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I think it's always economically advantageous to ignore the health of workers and let them birth and raise more workers and then die at a fairly young average a

I think it's always economically advantageous to ignore the health of workers and let them birth and raise more workers and then die at a fairly young average age. See the history of slavery, factory workers, miners, etc. I would be very surprised if any pandemic intervention that focuses on quality of life or especially lives saved is going to look positive by most economic metrics. Specific to the article; the traditional analysis with fixed value per life concludes that lockdowns were positive. The "preferred analysis" with a sliding scale from infants valued at $24M and 85-year-olds valued at $500K is negative. The total costs also look screwy; there's a line item for "lives lost from economic restrictions" with cost of $4015B. Divided by $7.8M per life would be over 500K people, which seems absurdly high. Yes, if one assumes as fact that almost as many people will die from economic restrictions as from Covid then of course the lockdowns will look bad in almost any light. I can't find any reference to how that line item was calculated.

avmich 5y ago
> I think it's always economically advantageous to ignore the health of workers and let them birth and raise more workers and then die at a fairly young average age. I don't see much economical benefit in my health deteriorating and me living much less than I otherwise could. I also don't see much economical benefit in being suddenly displaced from a privileged position and, at best, sent to a prison in a country which just shed excessive inequality - so prisons aren't that good. So - which economical advantage you're talking about?
- benlivengood 5y ago
  > So - which economical advantage you're talking about? We're fungible in the economic sense. A healthy person can replace us if we're too sick to work efficiently. I favor valuing people's quality of life over economic metrics for that reason.
vikingerik 5y ago
> would be over 500K people, which seems absurdly high It's quite possible. Depression and suicides and overdoses are up significantly. Cancer and heart disease are up from lack of screenings and treatments now delayed and backlogged by over a year. Obesity is way up from closing gyms and sitting at home consuming Ubereats. I'm not venturing guesses on the magnitude of those factors, some of which won't play out for years. And you're right that any such claim needs to provide a lot more detail. But it's quite possible that the cumulative human toll of the lockdowns will indeed be worse than that of Covid itself.
imtringued 5y ago
Banks grant credit (bank money on your account balance) through debt contracts. Money is only worth something if there is a person that is obligated to work for the money. The common man's understanding of money is that money is an object that can be owned like gold. If credit could be owned like an object it would be equivalent to owning another person's time. What does it mean to own the time of a dead person? Of course, you can't own it, it is gone. It's nothing but a promise. A homeless person might get by alone but a rich person is wholly dependent on society. Destroying society is the same as destroying the source of their wealth.

avmich 5y ago

> I think it's always economically advantageous to ignore the health of workers and let them birth and raise more workers and then die at a fairly young average age. I don't see much economical benefit in my health deteriorating and me living much less than I otherwise could. I also don't see much economical benefit in being suddenly displaced from a privileged position and, at best, sent to a prison in a country which just shed excessive inequality - so prisons aren't that good. So - which economical advantage you're talking about?

benlivengood 5y ago
> So - which economical advantage you're talking about? We're fungible in the economic sense. A healthy person can replace us if we're too sick to work efficiently. I favor valuing people's quality of life over economic metrics for that reason.

vikingerik 5y ago

> would be over 500K people, which seems absurdly high It's quite possible. Depression and suicides and overdoses are up significantly. Cancer and heart disease are up from lack of screenings and treatments now delayed and backlogged by over a year. Obesity is way up from closing gyms and sitting at home consuming Ubereats. I'm not venturing guesses on the magnitude of those factors, some of which won't play out for years. And you're right that any such claim needs to provide a lot more detail. But it's quite possible that the cumulative human toll of the lockdowns will indeed be worse than that of Covid itself.

imtringued 5y ago

Banks grant credit (bank money on your account balance) through debt contracts. Money is only worth something if there is a person that is obligated to work for the money. The common man's understanding of money is that money is an object that can be owned like gold. If credit could be owned like an object it would be equivalent to owning another person's time. What does it mean to own the time of a dead person? Of course, you can't own it, it is gone. It's nothing but a promise. A homeless person might get by alone but a rich person is wholly dependent on society. Destroying society is the same as destroying the source of their wealth.