One critical response to my 12 January 2015 Dominion Post article here on the need for the benefits from government scaffolding regulation to exceed the costs asserted that:

This misses the point that that decisions about people's safety at work should never be based solely on money. There is a moral test that also needs to be satisfied.

In summary, this is my response: 

• no-one is proposing that safety decisions " be based solely on money";
• all market-based cost-benefit assessments incorporate moral judgments;
• if society can save Y lives by spending $X on scaffolding, but can save more lives by spending the same sum elsewhere, e.g. on roads, how can the former be more moral?
• to propose that "safety should not be an either or" ignores the reality that we have to make choices because resources are scarce.

To illustrate, suppose you could pay $5,000 more for a car with greater safety features. That represents $5,000 less to spend on other things. Options include home improvements and safety, better education for the kids, greater charitable donations, or whatever. Moral judgments abound.

You weigh up those choices and make your decision. It could not conceivably be "based solely on money". Money is merely a yardstick. You are not choosing between money and a safer car, you are choosing between alternative spending options.

To generalise the argument, every observed market price or wage rate going into a cost-benefit analysis is a value derived from interactive human actions. All such actions reflect choices that incorporate moral evaluations. They would be inhuman otherwise.

So how would you think about a scaffolder who told you that you failed to satisfy a moral test when buying the safer car? You should spend that $5,000 on safer scaffolding next time you work on your house roof.

Well, a polite analytical response might ask why it is morally better to save Y lives from spending $5,000 on scaffolding, if a convincing cost-benefit assessment found that we could save more lives by spending the same $5,000 on making roads safer, giving Pharmac more money, or improving hospital safety.

The response that 'we' should not have to choose, we should just "do them all", is to deny scarcity. 'We' have to choose because we cannot afford perfectly safe cars, roads, houses or business activities. Cost benefit analysis helps us assess the choices.

Greater prosperity would help. Unfortunately, poor quality regulation makes us poorer.