I see the argument about the US Government’s statistical value of a life used a lot—and I’m not sure if I agree. I don’t think it echoes public sentiment—rather a government’s desire to remove itself of blame. Note how much more is spent per life on say, air transport than disease prevention.
Yeah I’ve always been a bit sceptical of this as well. Surely it’s just a yardstick that a department uses to decide between which investments it should make, rather than a considered (or even descriptive) “value of a life” for the US Government. Descriptively—the US government would spend far more for a few lives if those lives were hostages of a foreign adversary, and probably has far less willingness to pay for cheap ways the US govt could save lives (idk what these are, probably there are examples in public health). Basically—I don’t think it’s a number that can be meaningfully extrapolated to figure out the value of avoiding extinction or catastrophe, because the number was designed with far smaller trade-offs in mind, and doesn’t really make sense outside of its intended purpose.
I see the argument about the US Government’s statistical value of a life used a lot—and I’m not sure if I agree. I don’t think it echoes public sentiment—rather a government’s desire to remove itself of blame. Note how much more is spent per life on say, air transport than disease prevention.
Yeah I’ve always been a bit sceptical of this as well. Surely it’s just a yardstick that a department uses to decide between which investments it should make, rather than a considered (or even descriptive) “value of a life” for the US Government.
Descriptively—the US government would spend far more for a few lives if those lives were hostages of a foreign adversary, and probably has far less willingness to pay for cheap ways the US govt could save lives (idk what these are, probably there are examples in public health).
Basically—I don’t think it’s a number that can be meaningfully extrapolated to figure out the value of avoiding extinction or catastrophe, because the number was designed with far smaller trade-offs in mind, and doesn’t really make sense outside of its intended purpose.