Reminds me of some of the stories in Never Split The Difference, where the author was a hostage negotiator for the FBI who would reduce ransoms (on human hostag

Reminds me of some of the stories in Never Split The Difference, where the author was a hostage negotiator for the FBI who would reduce ransoms (on human hostages) from millions to in one case, a few thousand. He relayed a similar reasoning, at the end of the day they want to get paid and a dead person is worth $0 (and potentially the swat team coming in).