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I would argue no money could buy life. If you lose your money you are still alive. If you lose your life, you lose the money too.

• heavenlyblue 2y ago
  Yes and stealing billions from hundreds if people who lose a home/ability to educate isn't the same as stealing someone's life.
• aidenn0 2y ago
  The government regularly has to calculate a baseline for saving lives; e.g. if you have to spend 3 trillion dollars to save one life, you could instead do many much cheaper things to save millions of lives. For the US, preventing highway deaths is valued at roughly $13 Million[1], which is probably what GP is thinking of; the government has confidence that for every $13MM it spends on highway safety, it can save 1 life, on average, so a new safety measure that costs less than this per life saved is a win, and a new safety measure that costs more than this per life saved is a loss. I'm sure in other contexts there are other numbers; there is no reason to think that safety interventions in e.g. mines or factories or hospitals should cost the same. Similarly if you've talked to a member of the Effective Altruism community for more than about 5 minutes you're likely to hear how you can save a life in Africa with mosquito nets for less than $10k. Clearly money can buy lives, but GP needs to justify why they are using the USDOT numbers rather than some other number. 1: https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-policy/revised-departmental-guidance-on-valuation-of-a-statistical-life-in-economic-analysis\ https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-...*