better thing for money to be spent on?
It seems like you're attacking a straw man. Some people can make chair lifts and other people can make mosquito nets. We can and do have both. I also doubt that significantly increasing global mosquito net manufacturing capacity would make much of a difference. In this case, it's better for Canada to spend their tax money on chair lifts for their disabled veterans than on mosquito nets.
Just doing a quick Google search on the subject, it seems like mosquito nets are generally available in places where they're useful. Many people either choose not to use them, use them improperly, or repurpose free ones for other things.
Everyone is a tough guy for issues like this until they or a loved one need care. Nobody is ranting about communists in a waiting room.
The problem is no first world country is anywhere near finding itself in such position.
Resources are limited, but more often than not the problem lies in the allocation of those resources. If Canada can spend thousands of hundreds of dollars on bringing a giant rubber duck to a festival, it ought to be able to provide a goddamned stairlift.
I'd agree the problem is resource allocation. But also, my understanding is that basically every country has some problems funding healthcare right now — at a government level, it's not one stairlift but all stairlifts collectively, it's not one malaria net but the continuing existence of malaria, it's not one overweight person but the consequences of half the population being obese, not one person who needs oxygen at the beginning of an respiratory infection but an entire pandemic overwhelming the national supply of ICUs simultaneously, not one person whose condom broke but the entire HIV+ population as a whole, and so on.
We can, and have, picked a few things to totally eliminate, leaving us more to spend on the rest, but at the same time there are many issues we can't ignore in the short term just to speed up the permanent elimination of other issues.
But yeah, a $100,000 inflatable duck has an opportunity cost of saving 20 lives. I have literally no idea if that kind of thing generates more locally to make up for that cost — art inspires people in general, but I don't know how to quantify that in quality or quantity of lives, because while utilitarianism claims it can do that it leaves too many variables unspecified to actually do anything.
Likewise, even if you're inhumanly cold-blooded about human suffering, sports and athletics competitions drive public fitness, whereas blasé attitudes to encouraging people to kill themselves leads to other social harms (this is why I'm not comfortable with the decriminalisation of assisted suicide despite the fact that I believe the various desperately ill people who are suffering greatly say they want it as an option).
Look out, there's a Red under the bed there Joseph.
It just reminds me of the bicameral fiercely partisan political desert that lies within central north america.
I'm 60 now and dimly recall reading Rand during puberty .. it's interesting stuff for a while.
As for: > This sort of thing is only going to become more common.
The CBC article expands on the circumstances of the occurence, the investigation and dismissal of the individual that pushed MAID (medical assistance in dying) as an option, and the steps being taken to see that it doesn't happen going forward.