When people with a pet cause talk about their pet cause, they like to quote what their pet cause “costs society.” For instance, let’s say I’m really against tattooing. I’m not, but let’s pretend I am. Then I could say something like, “Tattooing in America costs society $95 billion a year!” I could even append a footnote showing how I arrived at that figure: I multiplied the estimated number of tattoo parlors in the country (15,000) by one million dollars, to estimate the amount of money actually spent on tattoos: $15 billion. Then, I added $22 billion for “health complications” from tattoos, and of course $58 billion for “lost productivity” from tattoos.

In other words, I just made it all up. And now, other people can cite my $95 billion figure without my crazy footnote, and very few people will think to question it.

Except, Thomas C. Greene might question it. He added up the publicized “costs to society” of just a few social ills, like smoking, drinking, and gambling (but not tattooing), and found that their combined costs exceed the total supply of money.

(Finger-wag to Rob.)