Putting a Dollar Value on a Life Saved

 

In 1981, Ford Motor lost millions in the Grimshaw case involving a gas tank rupture and fatal fire in a rear-ended Ford Pinto. The key fact for the jury was a memo that Ford engineers prepared for NHTSA. The memo explained that there were modifications that could have been made which would add $137 million to the production costs but the net risk reduction was only worth $49 million based on a calculus of the value of a human life. Therefore, the modifications were not cost-effective.

The jury was outraged that there was such a calculation, that there was a dollar figure on a human life. But the truth is that such calculations are made all the time.

As distasteful as it sounds we must now do exactly that in dealing with the COVID pandemic.

Every law student knows the Hand Formula set forth by judge Learned Hand (best name for a judge ever!) in US v. Carroll Towing (1947) which is that legal burden (B) or value of what should be spent to prevent harm is equal to or greater than the cost of that harm (L for “loss”) times the probability (P) it will accrue which is often summarized as B>=PL. The formula requires input of a value in the event of a negligently-caused death. Personal injury litigation often has to come up with a value of human life. Regulatory law must also do so.

Life-saving medical treatments that could extend lives are not authorized by insurance companies or Medicare if the cost exceeds the value of those additional weeks and months for the patient. We do not remove every tree or lamppost along all roads. NHTSA has an algorithm that computes road risk based on numerous inputs like the proximity of objects. Rules are then generated about setbacks, speed limits, etc., but the risk never goes to zero. We make playgrounds safer but kids still find ways to hurt themselves. We have rules for food handling, prescription drugs, flammable materials, and workplace safety but with the understanding that the risk never goes to zero short of eliminating the activity or product itself.

The current COVID pandemic has not really been subjected to a B>=PL analysis because the initial characterization of the pandemic was that of overwhelmed hospitals and two million dead Americans. The potential loss was so great that the amount we should spend to avert it was unlimited, like the need to defeat Hitler and Tojo or what parents would willingly pay to recover a kidnapped child.

But now we know (a) the overall risk is much less than first believed and (b) that with or without lockdowns tens of thousands more Americans are likely to die in the coming months and (c) the prospect of effective treatments and additional tools in the very near future appears bright. We appear to have delayed the spread with existing social-distancing methods but we do not know how much of that reduction was already built-in to the nature of the pandemic. Countries and US states with looser policies don’t appear to have rates of infection the slightest bit worse than those who have locked down tightly.

To put the matter as bluntly as possible, each one trillion dollars we lose as a result of continued economic shutdown probably now likely buys us fewer than ten thousand lives saved. That is a cost of $100,000,000 per life. We don’t spend even a fraction of that amount to prevent any other known lethal risk that will accrue for the three million Americans who will die from whatever cause over the next twelve months.  I have no idea how to make that economic truth politically palatable but the better though hard choice is to suck it up and accept the risk at hand and take only the measures we can reasonably be expected to afford as we do with every other known risk in our lives. A policy approach that assigns virtually infinite value to a life lost to one particular risk is not prudent nor is it fair to shortchange every other requirement of life and society.

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  1. Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. Coolidge
    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr.
    @BartholomewXerxesOgilvieJr

    Yes, this is the cluelessness that underlies every well-meaning statement that “if it saves just one life, it’s worth it.” If that were true, we would ban automobiles; but we don’t, because we have implicitly decided that the benefits of having cars outweigh the costs associated with them, including the inevitable cost in lives.

    Anyone who thinks that a dollar value cannot be assigned to a human life is apparently unaware of what insurance actuaries do.

    • #1
  2. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    I think the people who are prepared to throw away the economy are the most naive and fearful people in this country. These attitudes are not great compassion speaking out; they are only projections of people’s own fears of dying, and they are expecting us to willingly be dragged down with them. Not this puppy: I want to save everything about this country that shines, and that means the economics, too.

    • #2
  3. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are people who have do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    It is exactly this type of thinking that allowed the communists in Russia and China to be indifferent to the deaths of millions of their fellow citizens.

    • #3
  4. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are cold-hearted people who do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    What is your alternative?

    • #4
  5. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. (View Comment):

    Yes, this is the cluelessness that underlies every well-meaning statement that “if it saves just one life, it’s worth it.” If that were true, we would ban automobiles; but we don’t, because we have implicitly decided that the benefits of having cars outweigh the costs associated with them, including the inevitable cost in lives.

    Anyone who thinks that a dollar value cannot be assigned to a human life is apparently unaware of what insurance actuaries do.

    It’s not just what actuaries do.  It’s what everyone does, implicitly, every day in their actual life.  Everyone takes a chance every time they get in a car to go to the store.

    • #5
  6. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    The monetary value of a human life is always relative. It’s always graded on a curve. Every time you eliminate people at the end point, the curve moves. There’s a new end point. New drains on the society. 

    • #6
  7. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are cold-hearted people who do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    What is your alternative?

    Maintain our public devotion to the worth of saving a single life. 

    Do not open this Pandora’s box. Once it is opened, you’ll never be able to close it, and it will last far longer as a destructive force than the virus. 

     

    • #7
  8. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are cold-hearted people who do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    What is your alternative?

    Maintain our public devotion to the worth of saving a single life.

    Do not open this Pandora’s box. Once it is opened, you’ll never be able to close it, and it will last far longer as a destructive force than the virus.

    OK, so incur infinite cost to save a single life.  That’s your plan. 

    This is not what we do.  It is not what you do, probably.  If you really mean it, then we need to ban cars, and planes, and guns, and knives, and many other things.  I do not think that you advocate any of these things, but perhaps you do.

    So I think that your plan is not a good plan. 

    Just so you’ll know, as the OP points out, this is precisely what we have been doing in public policy and in law, for about 100 years (formally) and for all time (informally).

    • #8
  9. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are cold-hearted people who do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    What is your alternative?

    Maintain our public devotion to the worth of saving a single life.

    Do not open this Pandora’s box. Once it is opened, you’ll never be able to close it, and it will last far longer as a destructive force than the virus.

     

    I think the point is that it’s already open. I can agree that dollars should not be the criterion, but once we start enacting two-trillion dollar stimulus bills, that has already happened.  

    • #9
  10. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    I have to applaud any post that references the Hand Formula.

    It’s time for reassessment and a way forward, particularly in less dense regions of the country.  However, I continue to wonder if there is recognition of the fact that a good part of the reason that “the overall risk is much less than first believed” is due to certain measures that have been taken.

    • #10
  11. EODmom Coolidge
    EODmom
    @EODmom

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    I think the people who are prepared to throw away the economy are the most naive and fearful people in this country. These attitudes are not great compassion speaking out; they are only projections of people’s own fears of dying, and they are expecting us to willingly be dragged down with them. Not this puppy: I want to save everything about this country that shines, and that means the economics, too.

    That and they are throwing away Other People’s Money. Yours and mine etc. It’s easy when you do it that way. And they think they are buying something pretty darned valuable: power over you and me.

    • #11
  12. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    When is a death panel not a death panel?  Or is it just a nonsensical word?

    • #12
  13. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Zafar (View Comment):

    When is a death panel not a death panel? Or is it just a nonsensical word?

    When the decisions are not made by a panel.  

    • #13
  14. Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. Coolidge
    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr.
    @BartholomewXerxesOgilvieJr

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    It’s not just what actuaries do. It’s what everyone does, implicitly, every day in their actual life. Everyone takes a chance every time they get in a car to go to the store.

    Agreed. But actuaries do it consciously, while the rest of us do it without thinking about it, and many of us pretend the idea is unthinkable.

    • #14
  15. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are people who have do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    It is exactly this type of thinking that allowed the communists in Russia and China to be indifferent to the deaths of millions of their fellow citizens.

    You are missing some big distinctions. Communist regimes and all redistributionists ultimately measure lives against a fixed pie to be divided. Value as a producer or consumer is an overriding concern. In a free society, the issue is very different. It is given that resources are not unlimited, how much do we owe by way of investment to make what we do safe for others.  The entirety of American tort law is based on that question which in turn governs what insurers and businesses of all kinds must do. And the economists who lawyers hire as experts measure exactly that based on things like how we deal with everyday risks. There is no novel “commodification” or some new path opened.  

    • #15
  16. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are people who have do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    It is exactly this type of thinking that allowed the communists in Russia and China to be indifferent to the deaths of millions of their fellow citizens.

    You are missing some big distinctions. Communist regimes and all redistributionists ultimately measure lives against a fixed pie to be divided. Value as a producer or consumer is an overriding concern. In a free society, the issue is very different. It is given that resources are not unlimited, how much do we owe by way of investment to make what we do safe for others. The entirety of American tort law is based on that question which in turn governs what insurers and businesses of all kinds must do. And the economists who lawyers hire as experts measure exactly that based on things like how we deal with everyday risks. There is no novel “commodification” or some new path opened.

    _____  (Sorry–in the newest updates to the site, we’ve once again lost our ability to quote within a quote. :-) 

    This (emphasis mine):

    Communist regimes and all redistributionists ultimately measure lives against a fixed pie to be divided. Value as a producer or consumer is an overriding concern.

    is the same as this:

    In a free society, the issue is very different. It is given that resources are not unlimited,

    I can’t stop this trend, but, wow, as a public policy, this is a true slippery slope that we cannot control. 

    It affects everything we think about disability and dependency. Ultimately, it cannot lead down any other road than throwing a guy in a wheelchair off the Achilles Lauro

    • #16
  17. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    I have every right to think of my life as being infinitely valuable to me.  I have no right to demand that you treat my life as being infinitely valuable to you.

    • #17
  18. Weeping Inactive
    Weeping
    @Weeping

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are cold-hearted people who do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    What is your alternative?

    Maintain our public devotion to the worth of saving a single life.

    Do not open this Pandora’s box. Once it is opened, you’ll never be able to close it, and it will last far longer as a destructive force than the virus.

    So how do you decide, as a society, between two lives? Which one do you choose? The life that might die from the virus or the life that might die because of the shutdowns? Why are the lives that might die because of the shutdowns less worthy of being saved than those that might die because of the virus?

     

    • #18
  19. Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. Coolidge
    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr.
    @BartholomewXerxesOgilvieJr

    Larry3435 (View Comment):

    I have every right to think of my life as being infinitely valuable to me. I have no right to demand that you treat my life as being infinitely valuable to you.

    That’s really the bottom line, isn’t it? Despite what we might all say, the truth (if we are honest with ourselves) is that all life is not equally valuable to everyone. Every day, thousands of people die whom I do not care about, and there are billions of people on the planet who would not care if I died. It is to be hoped that each of us is valued by someone, but we are not all valued by everyone.

    And that’s exactly why the valuation of human life should not come from the government. Because the government will get it wrong in one direction or another. Either by treating people as commodities, or by treating every life as inifinitely precious and worth protecting at any cost. Either error has the potential to be disastrous.

    Each of us must make our own decisions about what, and whom, we value.

    • #19
  20. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Weeping (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are cold-hearted people who do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    What is your alternative?

    Maintain our public devotion to the worth of saving a single life.

    Do not open this Pandora’s box. Once it is opened, you’ll never be able to close it, and it will last far longer as a destructive force than the virus.

    So how do you decide, as a society, between two lives? Which one do you choose? The life that might die from the virus or the life that might die because of the shutdowns? Why are the lives that might die because of the shutdowns less worthy of being saved than those that might die because of the virus?

     

    You do your absolute best to avoid both. You have faith in God, that he created the people around you for a reason and that the resources to sustain human life are abundant, not limited. 

    The economist Paul Pilzer is famous for his work in abundance theory. 

    • #20
  21. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    For those struggling with the issues raised in the OP, Bjorn Lomborg’s formulation might help.  He’s generally been an opponent of the global warming agenda, though he doesn’t argue against the claims about the warming itself.  He argues that there are far more cost-effective ways to save lives.  I think that one of the main examples is providing safe drinking water in Third World countries.

    Lomborg’s formulation is to think of it this way.  Imagine that you’re a wealthy philanthropist with $100 million to spend to save lives.  This would be quite a wonderful thing to do.  What should you choose to do?

    My numbers are made up, just for illustration purposes.

    • Say you could spend $100 million to support the coronavirus shutdown, and save 10 lives.
    • Or you could spend $100 million on suicide prevention efforts, and save 100 lives.
    • Or you could spend $100 million on improvements in traffic safety, and save 300 lives.
    • Or you could spend $100 million on clean water projects, and save 2,000 lives.

    What do you want to do?

    • #21
  22. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are people who have do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    It is exactly this type of thinking that allowed the communists in Russia and China to be indifferent to the deaths of millions of their fellow citizens.

    You are missing some big distinctions. Communist regimes and all redistributionists ultimately measure lives against a fixed pie to be divided. Value as a producer or consumer is an overriding concern. In a free society, the issue is very different. It is given that resources are not unlimited, how much do we owe by way of investment to make what we do safe for others. The entirety of American tort law is based on that question which in turn governs what insurers and businesses of all kinds must do. And the economists who lawyers hire as experts measure exactly that based on things like how we deal with everyday risks. There is no novel “commodification” or some new path opened.

    _____ (Sorry–in the newest updates to the site, we’ve once again lost our ability to quote within a quote. :-)

    This (emphasis mine):

    Communist regimes and all redistributionists ultimately measure lives against a fixed pie to be divided. Value as a producer or consumer is an overriding concern.

    is the same as this:

    In a free society, the issue is very different. It is given that resources are not unlimited,

    I can’t stop this trend, but, wow, as a public policy, this is a true slippery slope that we cannot control.

    It affects everything we think about disability and dependency. Ultimately, it cannot lead down any other road than throwing a guy in a wheelchair off the Achilles Lauro.

    You don’t seem to realize that what you call a presumably avoidable “slippery slope” is already a norm for which there is no alternative unless and until infinite resources are available. As much as several additional months of life might matter to a critically ill person, no provider will spend millions of dollars to pay for the novel treatment to provide it. Is that murder?

    We do not require titanium alloy car frames or radar-equipped bumpers because it would make driving unaffordable.  How quickly the grocer discovers spills that could cause slip and fall, how often PAP smear testing is done, and a zillion other decisions, practices and policies are based on a cost-based risk analysis.  

    There is nothing moral or noble by pretending this does not happen or to decry this reality. Limited resources means choices must be made. They need to be consistent and rational—denying resources from protecting us from some risks to overprotect another is unjust as well as inefficient.

    A free market and a fair civil justice system to guide such choices is vastly superior (morally and economically) to yielding power to some politburo that values power more than people. 

    • #22
  23. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are cold-hearted people who do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    What is your alternative?

    Maintain our public devotion to the worth of saving a single life.

    Do not open this Pandora’s box. Once it is opened, you’ll never be able to close it, and it will last far longer as a destructive force than the virus.

    To do that you have to not have mass casualty situations. They are intrinsically zero sum at best. Medical care under those conditions is very different from the private practice of medicine (RIP.) It overlaps with relief in other natural disasters and wars; medical care must coordinate with disaster relief and suppression of civil disorder; the risk of lethal contagion can lead to enforcing quarantines by lethal force. These are the parameters, and contingency plans have are written. One danger is that the central planners’ tendency is to apply mass casualty criteria to things that might not be. We are seeing some of this now; one part of this epidemic is the contagious nature of CCP style social control.

    In addition, most if not all public health training programs in the US (with the possible exception of the military, and even then they must draw their faculty at least in part from mainstream academia) are under the control of the social justice agenda. So when you see someone with that MPH, think twice and pay attention to where they’re coming from.

    • #23
  24. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Society is going to eventually make a choice on risk tolerance that the various state governments are either going to have to adapt to or suppress using the force of law. We saw that 25 years ago when the 55 mph speed limit on Interstate highways was finally eliminated, after a 20-plus year run. It saved both fuel and lives, but it made driving for people outside of large urban areas with speed restrictions already in place a huge slog, and the law was being violated massively by the early 90s. Congress’ actions bowed to the reality of majority sentiment in the public, and states have adjusted speeds in part based on risk tolerance of the local public.

    That’s what you’re going to see with the re-openings — actions taken on a state-by-state, or even county-by-county level, based on not simply what officials think are the safest measures, but what officials think the people in those areas are willing to tolerate, when it comes to their freedom versus possible increases in COVID diagnoses. I don’t think any area is going to do a cannonball back into the pool of total unrestricted public gatherings without having certain things in place, including adequate precautions and protections for the local medical community. But some areas within each state are going to be more willing in general to dip more than just a toe in the water, while the most severely affected areas, or people in urban areas who fear a repeat of New York’s crisis, might demand nothing be done on re-openings until the start of summer at the earliest.

    So the freedom vs. security argument, now that it’s close to being modified, really isn’t any different than 2-3 weeks ago, when modifications were still in the hypothetical stage, because we didn’t know how the COVID-19 death toll would progress. You don’t want to force New York to reopen before it’s safe. But you don’t want to bar anyone from reopening until New York can.

    • #24
  25. Danny Alexander Member
    Danny Alexander
    @DannyAlexander

    #22 Old Bathos

    “As much as several additional months of life might matter to a critically ill person, no provider will spend millions of dollars to pay for the novel treatment to provide it. Is that murder?”

    Correction:  No *payor* will spend such sums — critical distinction.

    This sort of wicked problem often spurs innovation aimed at attaining the above sought-after outcome at a payor-acceptable fraction of the earlier cost.  *That* is where the paramount desirability of a free-market decision reveals itself.

    Prior to that achievement (a cost-non-prohibitive solution) being realized, in hyper-unusual scenarios such as a pandemic the likes of this one, *elected* officials take the helm on decisions such as this, and weigh seriously the considerations MarciN is positing.

    We rightly expect them to stay the heck out of the way in scenarios below the hyper-unusual threshold — no diktats and no rent-seeking allowed.  But we *elect* them precisely to serve as leadership in scenarios above that threshold.  (What their character and inclinations turn out to be is another matter.)

    • #25
  26. Danny Alexander Member
    Danny Alexander
    @DannyAlexander

    #22 Old Bathos

    “Limited resources means choices must be made. They need to be consistent and rational—denying resources from protecting us from some risks to overprotect another is unjust as well as inefficient.”

    Correction 1:  It’s not the choices that must be consistent, but rather the *criteria* employed.

    And indeed, the criteria menu may well expand — or even radically contract — should we find ourselves in hyper-unusual scenarios such as our current waking nightmare.  I would contend that this is what justifiably happened in the 2008/9 AIG bailout, to take a (rightly) controversial example.

    What the *choices* have to be is *effective* and fit for purpose.  Which leads us to…

    Correction 2:  The notion of “denying resources from protecting us from some risks to overprotect another” is unjust as well as inefficient *in steady-state operations.*

    However, in hyper-unusual scenarios such as our current ordeal, one might very well do exactly that.  Deliberations resulting in a decision *not* to do such radical and short-term resource-shifting nevertheless frequently employ criteria resembling the ones propounded by MarciN along the way to reaching that decision.

    For example, one can raise arguments about procedural preparedness, sufficiency of situational monitoring, and/or adequacy of investments in tools and skills, but when an enterprise is hit with a massive cybersecurity attack and/or previously unknown exploit (where the exploit’s appearance is now very much detected and its impact inescapably felt), that’s precisely what has to happen.

    • #26
  27. Danny Alexander Member
    Danny Alexander
    @DannyAlexander

    #22 Old Bathos

    “…vastly superior (morally and economically) to yielding power to some politburo that values power more than people.”

    Straw-man argument.

    • #27
  28. Danny Alexander Member
    Danny Alexander
    @DannyAlexander

    Re citing insurance companies…

    In the Property/Casualty insurance business, policies exclude coverage for eventualities such as wars, terrorist attacks, and nuclear-plant accidents.

    (Maybe one can find willing underwriters for such coverage in the Lloyd’s market; I’m talking here about P&C companies.)

    Indeed, in our current ordeal, no small number of enterprises have been locking horns with their P&C insurers over the Business Interruption Insurance policies they’ve previously obtained — only to discover exclusions (impermissibility of coverage) with respect to viruses deep within the policy terms wording.

     I can totally understand why the P&C carriers would not buckle to policyholders’ demands (to void such an exclusion and entertain their BII claims) in this context — claims adjudication costs alone could be prohibitive, and actual resultant claims payouts could bankrupt the overall industry.

    Which is why I found it exceedingly odd just the other day when President Trump weighed in on this issue, and suggested that the insurance companies ought to be open to reviewing such BII claims and be willing to issue payouts.  I would have thought that he’d let the private industry/free enterprise dynamic play out untouched.

    Now I’m beginning to wonder whether the POTUS may have actually made his remarks as a trial balloon for a Treasury-configured vehicle to permit BII claims processing to go forward, but on the taxpayers’ dime rather than that of the insurers.

    If my speculation is correct, then in effect what this means at a kind of “macro” level is that once again we’d be witnessing the application of the criteria being urged by MarciN.  The difference in such a case would be that obviously we’re talking here about the life and death of enterprises rather than human beings ((at least in a direct sense).

    Viewed through this kind of prism, perhaps we could say that the PPP is already just such an example of MarciN’s criteria being employed in the business/economic realm.  (Or is that a prism too far?…)

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  29. Suspira Member
    Suspira
    @Suspira

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    When we start commoditizing human life, we’re in big trouble.

    I realize that in the back rooms of hospitals and insurance companies, there are people who have do this for a living. But for these calculations to become part of our public policy decisions puts us one step closer to the socialists.

    I can promise one result of this kind of thinking: life will not be worth living for the survivors.

    It is exactly this type of thinking that allowed the communists in Russia and China to be indifferent to the deaths of millions of their fellow citizens.

    You are missing some big distinctions. Communist regimes and all redistributionists ultimately measure lives against a fixed pie to be divided. Value as a producer or consumer is an overriding concern. In a free society, the issue is very different. It is given that resources are not unlimited, how much do we owe by way of investment to make what we do safe for others. The entirety of American tort law is based on that question which in turn governs what insurers and businesses of all kinds must do. And the economists who lawyers hire as experts measure exactly that based on things like how we deal with everyday risks. There is no novel “commodification” or some new path opened.

    Communist regimes (and revolutionary “struggle”) are the ultimate expression of “the ends justify the means.” It’s explicit in their philosophy.

    Oddly, the more extreme flatten-the-curve measures seem to be working on the same principle.

    • #29
  30. Darin Johnson Member
    Darin Johnson
    @user_648569

    Get used to the idea, it’s unavoidable.  You can pretend you’re not “commodifying life,” but in the end you either will or will not take various actions that have life-safety implications.  Those decisions imply something about the value you have placed on life — including your own.

    You choice is not between “commodifying” or not, it is between being explicit about your assumptions, so they can be challenged and improved over time, or hiding them with nonsense bumper-stickers such as, “If we save one life it will have been worth it.”

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Lomborg’s formulation is to think of it this way. Imagine that you’re a wealthy philanthropist with $100 million to spend to save lives. This would be quite a wonderful thing to do. What should you choose to do?

    That’s definitely an improvement over the sentimental approach, but it doesn’t quite get the job done.  Choosing among interventions to save the most lives is much easier than deciding when to stop.  When is enough safety enough?  In my view, you’ve just got to be hard-headed about this stuff.  Take the bull by the horns. *

    The Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) or Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) are measures not of how much the government or Ford Motor Company value my life.  They are attempts to measure how much I value my own life.  How much more do dangerous jobs pay?  How much more do safe cars cost?  So I agree with the comment that we don’t want the government deciding how much a life is worth.  On the contrary, if the government is going to make decisions on my behalf (and it is ), it should use my assumptions about competing values.

     * Years ago I was working on a cost/benefit analysis of upgrading a generation plant.  There was some small life-safety affect due to increased pollution or some such.  My boss took the Lomborg approach.  He suggested the developer put a traffic light at a particularly dangerous intersection in town, the idea being this would save more lives than the pollution would claim.  My argument was, “If that light is a good idea, why haven’t they put it in already?”

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