posted
The snake eating the frog thread has fostered a discussion of the nature of people and the nature of animals. Many questions have come up as to the internal life of animals, the relative value of animal vs. human life, the distinction between companion animals and food animals, and so on. It's very interesting.
It has made me want to consider in more depth, the value that we should place on other humans. As a human being, what responsibility should we feel towards other humans, and why? To what lengths should we go to continue the human race, to protect individuals? What should we base these choices on: morals, genetic directive, emotion?
The specific case came up as to who would you save, in a hypothetical situation, where you were only able to save either a person or a pet. To me, the answer seems obvious, that human life trumps animal life, but it seems that the case is not so clear to others.
I would like to examine why I feel that it is so obvious that we should give humans our utmost attention in any life and death situation.
Things in the real world are tricky though. How do you weigh the value of a group of humans to an entire species of animal, as with loggers and the spotted owl? How do you weigh the value of the desires of a human group against the survival of an area's native life, as with the clear cutting of rainforest?
If everyone doesn't even agree at the most basic level, one human vs. one animal, I can imagine that as the questions become more complex, so will the discussion.
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posted
From a purely economic point of view, humans have zero scarcity value. And pets are highly unlikely to be superstitious.
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posted
I doubt that is the case, based on the sale price of human organs, and presumably on human slaves. I'm missing the point about pets being superstitious.
I find your point interesting though, as it forces me to consider economics as one of the reasons to value humans over animals.
What value can we assign to a person vs. an animal, based on economics?
I would guess that in almost all cases, a human would be assigned more value from an economic standpoint than an animal. Based purely on part costs, humans are highly valuable for organs and sperm/egg donation. In terms of labor, over the course of a lifetime nearly any human should be able to produce a higher dollar value in labor than an animal. Humans can amass wealth, whereas that is nearly unheard of with animals, baring the few cases where people will their estates to pets.
I can only imagine a very few cases where it would be possible to assign a higher economic value to an animal, a stud animal for example, or a particularly rare species. Still, I believe that a human would tend to have a greater potential for wealth than even many of these cases, as the human might invest in any number of things or work in any number of jobs, while the animal has a very specialized function at best.
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posted
Well, these are good points, actually. On the other hand, most humans can be replaced as economic actors by a different human; an animal might be fairly unique. Also, to get the organ value, it's actually necessary not to rescue the human, since there is a silly objection to using organs belonging to living ones.
About superstition, I was trying to imply that I'd be less likely to rescue a religious human. Not a problem with animals.
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quote:On the other hand, most humans can be replaced as economic actors by a different human; an animal might be fairly unique.
Doesn't the truth of this fact make you a little bit hesitant to consider people as merely economic actors?
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quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: Doesn't the truth of this fact make you a little bit hesitant to consider people as merely economic actors?
OK, let's consider other factors.
From a genetic standpoint, it seems that humans should be predisposed to want to help other humans. As a community, we improve each other's chances of survival. As a species, are we not inclined to want to survive? Unless you're specifically fighting against another person for resources, it would seem natural to work together with another human.
How about morally? Aren't we morally obligated to value human life over non-human life? In fact, I would argue that any moral system MUST place a high value on human life and welfare. Unless the only goal of a moral system is directed toward the afterlife, it must encourage the betterment of the human condition.
Is there a moral or religious teaching that places a higher value on animals than people?
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posted
You could use the economic analyses that count the value of lives lost due to accidents. In car crashes, for example, the values range from around $1 million to about $5.5 million (depending on circumstances).
Now, some of that is the cost of responding to the emergency, and some is the cost of legal fees, and medical bills (yes, even dead people rack up medical bills).
The component costs that would be worth considering in this discussion, would be:
- Quality of Life Years lost: People have value in themselves, and losing that time (versus a normal human life span) is a legitimate cost component -- at least for accidental death. I don't have a number for that right now. I'll try to look one up, but of course it is AGE dependent.
- Lost productivity: There's marketplace productivity lost when employers have to recruit and train a replacement. The US Army, for example puts a cost of $40,000 to recruit and train a new soldier when dies or deserts. There are statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that can be used, or you could just adopt the model for car crashes which NHTSA estimated to be about $724,000 per death.
There's also household productivity losses. I'm not sure I understand fully what goes into these estimates, but it's the loss of productivity of a household when a person in that household dies. I know one part of that is the time away from work, but it might be lost earnings in the household. I'm not really sure, as I said. That comes in at about $225,000. (I'll try to get more info on this).
These numbers do vary by state. I've quoted the ones from California which are not THE highest, but are up near the top of US states. (Massachusetts is generally higher than CA, for example).
Anyway, the dollar value for someone suddenly "not being there anymore" is about a million dollars.
That's an average, of course.
NOTE: I normally don't bring these types of calculations into general discussions. The numbers are useful for specific purposes -- trying to gauge the cost of injuries and deaths on our highways, for example. They aren't intended for use in assigning a value to a person. It's more like 'what does it cost society to lose one of us?' rather than 'what is Bill worth right now to society?'
Subtle difference, but one I will insist upon if people would like to use this type of analysis. I'm not about to seriously assign dollar values to people's lives, so please, also, don't flip out about this and start making accusations or calling it ghoulish. It has a purpose. Mostly it has to do with the need to present data in a form that decision-makers (legislators) can understand and that can plug easily into cost/benefit analyses that are REQUIRED for most program planning purposes.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Well, these are good points, actually. On the other hand, most humans can be replaced as economic actors by a different human; an animal might be fairly unique. Also, to get the organ value, it's actually necessary not to rescue the human, since there is a silly objection to using organs belonging to living ones.
About superstition, I was trying to imply that I'd be less likely to rescue a religious human. Not a problem with animals.
Animals also seem to have the same propensity for religion that atheists have KOM. I confess my initial reaction is disgust that you have such disdain for the religious, but please explain to me your logic behind saving say a fellow atheist over a Christian. Given the same choice Ill be honest I could not choose on that criteria alone, in fact for some the fact one is a Christian makes one more likely to save the atheist.
Do you feel that a religious person is much more likely to commit social ills throughout their life time than an atheist, empirically speaking of course.
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posted
Well...I have seen atheist sites saying that the prison population has a lower percentage of atheists than the general population, which would seem to indicate that yes, religious people are in fact more likely to commit crimes.
However, I haven't seen anything from a neutral or official source, nor do the statistics seem to take into account the possibility of conversions in jail. I'd say there's a possibility that atheists as a group may be better members of society, but that says nothing about individuals, nor does it prove causation. After all, it may be that higher education tends to result in higher levels of atheism and lower levels of crime.
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quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: Well...I have seen atheist sites saying that the prison population has a lower percentage of atheists than the general population, which would seem to indicate that yes, religious people are in fact more likely to commit crimes.
However, I haven't seen anything from a neutral or official source, nor do the statistics seem to take into account the possibility of conversions in jail. I'd say there's a possibility that atheists as a group may be better members of society, but that says nothing about individuals, nor does it prove causation. After all, it may be that higher education tends to result in higher levels of atheism and lower levels of crime.
Oh there is at least ONE reputable study that showed that among scientists, the more education they have the less prone to belief in God much less organized religion. The only exception seemed to be Mormon scientists, who show the exact opposite effect. Ill see if I can find it.
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posted
Bob - your figure for the cost of any random human life is actually quite off, at least according to the latest economics research I've seen (I attended a seminar on the topic this summer). In the U.S. the average human life is valued at roughly $15 - $20 million, depending on the model you use. This number can be found in two ways - either adding up the costs, as you did, or checking the costs of our actual "life-saving" policies vs. the number of lives they save, to see what price we're actually putting on human life. Either way, you tend to get an answer that dips not much lower than $10 million, and can go as high as $50 million. The most recent literature, as I said, estimates the cost to be somewhere between $15 and $20 million *in the U.S.* Other countries can have very different costs, but you can't make cross-country inferences without violating the assumptions of the models.
For the ethical debate on human life vs. animal life, I suggest people look to Peter Singer (modern ethicist) and the people responding to him. Two good books are Writings on an Ethical Life by Singer and Singer and His CriticsPosts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Jhai -- as you might or might not know, one of our board members, sndrake, has a bit of a feud going with Singer over disability issues; he's a member of Not Dead Yet ( http://www.notdeadyet.org/ ) who finds Singer's positions on the issues . . . wanting, and often based on demonstrably questionable assumptions.
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posted
Yes, I know of sndrake and his views. You'll note that I never said I actually support Singer's views on the different issues he's written on - on most of them I'm undecided or feel I haven't read enough yet to make a judgement. However, Singer is fairly accessible to the lay reader, delineates the issue clearly, and, when you read him along with his critics, you get a good idea of the different sides to the issue.
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posted
This is true, we read a fair bit of him in one of my philosophy classes for similar reasons. Someone needs to write some similarly accessible essays tackling Singer's own issues . . .
edit: but in a positive fashion
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for a completely different reason, I'd love to have a reference for the figures you cited. Any chance you can give me author and journal, or at least point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
btw, the research on crash costs has been conducted by the same group of authors for decades. They are quite skilled, but it's always good to have another viewpoint. If it turns out that the traffic safety community is using a value that's much lower than the norm for other analyses getting at the same issues, it'd be interesting to pursue that.
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posted
Bob- Well, the seminar was presented by an ABD at Georgia State. I checked her CV and the main paper she was working on on this topic is forthcoming in Enviromental and Resource Economics. I can email her for her working paper, if you'd like.
I have no idea how large the literature is on this topic, although it sounds like something that economicsts would be morbidly intersted in. Through Google Scholar (Estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life) I've found a couple of article on the topic, one of which is a review of previous literature. If you email me, I can send those to you. Most of them seem to be using a very different technique from the one you've used - they use differing hazardous risk in careers vs. the apparent salary premiums to see how much extra employers have to pay their employees to risk their life. Lots of assumptions going on there, but you can read the literature to see for yourself.
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