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Thanks for the thoughtful comment. A lot of this thinking does line up for me, but it seems like there's something missing. Why do we all feel a little bit sick

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. A lot of this thinking does line up for me, but it seems like there's something missing. Why do we all feel a little bit sick when we hear about car executives doing calculations to determine whether to perform a recall or not? Isn't it because we're putting a financial price on life? Or is it just that the price we're hearing is too low?

epgui 4y ago
I think even if we all agree that there is a price, it’s hard not to feel discomfort about that. Depending where in the world you are, you may have grown up to believe that humans are more worthy than animals because we have “souls” or whatever that means. A lot of our culture and religion deeply reinforces the “humans are special holy magic” feelings. I won’t develop this thought to great detail unless someone wants me to. But in addition to that, you’re absolutely correct in saying that oftentimes the price we put on life is too low. In addition to that, even if the price is correct, it may be difficult for us to have a good perspective on that, simply because we are talking about large numbers (we’re really bad at large numbers), and because pricing stuff is hard. Even stocks are hard to price, and people argue with each other about wildly different price targets.
e_y_ 4y ago
The most infamous recall was the Ford Pinto, and it was particularly bad because they knew about the problem before the car ever shipped, and once the problem was known didn't fix it for years even though the cost would have been $11/car. Less directly, there's the fact that new safety features often come to luxury vehicles first, and might eventually trickle down to cheaper cars due to competition and regulation (backup cameras, automatic emergency braking). I think mostly we don't like to think about it. This comes up particularly in the health care industry. There was the (manufactured) furor over "death panels" but there's also the very real challenge of deciding whether it's worth paying possibly millions of dollars on a drug that might have a marginal-at-best improvement in someone's survival odds. And it's not just about some corporate executive's pockets; these costs get passed on to regular people through increased premiums and may cause people to drop their health insurance entirely.
- epgui 4y ago
  Indeed! > And it's not just about some corporate executive's pockets; these costs get passed on to regular people through increased premiums and may cause people to drop their health insurance entirely. Not only that, but even in first world countries (ie.: countries that have a good universal/public healthcare system), the dollar value of a statistical human life matters as well. There are waiting lists where you have to decide a priority rank of who gets the organ first, or who gets scheduled in on Monday for their surgery vs who has to wait, etc. Nobody likes that it has to be this way, and nobody wants to be the person that decides (in reality, it's often an ethics committee and there are rules and guidelines to follow), but that's how it has to be. The money used to save and extend lives has to be taken from somewhere, and it's taken from the money that represents a fraction of the population's labour one way or another (it's a bit more complicated than that, especially when you consider monetary policy, and non-labour sources of income, but the general idea stands). If you don't put a dollar value on it, then you're going to be making a lot of subjective decisions based on how you feel resources should be allocated: you're going to be taking from some people and giving to others, based on a gut feeling rather than a system. Your gut feeling might be the right one from time to time, but chances are it won't be self-consistent, and will be very biased.

epgui 4y ago

I think even if we all agree that there is a price, it’s hard not to feel discomfort about that. Depending where in the world you are, you may have grown up to believe that humans are more worthy than animals because we have “souls” or whatever that means. A lot of our culture and religion deeply reinforces the “humans are special holy magic” feelings. I won’t develop this thought to great detail unless someone wants me to. But in addition to that, you’re absolutely correct in saying that oftentimes the price we put on life is too low. In addition to that, even if the price is correct, it may be difficult for us to have a good perspective on that, simply because we are talking about large numbers (we’re really bad at large numbers), and because pricing stuff is hard. Even stocks are hard to price, and people argue with each other about wildly different price targets.

e_y_ 4y ago

The most infamous recall was the Ford Pinto, and it was particularly bad because they knew about the problem before the car ever shipped, and once the problem was known didn't fix it for years even though the cost would have been $11/car. Less directly, there's the fact that new safety features often come to luxury vehicles first, and might eventually trickle down to cheaper cars due to competition and regulation (backup cameras, automatic emergency braking). I think mostly we don't like to think about it. This comes up particularly in the health care industry. There was the (manufactured) furor over "death panels" but there's also the very real challenge of deciding whether it's worth paying possibly millions of dollars on a drug that might have a marginal-at-best improvement in someone's survival odds. And it's not just about some corporate executive's pockets; these costs get passed on to regular people through increased premiums and may cause people to drop their health insurance entirely.

epgui 4y ago
Indeed! > And it's not just about some corporate executive's pockets; these costs get passed on to regular people through increased premiums and may cause people to drop their health insurance entirely. Not only that, but even in first world countries (ie.: countries that have a good universal/public healthcare system), the dollar value of a statistical human life matters as well. There are waiting lists where you have to decide a priority rank of who gets the organ first, or who gets scheduled in on Monday for their surgery vs who has to wait, etc. Nobody likes that it has to be this way, and nobody wants to be the person that decides (in reality, it's often an ethics committee and there are rules and guidelines to follow), but that's how it has to be. The money used to save and extend lives has to be taken from somewhere, and it's taken from the money that represents a fraction of the population's labour one way or another (it's a bit more complicated than that, especially when you consider monetary policy, and non-labour sources of income, but the general idea stands). If you don't put a dollar value on it, then you're going to be making a lot of subjective decisions based on how you feel resources should be allocated: you're going to be taking from some people and giving to others, based on a gut feeling rather than a system. Your gut feeling might be the right one from time to time, but chances are it won't be self-consistent, and will be very biased.