What's the cost of a billion deaths?
The great professor Peto has declared that a billion people are going to die from smoking.
At least he knows how to get a headline. But in this case, the wreaths he sees are not the wreaths of a billion smokers who have wheezed their last. He is seeing the wreaths which mark the death of academic respectability at his University: the once great Oxford. Now even their professors have to stoop to sensationalism like some superannuated Russian Count to get noticed. Except that even we would not stoop quite so low, not least of all because those Mongolian horses have left the count unable to stoop at all.
The professor missed one trick: he should have put a monetary value on each life. Say each life was worth $10,000 (too much for your average peasant, but the Count is in a generous mood today). He could have then declared that smoking was going to cost the world $10,000 billion ($10 trillion or gazillion or whatever they have for loads of dosh which someone should be giving to the Count).
The inevitable conclusion is that we should Do Something to stop the world heading to smoking cataclysm. This mainly involves banning people from what they want to do: teh normal busy bodies banning bug. At some stage, it doubtless involves giving more money to the good professor to investigate the problem further.
The bullshit is so deep, Hercules needs to come along and clean it out. Lacking a river to cleanse the professors bollocks, we will take a shovel to his bollocks and see what we can do. I hope it is more painful for him than it will be for the Count.
1) The billion people is over 100 years, so that is ten million a year out of a population of 6,000 million. One in six hundred people will die from smoking every year. Is that a terrible price for smoker's to pay for a life time of pleasure?
2) When will these smokers die? If they all keel over at the age of 28, then that is a problem. If they all die after they have retired, then what precisely is the problem?
- the smokers will have had a good few decades of smoking and contributing lots of fag tax at the same time to lucky non-smokers like the Count who has always liked the notion of peasants supporting his lifestyle
- they will have finished bringing up their offspring. Hopefully the offspring will have been taught to smoke to provide more taxes to defray the Count's tax bill.
- they will no longer be economically active, so the taxpayer will be relieved of a burden.
I think the professor wants us all to live long and miserably, without any pleasures, while we become an increasing burden on our families and the state. When the Count goes, I hope to be shot by an insanely jealous husband as I am caught in bed with his wife and his daughter.
3) Where does his billion come from? Sounds suspiciously round to me. Even he admits that most of them will be in China. He should go there. From Beijing to Hong Kong there is a foul permasmog which cuts visibilty down to a few hundred metres: the Chinese will have choked on their own pollution long before they choke on their foul cigarettes.
He should do another estimate: how many people die from living each year? Roughly 100% of all deaths are a consequence of living. Perhaps we should therefore ban living, which in the professor's case would be a very good idea indeed.
At least he knows how to get a headline. But in this case, the wreaths he sees are not the wreaths of a billion smokers who have wheezed their last. He is seeing the wreaths which mark the death of academic respectability at his University: the once great Oxford. Now even their professors have to stoop to sensationalism like some superannuated Russian Count to get noticed. Except that even we would not stoop quite so low, not least of all because those Mongolian horses have left the count unable to stoop at all.
The professor missed one trick: he should have put a monetary value on each life. Say each life was worth $10,000 (too much for your average peasant, but the Count is in a generous mood today). He could have then declared that smoking was going to cost the world $10,000 billion ($10 trillion or gazillion or whatever they have for loads of dosh which someone should be giving to the Count).
The inevitable conclusion is that we should Do Something to stop the world heading to smoking cataclysm. This mainly involves banning people from what they want to do: teh normal busy bodies banning bug. At some stage, it doubtless involves giving more money to the good professor to investigate the problem further.
The bullshit is so deep, Hercules needs to come along and clean it out. Lacking a river to cleanse the professors bollocks, we will take a shovel to his bollocks and see what we can do. I hope it is more painful for him than it will be for the Count.
1) The billion people is over 100 years, so that is ten million a year out of a population of 6,000 million. One in six hundred people will die from smoking every year. Is that a terrible price for smoker's to pay for a life time of pleasure?
2) When will these smokers die? If they all keel over at the age of 28, then that is a problem. If they all die after they have retired, then what precisely is the problem?
- the smokers will have had a good few decades of smoking and contributing lots of fag tax at the same time to lucky non-smokers like the Count who has always liked the notion of peasants supporting his lifestyle
- they will have finished bringing up their offspring. Hopefully the offspring will have been taught to smoke to provide more taxes to defray the Count's tax bill.
- they will no longer be economically active, so the taxpayer will be relieved of a burden.
I think the professor wants us all to live long and miserably, without any pleasures, while we become an increasing burden on our families and the state. When the Count goes, I hope to be shot by an insanely jealous husband as I am caught in bed with his wife and his daughter.
3) Where does his billion come from? Sounds suspiciously round to me. Even he admits that most of them will be in China. He should go there. From Beijing to Hong Kong there is a foul permasmog which cuts visibilty down to a few hundred metres: the Chinese will have choked on their own pollution long before they choke on their foul cigarettes.
He should do another estimate: how many people die from living each year? Roughly 100% of all deaths are a consequence of living. Perhaps we should therefore ban living, which in the professor's case would be a very good idea indeed.
posted by Count Kostov at
4:20 pm
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