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People are quite fond of the idea that you "can't put a price on human life." Usually it's meant in the context of "any amount of spending, no matter how exorbitant, is justified if it saves one person." Let's put this useless old canard to bed already.
You quite clearly can put a price on human life. And, in fact, you MUST put a price on human life. It is immoral not to!
The reason for this is quite clear and quite simple: Our capacity for saving lives is limited, because our resources are limited. Every dollar spent on Bob means a dollar less for Jill. If the price of saving Bob means three other Jill's must die due to lack of resources, then it is immoral to save Bob. In other words, you must put a price on Bob's life since there is already a price on Jill's life.
Let's put this in more immediate terms. Bob requires a heart transplant. Let's say this costs $1,000,000. Ndugu, on the other hand, needs a cheeseburger, because he is starving to death. A cheeseburger costs $1. If we save Bob, it means not being able to save a quite many Ndugu's. If we say that Bob's life is priceless, it necessarily means that Ndugu's life is worthless. Now the contradiction becomes apparent.
Of course, life is even more complicated than this simplistic example. For one thing, we don't have a fixed "life saving charity fund." The greatest complicaton is in the fact that being alive is not the only good thing in the world. Quality of living and human suffering also counts for something. Suppose saving one Bob means a thousand people will not have clean water to drink. Suppose saving one Bob means a thousand people go without electricity, or without crucial medication, for a whole year. Or a whole decade. Where do we draw the line? I can't say. My only point is that a line must exist somewhere.
These are things which are impossibly difficult to try and quantify, but our goal here is not to solve economics. Our goal is to put this idiotic notion of "priceless human life" in the dustbin where it belongs. You MUST put a price on Bob's life. No one is priceless so long as other people with needs and desires are alive.
There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
 
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I like that you're thinking about this. I hope it means you try to improve the state of affairs for humanity and other life.
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I agree with you, and we've learned a little about it in class. It sounds as though you are familiar with Quality-adjusted life years (QALY) and how that can put a quantitative measure on the extension and healthiness of someone's life. It's kind of like extra time multiplied by the quality of that extra time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_adjusted_life_year
We can classify cost-effectiveness of medical interventions such as surgery and drug treatment by comparing cost per QALY. Some basic medicines like metformin for a diabetic or a statin for someone with high cholesterol is going to give a huge benefit for a very low $ cost. Where it can get dicey is with more complex things like metastatic cancers that have therapies that may extend life by several months for the price of $50,000+. I might be pulling this out of my ass but I think I remember hearing that around $50,000 per QALY is what can be used as a rough guideline for a 'cost-effective' intervention right now.
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we also have to put into calculations to what extent Bob can help other people if we choose to help him? What if it was bill gates that needed the surgery? Helping bill would allow bill to help thousands of ndugu
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Good that you've thought about this kind of stuff, but from the way you wrote this, you sound like you're trying to convince people. No offense to you, but this is very basic logic and I personally would be very angered if someone was so unbelievably stupid as to insist on the pricelessness of human life in the face of limited resources.
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This is a seemingly complex question but it ultimately leads to the nearly universally accepted notion that "human life" has no inherent monetary value. Different lives are worth different amounts of money and their value is largely based on their ability to pay back (or to have paid) for the price of their salvation, so to speak. We're willing to shell out a little more to make ourselves feel like we're civilized. Citizens are worth more money than most non-citizens for any given rich country. The ones who contribute or will contribute to the economy, more so. And then there's the QALY thing mentioned previously.
I don't think you have to set a price as you say, though. The resources either get mobilized or they don't. Tens, if not hundreds of people could have been saved with the money I cost in healthcare, thanks to the government of Canada which likes me better than it likes foreigners.
Setting a price is useless because "the line" as you say is drawn not according to a calculation but according to a bunch of factors like social acceptability of the various options at hand, as well as a shitload of variables regarding the political climate. Fixing a price wouldn't necessarily make that much sense. I don't believe that questions like this can be administered by algorithms for the same reason that PCs can't do triage at the emergency room.
This whole state of affairs is very vile and disgusting but we all agree that there's no way around it.
Note: I'm not arguing that governments and NGO's should be spending their money irrationally. They should and and do take cost into account in their operations and that's fine. But I disagree that there should be a rigid cutoff. Different contexts call for different responses.
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I definitely learned this concept in my economics courses. In Canada, the value of an arbitrary human life is roughly half a million. This goes up and down slightly from year to year. So for example, if reinforcing the railings on a bridge is prospected to save one life over its course, then if it costs $400,000, then the project should go ahead, but if it costs $600,000, then it's better to accept that casualty and use the money to save a life elsewhere. The half a million is only tailored towards the prevention of the unexpected death of a random person though. For every other circumstance, it's different, especially when it's no longer random and you are saving a specific person.
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That's all fine and dandy until it's your life or someone you love. If a person's life is worth X amount, then what would be objectionable about exchanging money if you want them dead? After all, you've paid what their life is worth. Price is quantifiable but it doesn't inform us about worth, especially of a human life. I think you reject that a million Ndugu's are worth one Bob, yet that is all we get if we merely assign them prices.
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It's one thing to use limited resources to save as many people as possible, and another thing to put a price on people's lives. You can't buy another person's life in the sense that it then belongs to you, or rather you should not be able to.
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The expression "priceless human life" doesn't mean the life has infinitely high monetary value; it just represents the belief that it cannot be simply calculated down to some amount of money. To me, it is a correct assumption, because at any given moment, nobody has an idea what the person who lives / dies could / couldn't do during his extended lifespan to "payback" for it. (Putting aside idealism, humanism etc.)
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Becomes even more relevant when you try and calculate how much it will cost to take care of our rapidly aging and breaking down (but not quite dying yet thanks to modern medicine) population. Often keeping them alive against their will to boot.
At least in the UK a quick google puts a care home at £25-30k / year depending on where you live. Factor in costs of getting a doctor or hospital visits (~£500 night, £100-200 of blood tests, £50+ X-ray(s) +/- £5000 for the inevitable hip replacement(s) + however much an ambulance costs). Gets expensive. Expecially when you consider you may just buy them another year of being unable to walk or go outside and shitting themselves in bed being fed by someone else.
For added controversy you can also factor in what people can offer people when doing these costs vs say "criminals" and "good honest folk".
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Yes, some people use "you can't put a price on human life" to mean that "any amount of resources should be spent to save a life". But I think the vast majority are aware that this is an idealistic and impracticable idea. You are completely correct that there are no solutions, only compromises. The problem with making these compromises directly quantifiable via a set amount of money is that it's easy to abuse: "Sure we skimped on safety measures in our new factory and three people were killed when that tank exploded, but at a going rate of $750K for a human life - if we now donate $3M to a cancer charity, that makes up for it."
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This work already likes that now ? Everyone got a price somewhere , the base of everything = money
if we do something like some people here would love to see, it will get EVEN WORST, don't think people will pick the guy who can eat for 5 years over the guy who got 6 million dollars for the same thing, that well know they pick the guy who got the most money and poor people can just go fuck themselves....
So think about who you are helping here while thinking about putting a price on human, because we kinda got that anyway...this goes more into a moral discussion after....
Little example how this work right now : Bob got 1 million dollars and work for a big corporation, he someone important and he needs a heart transplant, mike a normal worker and it would cost 20 times less for him to get the heart , they both need it,
Bob got the heart ( maybe he pays, while mike dies ), that's how this work right now !!
That's noble of some of you to think people would pick the poor guy who need it 20x more and it would cost 20x less for him to get it... But this doesn't work like that !!!
That's just the same for everything, when you need to go see a doctor the guy with the most money got the service
( Or fames, people who got money got shortcuts for everything ) while the other ''normal guy'' cant even see a doctor !!
the society we live in today rotten to the cores, it would need alot more change and if people start to do what you guys here want it will only get worst, so think some time
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
rofl
the price of a human life is obviously the value of their organs
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On November 25 2013 01:24 quebecman77 wrote:
This work already likes that now ? Everyone got a price somewhere , the base of everything = money
if we do something like some people here would love to see, it will get EVEN WORST, don't think people will pick the guy who can eat for 5 years over the guy who got 6 million dollars for the same thing, that well know they pick the guy who got the most money and poor people can just go fuck themselves....
So think about who you are helping here while thinking about putting a price on human, because we kinda got that anyway...this goes more into a moral discussion after....
Little example how this work right now : Bob got 1 million dollars and work for a big corporation, he someone important and he needs a heart transplant, mike a normal worker and it would cost 20 times less for him to get the heart , they both need it,
Bob got the heart ( maybe he pays, while mike dies ), that's how this work right now !!
That's noble of some of you to think people would pick the poor guy who need it 20x more and it would cost 20x less for him to get it... But this doesn't work like that !!!
That's just the same for everything, when you need to go see a doctor the guy with the most money got the service
( Or fames, people who got money got shortcuts for everything ) while the other ''normal guy'' cant even see a doctor !!
the society we live in today rotten to the cores, it would need alot more change and if people start to do what you guys here want it will only get worst, so think some time
Yes, the first world is very corrupt today. No, you can't use money to get white-market organs. No, doctors are not corrupt and money-obsessed. Please use sources when making wild and exotic claims about universal corruption in an industry that people join to save lives.
Oh, and recognizing that a human life has a finite value does not cause corruption.
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edit: I just realized you were arguing against the absurd position that no sum of money is too great to save a person  . Okay on that point I agree completely, I think anarchy said it best
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original post:
Certainly you need to put a price on a life when tradeoffs need to be made - you have to do your best to make the best decisions. But does this price *truly* reflect on the value of a person, or is it just an imperfect tool? If its the latter, and if the tool is highly imperfect, then in a sense you must admit that you can't really put a price on human life.
In all cases you need to evaluate what the "value" in life truly is. Is it value to society and what they do for others? So if a person lived on their own and didn't interact with others, would his life have little to no value? If there is an objective baseline to all of life, what exactly is it based on? I can't see any rigorous reasoning here. You can certainly assert that a person's value is their worth to society plus a certain baseline...but when it comes down to it, can you really justify your assertions? Its all very subjective, arbitrary, and quite mysterious.
Some people might argue that life can be created almost at any time without (too) much trouble making it very cheap and common, and so its not worth that much (we are just deterministic machines, billions of unique people can be created at any moment - so you're not that special). Others would intensely value that uniqueness, because of its uniqueness (even this is not very clear - why should we value uniqueness?). So the baseline is in question.
Its actually very hard to argue against the idea that altruists have more value than people who keep to themselves (in terms of their value to society). But I'm still not sure how much more valuable they are worth...because in general everyone is an altruist, we all contribute to society in some way except for the extreme hermits (even they have a role to play, however - some end up creating great works of literature or philosophical works - so practically this is hard to measure). So in this sense, even if you agree that a certain metric exists, its next to impossible to measure.
So in two senses I feel like you can't put a value on human life, both practically and theoretically. And to go back to the theoretical value of altruistic people over hedonists, I'm not very comfortable with the idea that being helpful to society makes you more valuable as a person. Theoretically, I feel like everyone has a right to make their own decisions free from any coercive requirement to assist others or going further, any implied favouritism; but practically I can see why, in reference to society, one would be 'worth' more. So then I would say that an altruist has no more intrinsic worth than a hedonist, but he/she does have more 'practical' worth. But then in that case, as argued above its very challenging to determine that practical worth. So then theoretically and practically I wouldn't say you can't put a price on life.
But we do have to do the best we can, so we take the accepted models for value however dubious and unclear they are, and use them to make decisions. But this is no indication that those models are valid.
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Money is a piece of paper that you wave in front of people to make them do things for you. It's arbitrary and inherently meaningless. It has value only in the context of society.
It's an interesting discussion, though.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/luhK5bq.gif)
