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We assign value to human life all the time, in dollar terms or otherwise. And we most certainly assign a higher value to certain lives over others, you just do
by helaoban 7y ago
We assign value to human life all the time, in dollar terms or otherwise. And we most certainly assign a higher value to certain lives over others, you just do it implicitly. It’s the reason you don’t drop everything you’re doing in your life right now to go fight HIV in Africa, or aren’t organizing protests in front of the White House Lawn everyday to try to prevent the US from dropping another bomb on a Pakistani village. The personal and economic costs to do so are too great, therefore you’ve at least placed an upper bound on the value of those lives, which is something like the cost of maintaining your current lifestyle. In fact, the the true price of those lives can probably be approximated by looking at how much you’ve actually contributed in dollar terms to trying to preserve them, which is basically zero.
Are you saying that it’s immoral to at least consider the implications of a prolonged economic shutdown, or to advance a timetable for reopening that isn’t contingent on waiting 6 months for a vaccine?
Save us the sanctimony, you and everybody else is engaged in the exercise of assigning different values to different lives everyday.
- camgunz 7y agoHi, let me try and defuse this a little. I'm sure we're both doing our best and these are trying times. Let's endeavor to be civil and not assume things about each other. For example, you have no idea what I did all day, so let me tell you. I work in social good, trying to close the access to justice gap. The way I justify not taking a plane to some hotspot is that I think I can "do the most good" (in the immortal words of Hillary Clinton) as a software engineer working in this field. I'm not letting you in on this to high road you. I also bought a new phone instead of donating that money to COVID relief, for example. Rather, my point is that we need to find sustainable ways to improve the world. We're not gonna solve genocide, famine, etc any time soon, and we shouldn't beat ourselves up for enjoying life while we work to improve it. It's the only way it will ever get done. > Are you saying that it’s immoral to at least consider the implications of a prolonged economic shutdown, or to advance a timetable for reopening that isn’t contingent on waiting 6 months for a vaccine? I'm confident that isn't what I said. Consider away. Please don't minimize the danger of COVID-19.
- helaoban 7y agoSorry if I sound irascible, but I think my point stands. Any reopening of the economy before the entire population is vaccinated will necessarily put some lives at risk. The destruction being wrought by continued mothballing of the economy is awesome, and it may well result in the premature deaths of millions of people. Pointing this out is not minimizing the danger of covid-19, it’s putting it into context. And accusing somebody who entertains a perfectly normal line of reasoning of engaging in a “ghoulish” exercise of human life valuation is a perfect example of virtue signaling.
- camgunz 7y agoYeah I'm also a "recessions kill people" person, and people I'm close to personally are struggling. If we're gonna have a reasonable policy discussion about this, my understanding is the plan is to not evict/foreclose/repossess for the time being, and print money to bail people out. That seems within our power. Containing the spread of coronavirus without sheltering or a massive testing regime doesn't. It doesn't solve everything, people's lives are put on hold in more ways than just financially and we need to keep looking for answers. But again I think we can figure that out.