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The troubling question here isn’t really what price to put on saving lives, but rather why we would divide our resources in such a way that such questions are m

The troubling question here isn’t really what price to put on saving lives, but rather why we would divide our resources in such a way that such questions are meaningful in the first place. We live in a world of great abundance of every measurable sort, and insistence on putting economic expansion ahead of protection of our friends, families, and neighbors would be better analyzed using the lens of ethics rather than that of finance.

ikeboy 6y ago
Resources are scarce. There's no way around that. There is always a way to spend more resources to decrease the probability of death by some amount. We could, say, ban driving except by professional trained drivers, and get rid of tens of thousands of deaths per year, at the cost of "only" a hit to the economy. Should we do that?
- alex_young 6y ago
  Highway fatalities are not an epidemic. Would this analogy hold up if we instead considered the cost of defending against an invading army? Would it really be reasonable to ask if we had enough money to build the machinery to hold them at bay? In past times we and other successes societies have worked in concert to defeat threats to our collective and worried about fixing any economic consequences later.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    I mean, that's a different argument than saying value of life doesn't matter. Value of life is relevant when comparing different possible actions that cost different amounts of resources. If it's clear that the benefit is more than the cost, you might not actually have to do the analysis. But if the cost is measured in trillions of dollars, then it becomes very relevant to see exactly what the expected benefits are. If the invading army is going to kill a hundred thousand people, and defending against them requires using up resources equivalent to letting five hundred thousand people die, then it's very much a question that should be asked.
rayiner 6y ago
You overestimate how much "abundance" there is. Every year, about 3 million people die in the US. Say we could extend each of those lives a few years by spending $1 million. That would cost $2.8 trillion, or almost a quarter of what we aren't already spending on government services. Spending just half that over 10 years would nearly eliminate the black-white wealth gap in the U.S. Which is a better use of the money?
- alex_young 6y ago
  It's interesting that you bring up race here. Have you considered the greatly increased death rate among Black people in the current pandemic? Black people are dying at a rate more than 1.5 times higher than their population share [0]. I'm also not sure what you mean about my estimation of abundance. We have all of the resources we need to focus our efforts on minimizing the spread of this disease and building the infrastructure to find a cure. What resource do you think we lack? [0] https://covidtracking.com/race https://covidtracking.com/race
downerending 6y ago
To quote the movie: Gotta be rich in the first place to think like that.

ikeboy 6y ago

Resources are scarce. There's no way around that. There is always a way to spend more resources to decrease the probability of death by some amount. We could, say, ban driving except by professional trained drivers, and get rid of tens of thousands of deaths per year, at the cost of "only" a hit to the economy. Should we do that?

alex_young 6y ago
Highway fatalities are not an epidemic. Would this analogy hold up if we instead considered the cost of defending against an invading army? Would it really be reasonable to ask if we had enough money to build the machinery to hold them at bay? In past times we and other successes societies have worked in concert to defeat threats to our collective and worried about fixing any economic consequences later.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  I mean, that's a different argument than saying value of life doesn't matter. Value of life is relevant when comparing different possible actions that cost different amounts of resources. If it's clear that the benefit is more than the cost, you might not actually have to do the analysis. But if the cost is measured in trillions of dollars, then it becomes very relevant to see exactly what the expected benefits are. If the invading army is going to kill a hundred thousand people, and defending against them requires using up resources equivalent to letting five hundred thousand people die, then it's very much a question that should be asked.

rayiner 6y ago

You overestimate how much "abundance" there is. Every year, about 3 million people die in the US. Say we could extend each of those lives a few years by spending $1 million. That would cost $2.8 trillion, or almost a quarter of what we aren't already spending on government services. Spending just half that over 10 years would nearly eliminate the black-white wealth gap in the U.S. Which is a better use of the money?

alex_young 6y ago
It's interesting that you bring up race here. Have you considered the greatly increased death rate among Black people in the current pandemic? Black people are dying at a rate more than 1.5 times higher than their population share [0]. I'm also not sure what you mean about my estimation of abundance. We have all of the resources we need to focus our efforts on minimizing the spread of this disease and building the infrastructure to find a cure. What resource do you think we lack? [0] https://covidtracking.com/race https://covidtracking.com/race

downerending 6y ago

To quote the movie: Gotta be rich in the first place to think like that.