The World Has (Probably) Passed Peak Pollution

Re:The World Has (Probably) Passed Peak Pollution by hiAndrewQuinn on Friday May 10, 2024 @06:33AM (#40317273)

True, true. The evil vizier-economist's answer would be to notice that statisticians tend to estimate the value of a human life at around $10 million on average, and then notice that raising a child in the United States costs a paltry $250,000 or so over 18 years, and finally start to wonder how they can facilitate smoothing out that discrepancy across space and time to the parents' benefit. I"m not crazy enough to think far along those dimensions, but there is a big mismatch here that I think would be core to any secular solution to the problem.

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Re:The World Has (Probably) Passed Peak Pollution by faeriechangling on Friday May 10, 2024 @01:32PM (#40321591)

I rarely run into a person that values their own life as high as 10 million dollars, unless they're quite wealthy.

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Re:The World Has (Probably) Passed Peak Pollution by kaashif on Friday May 10, 2024 @02:28PM (#40322280)

Really? I would value my life much more than that.

I think how the question is phrased really matters.

How much do you value your life? Or how much would someone have to pay you to kill yourself?

Are these even different questions?

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Re:The World Has (Probably) Passed Peak Pollution by faeriechangling on Friday May 10, 2024 @03:19PM (#40322864)

I was recently buying an older car and calculating out how much buying a newer car with more safety features was worse by assigning a value to my life/health and the risk of death and the risk of injury. I see used cars which generation over generation have major safety upgrades which, if you value your life at 10 million would probably save you 10 grand or so over the life of the car, having a gulf in price of a few thousand, and most of that value difference wasn't because of the safety features.

I guess it's possible people are just ignorant, but in general I see people especially men acting recklessly enough with their lives that they seem to not ascribe the highest values to them. They would rather have a shorter life where they have more money and other things.

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Re:The World Has (Probably) Passed Peak Pollution by hiAndrewQuinn on Saturday May 11, 2024 @12:04AM (#40325884)

On the other end of the spectrum, I probably give much more inherent value to my life than the average person (probably closer to 20m than 10m, if I were to spreadsheet it out) and it drives a lot of risk-averse action on my part.

Driving was one I decided on early: I didn't get a driver's license until 25, to get well out of the danger zone for auto accidents; and then less than a year after I got it, I moved to Finland (an uncommonly safe country in its own right) and I've been living off of public transit and bike paths that aren't thin painted lines next to motor traffic ever since.

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