Re: Moral Hypothetical
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Where is the $1 billion coming from? If it is newly created wealth, then the government should encourage its creation. But if the company would just make $1 billion by taking it from someone else, then the government should forbid it, because the death resulting would be a net decrease in social wealth.
For example, you could imagine that the company discovered a tax loophole whereby it could gain a $1 billion tax credit is one (or three) of its employees is killed. Obviously, the government doesn't want to encourage the exploitation of this loophole.
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This is all irrelevant. Not the point of the question.
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How can this possibly be irrelevant? The question is what sort of private actions should the government encourage/forbid. My answer depends on whether those actions create social wealth. The fact that the company creates wealth for itself does not imply that it has created net wealth. I may have, it may not have; this is not specified by the question.
So the answer is sometimes the government should do one thing, sometimes it should do something else, depending on the nature of the wealth created.
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