Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential
locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall?
Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by
the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
The example reminds me of this discussion[0] between Milton Friedman and a student.
1. Friedman positions the student's view as wrong. And changes the question.
2. Friedman argues himself to the student's argument. Without acknowedging this.
3. Friedman never once acknowedges that the problem was that Ford was aware of the risks but chose to conceal them from the public, such that the public was fundamentally unable to make an informed choice.
4. That allowing people to bargain with their own lives leads to numerous other slippery-slope and logically-constrained tragic inevitabilities. Individuals almost always think they can beat the odds. They're almost always wrong.
What cost-benefit analysis almost always fails to consider are the moral and goodwill costs of making a decision which is intrinsically harmful to the customer. Most especially when not informing the customer of the full risks.
That specific clip is among the more prominant reasons I find Friedman an entirely unfaithful and bad-faith debater. He keeps moving the goalposts and using equivocations just enough that unless you're quite attuned to the fact, you'll miss it completely. And that is where he's not lying outright. Curiously enough, his son David does pretty much precisely the same thing.
Neither seem capable of admitting error either, which is the final loss of credibility.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jltnBOrCB7I