Any such inquiry should include more data than just the gross frequency of fatalities or crashes versus the presence of happy hours in the locale. The time of the crashes, and the time of the happy hours matters. That is, it is less plausible that happy hour drinking between 5PM and 7PM would cause a crash at midnight than a crash at 8PM.

So, a statistical study that accounts for the time of happy hours and the time of drunk driving crashes or fatalities would more plausibly establish or eliminate causation in the post hoc ergo propter hoc sense.

That said, I do not know what studies actually exist, or whether they account for those times, though I suspect that most only use gross frequencies of crashes versus presence of happy hours, as did the statistics mentioned in the cited news reports. I do know that automobile accident reports typically include the time of the crash as well as some indication of the involved drivers’ BAC, so the data should be readily available for anyone who undertakes a more refined study.

Cars kill people. I don’t like that about cars. Hate it, actually. But cars do so many things to improve the human condition. Cars also save lives by creating a robust economy that allows us to have an economy that leaves money left over for cancer research, charity and a zillion other ways that lives and saved and the human condition here is improved.

Now compare the value of cars to the value of discounted drinks. I submit to you that not only do I believe that cars and discounted drinks have different social utility, everyone else in the world does too.

But I think it is fair to say that using my hypothetical that if happy hour killed 10,000 people a year, you would still support that wholeheartedly. It is a valid opinion if you want to push all of your chips to the center of the Pure Libertarian table. But I think few Americans would go this far.

You are thinking far too small. All things that live die. Birth is the ultimate cause of all deaths. The most effective way to reduce deaths is to outlaw birth.

That’s 50 lives out of how many and how much would it cost to save them? At what point is the cost too high?