What value life? (1 Viewer)

[sam04u]

(my) answer to everything = utilitarianism

the value is not on the life, but on the experiences had. we should allocate resources in whichever way we estimate to produce the most net gain in ~happiness when all things are reasonably considered etc etc

I don't see why you would place an intrinsic value on life unless you're religious or something.

Putting an economic price tag on each persons life in regards to another persons opinion not that of the person themself is pretty inhumane.

I generally like to take the stance that every life is "priceless". However, this is just my opinion and therefore doesn't carry much weight in regards to individual life and death scenarios.

I think it is up to the specific person to acknowledge their own priority of living in financial terms, in regards to the value they place on preventing their own death.

The value of a statistical life can be determined by looking at a person's willingness to pay. Willingness to pay can be found by asking a person how much they would be willing to pay for good health outcomes (or to reduce bad health outcomes). It can also be determined by looking at a person's purchasing choices. An example would be looking at how much more a person would be willing to pay for airbags in his/her car. To determine willingness to pay one would look at the change in the price that occurs because of the added airbags and divide that by the change in the risk of death.

With the limited supply of resources and infrastructural capital or skill at hand, it is impossible to save every life, so some trade-off must be made.

Pretty much this.

 

[yoddle]

Feel free to start living by your own ethics.

If the value of life is infinite and we should devote as much resources as possible to keeping people alive, feel free to stop "insanely" squandering your money on the "destructive" pursuits of our capitalist system.

All you need to spend money on is basics like food, water, shelter, clothing and transport so that you can continue to work and produce income to use to help keep people alive.

There are plenty of children quite literally starving to death right now who would greatly appreciate it if you cut back on any luxuries you enjoy and instead gave the money to them to buy food and get clean water and medicine.

Surely any luxury you treat yourself to is an absolute waste of resources that could better be used to help those whose lives are in real jeopardy. Why are you wasting time on this forum instead of out working a second job to help the poor?

Obviously at some point you do value certain things more than human life, we all do. Until you pious cunts start living by your own idealistic, nonsensical ethics how about you shut the fuck up.

I see you've arrived at a place a few thousand miles away from my point.
That being that Western culture (I suppose you could include many modern Asiatic nations as well) puts the status quo, the preservation of economic growth and the capitalist system ahead of the entire reality of existence.

This has little argumental bearing on me getting a second job so I can send more money to children in the Third World.

What is 'idealistic' and 'nonsensical' is thinking that current standards of living enjoyed by those in the First World can be maintained (let alone spread to those less materially well off) without irreversible and unacceptable damage to the real (i.e. ecological) systems that support human existence.

And for your big fat information Bradley, I have started taking a number of lifestyle decisions that support my ethics.

ITT: loquasagacious makes a brilliant post explaining the fallacy of the life is sacred argument. Everyone ignores it and throws in their two cents, going on precisely the same sentimental, emotionally charged rant he had already discredited, totally ignoring his challenge to explain their position.

If louquasagacious gets overly upset by people chucking in their two cents worth and ignoring the OP, then I'm sure he would have stopped posting years ago, as it invariably occurs on every single thread in NCAP.

 

[Pyrokinetic]

I don't agree with quantatively measuring the value of human life but i can understand how and why the need to do so would arise. I think the main reason people refuse to acknowledge that a dollar value can be rightfully given to human life is not because of religion but because it challenges and touches a chord in our common humanity.

We are all trapped within our own unique solipsistic view of reality whether we are religious or not (im agnostic), but to address the polemic issue raised by the OP, we need to -if only hypothetically- remove ourselves from that perspective and think about matters pragmatically. I think this post nicely places the issue into our most immediate contexts:

Feel free to start living by your own ethics.

Anyone care to explain how we deal with the problem of scarcity if we are view all life as infinitely valuable? How do we make decisions about how to ration finite resources.

Also if all life is equally valuable, should we spend the same amount of money saving the life of a 70 year old as on a 5 year old? Or the same amount on a convicted rapist as on a renowned scientist?

Anyhow, i'm a fencesitter on this issue. I think in debates like on things like this we just end up caught in a loop of our own making, which in its own peculiar way reflects the root of controversy surrounding the issue. Because true, the fact that the value of human life has become a problematic issue is in a way an ode to our capitalist world and its materialistic indoctrinations. But we can't deny its relevance to today's society.
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[Raaaaaachel]

I see you've arrived at a place a few thousand miles away from my point.
That being that Western culture (I suppose you could include many modern Asiatic nations as well) puts the status quo, the preservation of economic growth and the capitalist system ahead of the entire reality of existence.

This has little argumental bearing on me getting a second job so I can send more money to children in the Third World.

What is 'idealistic' and 'nonsensical' is thinking that current standards of living enjoyed by those in the First World can be maintained (let alone spread to those less materially well off) without irreversible and unacceptable damage to the real (i.e. ecological) systems that support human existence.

And for your big fat information Bradley, I have started taking a number of lifestyle decisions that support my ethics.

No sir, you have arrived a thousand miles from my point, and from your own original point.

The comment I initially responded to was:

The whole notion of putting a monetary value on life (human or nun-human) because of perceived "rationality" is a symptom of our fundamentally flawed culture.

That at some point the value of money begins to exceed to the value of human life so more time and energy can be spent on building roads to support an inherently unsustainable and destructive economic system is insane.

So if human life is always more valuable than money, as you just said it is, then you choosing money and luxuries purchased with money, over helping the poor and the sick is hypocritical.

 

[Raaaaaachel]

Because true, the fact that the value of human life has become a problematic issue is in a way an ode to our capitalist world and its materialistic indoctrinations.

Capitalism just means an economic system free of intervention, where the means of production are privately owned.

It is not inherently materialistic.

Under such a system people are entirely free to pursue non-materialistic goals. They may set up communes, or various communities dedicated to simple lifestyles and ecologically sustainable living. They may pursue religious or spirituals goals rather than materialistic goals, whatever they choose.

What we have now is not capitalism, but corporatism, where government interference and spending is enormously high and continually growing, where even in the USA industries are increasingly being nationalized, and where everything that is still privately owned is stifled by more voluminous regulations than have ever existed in history.

 

[Pyrokinetic]

Capitalism just means an economic system free of intervention, where the means of production are privately owned.

It is not inherently materialistic.

Under such a system people are entirely free to pursue non-materialistic goals. They may set up communes, or various communities dedicated to simple lifestyles and ecologically sustainable living. They may pursue religious or spirituals goals rather than materialistic goals, whatever they choose.

What we have now is not capitalism, but corporatism, where government interference and spending is enormously high and continually growing, where even in the USA industries are increasingly being nationalized, and where everything that is still privately owned is stifled by more voluminous regulations than have ever existed in history.

Oh wow. Wasn't aware of the distinction, thanks for clearing that up.