Re:Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what woul...
by HWR_14 on Wednesday August 23, 2023 @11:54AM
(#37237983)
That's distasteful but necessary. It's when we start making policy by valuing peoples live based on economic output that things get bad. Otherwise you end up killing a healthy young person to harvest their organs for old people at the top of their career.
Notice the comment being objected to was "is the night watchman's life worth 3.2 million"
Re:Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what woul...
by goodpoint on Thursday August 24, 2023 @05:59AM
(#37246984)
No, measuring loss of income due to premature death is very different from saying "was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars".
On top of that, making healthcare decisions based on future income goes straight against ethical guidelines. By your logic people unable to work due to disability, age or serving a life sentence would be denied any healthcare.
It feels quite icky to do this, but it is necessary when making policy decisions.
Every day, governments and corporations decide to spend (or not spend) X amount of dollars to save Y number of lives. Does it make sense to spend some money on infant mortality prevention, vs research on cancer types that only really old people get? What about seatbelt laws? Or pollution prevention?
Ideally, we would rationally spend our limited money on providing the best life for the most people. Not that this actually happens for a variety of reasons.
If we are to get the best value for our money, then we need to assign a value to human life in terms similar to disability-adjusted life years (DALY):
https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr...