This columnist argues that more personal freedom is worth a few more sick people dying. In other words, preventing death from disease is not a terminal goal for him; it's sacrificeable for his actual terminal goal of less government intrusion. Setting aside the mindkill potential over Obamacare, I find his choice of terminal goals worrying.
preventing death from disease is not a terminal goal for him; it's sacrificeable
You're using a wrong framework which assumes that in every choice there must be only one terminal goal, if you sacrifice anything that sacrifice is not terminal.
A more useful framework would recognize that there is a network of terminal (and other) goals and that most decisions involve trade-offs. It's very common to give up a measure of satisfaction of some terminal goals in order to achieve satisfaction of other terminal goals.
In this specific case, trading off death from ...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Previous Open Thread
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.