10 ms·
Value of life
- Destiner 3y ago> In Western countries and other liberal democracies, estimates for the value of a statistical life typically range from US$1 million—US$10 million; for example, the United States FEMA estimated the value of a statistical life at US$7.5 million in 2020 Woah that's tiny.
- lifestyleguru 3y agohaha, already in rich EU countries it's much below EUR 100k - see e.g. Germanwings Flight 9525. In other countries it tends to zero. Even in US, I don't think that life of people awaiting visa amnesty is (statistically) worth more than zero. These claimed millions are weird numbers. "Life is priceless" is very dangerous notion to believe in, because it gives treacherous sense of security. In critical situations it might be "we are not spending more than EUR 3k to save his life and EUR 3k merely pays for 100km of transport and two paramedics".
- Gys 3y agoI assume there is a big difference between the value of life and the value of dead.
- Semaphor 3y ago> Note that the VSL [value of a statistical life] is very different from the value of an actual life. The part about the calculation the EPA uses is very relevant: > Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying by 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved.” Now suppose that the average response to this hypothetical question was $100. Then the total dollar amount that the group would be willing to pay to save one statistical life in a year would be $100 per person × 100,000 people, or $10 million
- lifthrasiir 3y agoIn the other words, there is a cost function `f(p)` which is the amount of money to spend in order to prevent the fatal risk of probability p. For low enough p this function can be linearly approximated, and we named the value of `f(1)` under this approximation as the value of statistical life only for convenience. (In reality `f(1)` or even `f(0.01)` is not defined, and the true value is mostly determined after the fact.)
- ssl232 3y agoThe National Health Service in the UK maintain a value of life years, used to calculate whether to pay for the use of life extending drugs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28983924 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28983924. It's quite low in the grand scheme of things; about £30-80k/year depending on the metric.
- iams 3y agoThis is more of a negotiation tactic against pharmaceutical companies that are marketing new wonder drugs that give terminal cancer patients 1% longer life expectancy for 10x more cost. The drugs company can sell their new wonder drug to the UK for 80k a year, or not at all. That's why these drugs are so much cheaper in the UK than in countries such as the US.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> That's why these drugs are so much cheaper in the UK than in countries such as the US. Well, sort of. The drugs come to us in the UK after the US customers have paid for the R&D. That's why they're cheaper; they're not being used to fund new drug discoveries.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoDrugs dont come to the UK after R&D has been paid. UK/EU approvals times are often close to the US, but anticipated US revenue is what justifies the initial R&D spend. E.g. You are deciding if you will spend 1 Billion to develop a drug with a 20% sucess rate. Europe sales are projected at 2 Billion, and US sales at 10 Billion. It is US sales that make the expected value positive. If the US paid European rates, the product would not be developed.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> Drugs dont come to the UK after R&D has been paid The R&D funding came from the previous drug, not the current drug.
- michaelt 3y agoA person who earns $57k/year working full time from age 18 to age 68 "only" makes $2.85 million over the course of their life. Obviously, a certain premium is appropriate, to reflect all the value that isn't reflected in salary, like raising children, caring for elderly parents, chores around the house, voluntary work and so on. And there's no amount of money that will make a person whole again after, say, the loss of their spouse. But if for statistical purposes we absolutely have to? I'd say $7.5 million sounds pretty generous.
- DeathArrow 3y agoHow can the amount of money a person earns over his lifetime equal the value of his life? Are Musk, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Buffett 1 000 000 times more valuable than other persons?
- simmerup 3y agoFrom the wikipedia article where this number is taken from: > Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying by 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved.” Now suppose that the average response to this hypothetical question was $100. Then the total dollar amount that the group would be willing to pay to save one statistical life in a year would be $100 per person × 100,000 people, or $10 million. This is what is meant by the "value of a statistical life.”
- michaelt 3y agoDid you notice the bit where I said it was right and just that the value not merely be the earnings, but more besides? As to Bezos and Gates, fortunately the statistical value of a life only has to concern itself with the median person, not with outliers.
- eembees 3y agoRelated: The Micromort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
- readthenotes1 3y agoThis is why safety is third. https://mikerowe.com/2020/03/walk-me-through-this-safety-third-thing/ https://mikerowe.com/2020/03/walk-me-through-this-safety-thi...
- pcthrowaway 3y agoThis reminds me of the "infinite trolley" problem from https://archive.is/8RneE https://archive.is/8RneE (which I'm surprised just now to not see mentioned anywhere else)
- debok 3y agoSomething that wasn't really addressed in the article is that smooth operation of the economy also saves lives. To put in terms of the infinite trolley problem: The longer the trolley gets, the bigger the probability that one of the passengers is an EMT commuting to his shift, where being late could cost a life. You can add many such passengers, with various levels of complexity, where being late could end up costing a life or a livelihood. So at some point, not hitting the brakes becomes worthwhile even just in terms of lives saved. The problem is that it is very hard to measure the exact impact of "inconveniencing" the 8 million passengers. I expect many lives will be lost if you stop a train with 8 million passengers for ~15 minutes. I would probably not stop the train with even less passengers, maybe a few hundred thousand. Edit: added the last paragraph, to drive my point home.
- taneq 3y agoOnce upon a time I used much the same reasoning as your last point to calculate the expected total change in quality-adjusted life years for reducing the speed limit on our local freeway to various points. I don't remember the exact outcome (although I'm pretty sure that reducing it below something like 80km/h was a net loss) but it was an interesting thought experiment to begin with, and it got a lot more interesting once I started getting angry responses to my results. :P
- _141421 3y agoI think rewording this from "value" to "how much can we afford to spend to save a life" would be interesting. It sounds less capitalist-y and more naturalistic and grounded. On the actual value itself, it would be interesting to see a report of the actual metrics that different industries and entities use to calculate that value. I'd expect it would be very varied.
- taneq 3y agoAgreed, and the effects of this kind of positive vs. negative phrasing us one of the fascinating things to examine using tools like the trolley problem. Speaking of which, I believe the trolley equivalent of this rephrasing would be one track, one person tied to the track, one freight trolley with no passengers but with a total dollar value of $x, and one lever which will derail the freight trolley destroying it and cargo entirely. What value of $x would be worth pulling the lever?
- hef19898 3y agoSacrificing one life for money? Easy, derail the trolley regardless of cargo. Anyway, as philosophical or moral problem, the trolley question just sucks.
- taneq 3y agoThat's literally the point of the trolley problem. "You can't put a dollar value on human life, or compare the value of different human lives" is the socially accepted 'correct' answer. It's also a polite fiction, and using a mental tool like the trolley problem you can uncover what you and others actually think.
- hef19898 3y agoReminds me of a scenario that I was asked once in an assessment center (a military one): Ypu are defending a bridge, the last one across the river, the enmy is approaching, refugees are on tje bridge, the enemy crossing would mean the front collapses. What do you do, let the enemy cross or blow the bridge? My, partially smart ass answer: retreat, let tze enemy and refugees cross. Because I don't see a point in killong non-combatants to, maybe, save a situation that was screwed up months ago. Because why am I, without enough forces to hold the bridge, the last obstacle for the enemy before he breaks through? And even if I blew the bridge, I don't take out the enemies engineers, so they will just cross the river elsewhere. Since I didn't fail the assessment, the answer at least wasn't completely wrong I think.
- yreg 3y agoPlanet Money had an episode on this. I liked it, like most of their show. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-vs-the-economy https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-v... The topic is also related to yesterday's thread "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero (2022)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38905889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38905889
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- docdeek 3y agoA good movie on this concept is ‘Worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worth_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worth_(film)
- nateberkopec 3y agoGiveWell can point you to various charities in 3rd world countries where you can be reasonably certain you can save a life for about $5000-7000. https://www.givewell.org/ https://www.givewell.org/ Save 1 life in the USA, or take the same 7.5 million and save ~1000 lives in Africa. Interesting lens on which to view these numbers.
- hef19898 3y agoCost =|= Value =|= Price
- jjice 3y agoI get the cost/value != price, but what's the difference between cost and price?
- hef19898 3y agoIt costs me 100 bucks to produce and sell an item, the market is only ready to pay a price of 80. I loose 20. In terms os life: the value of life is universal (at least it should be), the cost of saving one (or ending one...) depends on circumstances. And the price someone is paying in order to safe / end said life is again something different. Edit: The value of the item initially mentioned can be anything: from the 80 for the customer at the time of purchase, 500 because it provides the customer with clean water a week later or even negaitive (e.g. because it is a replacement part, non-original, for a classic car and the resulting values of the car decreased after installation).
- 0wis 3y agoInteresting subject often overlooked in our humanist (as valuing human life over everything) societies. On the subject, the bias I have found the most often when discussing it is when someone says that « a life has no price, everything should be done to save it ». Such views often results in overlooking real risks and focusing on fears. Even if I agree that value is not cost, having a number is better for decision making than having nothing, especially in engineering projects.
- cortic 3y agoThey were reducing the speed limit in part of the UK from 30 to 20mph. Some people believed it would save 4 or 5 lives a year. I worked out that it would cost an extra 50 lifetimes a year sitting in traffic. I never posted this as the value of a life didn't feel proportional to the value of a lifetime, though i never really objectively understood why. Feels like a similar paradox to the repugnant conclusion.
- Chris2048 3y agoThese kind of talks always came up in philosophy class and I always made the same point - there isn't saving a life, we are all dying/will die, singularity permitting. Dying just means dying sooner, lifetime QoL should be the only metric for us mortals. It's just the calculus suffers from the same existential problem as abortion morality - how do you weight a lived life vs non-existence?
- gmac 3y agoQALYs are generally how this done, and don't need to be limited to medicine: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/quality-adjusted-life-year https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/... They won't help you with non-existence though.
- Chris2048 3y agoYeah, the calculus needs to be more complex: * not clear 2 * 50% QALY == 1 * 100% QALY * maybe factor in "non-existence" with expected life expectancy? * need negative QALY to factor in pain, dissatisfaction
- thunky 3y ago> the value of a life didn't feel proportional to the value of a lifetime, though i never really objectively understood why Probably because no single person loses their entire remaining lifetime due to slower traffic, vs the person who dies in traffic that does.
- pfdietz 3y agoConsider what happened after the Space Shuttle accidents. The vehicle was grounded for a long time (32 months for the Challenger accident). During that time the putative benefits of the launches were not being accrued. The stand down implies the value of these benefits couldn't be very large, given the expected number of additional astronaut lives saved during that time. In general, it's economically irrational to spend large amounts of money making space travel safer for a small number of astronauts. It would be better to just say "this is dangerous as hell; we'll pay you $10M/mission (say) to justify the risk."
- gmac 3y agoI'd say this kind of highlights the limits of economic rationality as a decision-making rule. Yes, that's rational. But being careless with other people's lives is something many people (including me, an economist) are morally not OK with.
- pfdietz 3y agoI'd say it illustrates that the Space Shuttle program wasn't actually worthwhile. When push came to shove, the supposed benefits were less than a rather piddling amount of astronaut life value. We have no trouble continuing to risk lives in other activities (the military, for example).
- gmac 3y agoQuite possibly. But I suspect the full benefits are pretty hard to assess from our armchairs. I imagine there's a fair amount of useful technology that got developed along the way, and a bunch of global cultural value (and US soft power) over several decades derived from having putting a person on the moon.
- pfdietz 3y agoThose benefiting from the spending have incentive to exaggerate the benefits up to the limit of plausibility. So, as a rule of thumb, expect the actual benefits to be less than the claimed benefits. It's certainly the case that many of the supposed benefits of the Space Shuttle (and the Space Station) didn't materialize. The Space Shuttle has the additional "negative benefit" of having retarded development of US expendable boosters. Something like an expendable Falcon 9 could have been created decades earlier, had policy been rational.
- pfdietz 3y agoAnother application of this is addressing people who say "nuclear is safer than solar/wind" and trot out some numbers they got somewhere. Assuming those numbers are correct, when you look at them, the contribution of the putative saved lives to the cost of a kWh is somewhere around 1 millionth of a dollar (I forget the exact number), and so is totally swamped by the actual differences in cost. This is not the case for lives lost to fossil fuels, particularly coal; there the contribution is significant.
- pyuser583 3y agoA lot of the “value of life” calculations are “at what point are we probably killing somebody else”. You can place an infinite value on a human life, but killing five people to save one still doesn’t make sense. Some infinities are larger than other infinities.
- josefothenio23 3y ago[dead]