The Value of Life

We act as if human life is beyond monetary values in the west, as if we will pay any cost to preserve life but this is evidently untrue. This is an illusion that both society and state are happy to go on pretending or believing as it brings comfort and keeps order. We may well give anything and everything to preserve our own lives or the lives of those we love but to what lengths would society go to preserve those lives? While society may in some cases go to extreme lengths to preserve a few lives in exceptional circumstances this is not the norm, we may personally go to any lengths to avoid death in some situations but, as I shall attempt to show, this is not always possible and we must place a value on our selves so as to guide us in many of our choices.

In economic terms the value of a life is an easy calculation based on estimated remaining working life and that persons salary. This assumes that each person is just a tool capable of performing useful work and does not take into account the affections other people might have for the person in question. This more sentimental angle would bring us to a different figure based on how much each of our friends and family (including ourselves) would give to keep us in their lives. Even if in each case it was everything that people would be willing to give the final figure is still a finite monetary figure, as is the economy's way of evaluation. The concept of sparing no expense in the pursuit of saving lives is paradoxical as part of the cost of everything is made up from pieces of peoples lives, be that the time invested in the work or any risks involved in that work. We could only permit the top of the range safety features in cars as an example of how society could be more focused on saving lives and less so on saving money. The problem with doing this is that it is a lot more work and resources to produce only vehicles with the best safety features which would mean people have to invest more into getting them. Safer cars cost more and this cost is paid for in life, the only fundamental currency people have at their disposal. The argument boils down to something like would you rather sell some additional hours from your life now or risk not having those hours later. In neither scenario are the hours really yours. You can even work out which is the correct choice based on the risks, your earning capacity and the cost although this does assume at best that you don't enjoy working and at worst that it is comparable to being dead. Almost every choice we make is a gamble with some or all of our life with the returns being a bit more life or some enhancement to it. We buy the cheap car to save some life in paying for it at the risk of having an accident and losing it all.

It is in this regard that we often seem more callous with our own lives than those of our friends and family. We must do most of our gambling with our own lives, each time we cross the road or eat something it is ourselves we put at risk, however small. Certainly our friends and family can support us financially or invest in reducing risk on our behalf (such as a parent buying their child a bike helmet) but this only accounts for a portion of the gambles we take on a daily basis. As I already asserted we not only have an economic value but also a sentimental value to those close to us and so it is in their interests we minimise our own risks, however it is far less at their expense if we conform to their wishes than it is our own. In essence we are both at risk if I am careless with my life yet only I am really able to pay the costs of lowering our shared risks associated with my life. This is why our parents often seem overbearing and patronizing, generally we are a very important person in their lives and so they advise us continually to reduce our risks while often not taking their own advice. While a bit of an obscure statement and entirely unconfirmable I would assert that if a parent were to become one of their offspring somehow they would act either as themselves or the child but certainly not as per the will of the parent towards the child before the transmogrification.

For those we don't know it is easier to ascribe a monetary value upon their life but it may seem impossible to place one upon ourselves or loved ones. When asked what value we would place on our own lives and those of our loved one we might well say priceless, not measurable financially. and we might truly believe that however our actions would betray this statement. Earlier when I gave the example about the car safety I suggested you could work out which was the correct choice (the expensive safe car or the cheap dangerous one) given various bits of data. We can use a similar method to work this backwards and calculate what people actually value their own lives at in a monetary sense based on their actions. To do this we need to assume that people are always correct in their choices which is a risky assumption that cannot be relied on, however with the average of your values from many different choices you would get a good approximation. This leads to some unpleasant conclusions, the most notable being that, from what ever angle you look at it, richer peoples lives are worth more than poor peoples. Those who earn more are more valuable to society, if not directly to the majority of people then certainly towards capital. Those with more money will make choices that show they value their life and those of their friends and family highly in monetary terms compared to the actions of poorer people. This is not a law but a strong trend, there will be plenty of exceptions where wealthy people live very recklessly but not enough to upset the correlation.

When asked about the relative values of human life most westerners will say that it is equal for all people, or if they do differentiate it will be based on age, health or perhaps even potential such as a very bright person or a very good person. They will not entertain the idea that wealth begats a more valuable life despite the fact that our capitalism directed choices indicate exactly that. Morally we try and act as if we were operating within a communist state and economy. I am unsure as to why we cling to this belief against all the clear evidence. It could be that it undermines our self esteem if we accept that wealthier people than us are more of a person than we are. It could be that it is very hard to value other people due the the simplifications and assumptions of the methods I suggested making people unwilling to try, people value things differently and so it is far simpler to make everyone equal. It could be religious tradition that has kept these values of equality strong within society. It could be the stigma of fascism that has steered society away from accepting a reality where we do all have values like any other commodity. More likely it is a combination of these factors and perhaps others too.

The real question is does this illusion matter? Does it cause any inherent problems in society? This issue causes me difficulties as I am a lover of truth yet I too, despite the evidence, believe that life is precious and worth more than the monetary value we can place on it. I also believe that we have an equal right to exist regardless of your wealth. ( The right to an existence within a society is a slightly different matter as it does depend on your actions, which should they be criminal starts to pose problems but we can assume in this instance that all in question are not impinging on the freedoms of others). I live with the paradox that means I think the well paid doctor is worth more than the layabout however I think they have an equal right to exist. The justification of this paradox is that they are measured in entirely different currencies which are not directly linked. The value of a person is an economic concept which applies only where money is relevant. Beyond that scope this method of valuation has no uses. In areas where money is not a factor you should be using a moral currency to assess the value of people. You are able to relate in this manner what the present exchange rate is between moral currency and real money however you are unable to infer things about one based on the values given by the other.

Each society will have a different country wide average value of life based on the opulence of that nation. You will find this very apparent if you travel to a range of countries, the more developed ones will have much more health and safety regulations, rules will be stricter and better upheld. This is for the simple reason that it is not economically practical to invest more into preserving life than it is worth, the country will become worse off, the people it is saving are costing them more than they are returning to the society on average. As a country develops and its people command more wealth the whole nation become more precious regarding life, the state will be seen to go to greater lengths to preserve it and people will act more cautiously placing a higher premium on themselves. Certainly much of this is due to an aversion to being sued rather than the higher values of life directly but this amounts to exactly the same thing, it is because the values of life are increasing that people are willing to invest in legal protection against loss of life, injury and so forth.

By increasing the wealth of a nation you not only make life more valuable in economic terms but you also increase the value of morality. This is why it is often said that some people are only moral because they can afford it and some are only immoral because they cannot. This does not mean that the rich are more moral than the poor in action or belief nor does it say anything about the morals themselves, all it does is illustrate that the exchange rate between moral currency and real money changes as monetary wealth increases. We have no tangible or quantifiable way to redeem moral currency and so things are related in monetary terms which distorts our perceptions of morality a little.

Most of how the world works is inseparably linked to money and so the moral value of a person is generally less relevant than their monetary value. The social illusion of wealth not relating to how we treat people at least helps to preserve the important idea that there is a value outside of wealth to which we can give each life in this ethereal moral currency. It supports the idea that there is more to life than money. I therefore see little problems with having this social illusion despite it having the feel of misinformation and the occasional noble yet impractical actions of people. The correlation between an increase in wealth, efficiency, technology and productivity of a nation and an increase of the economic value of life of its citizens gives us some evidence that life and morals are more important than money as we invest ever more into them as and when we get more to invest. We give what we are able to in the pursuit of such things and so this too should give direction for the evolution of society, to place itself in ever better positions to be able to give more towards life and morality. We should not be advancing in production and technology not so we can have more stuff but so we can have more morals and more life.

I have bitten off rather more than I can chew on this topic which really deserves a book rather than an essay. There are many areas which I have not touched on that are relevant to this topic and those which I have included are given in the briefest possible terms. The value of life spills into many different disciplines from philosophy to economics to psychology which I have not explained when they crop up either. All of these factors muddy the waters and make it hard to make any clear statements about things without resorting to gross assumptions.

A quick example of a psychological effect which complicates my assertions is that we a beings of relativity and of experience. We become used to how life is and are less able to give up things we have. If life gets steadily better we remain content yet if it gets worse we quickly become miserable. Some people are obviously better or worse suited to changes and will react in different ways but if we accept the general premise we can draw some conclusions about the overall trends in society. It implies that although life gains monetary value as its situations improves it loses what I can only describe as used value. A new car is worth some amount but after it has been used it will be worth less, some cars hold their value far better than others. When the life of a rich person in some way becomes “used” due to some misfortune that diminishes the quality or value of that life it loses far more value to the person wielding that life than would be the case if the same misfortune occurred to a poorer person. I am not sure as to the relevance of this observation, nor to where it fits in exactly into the whole picture of the value of life. In some respects it warns against advance in society which is preposterous. The remedy hopefully lies in the sphere of psychology as one commensurate with the advance of society cannot exist in a purely economic form. I shall explore this concept a little further in an upcoming essay on the state of man which I am presently working on.

To conclude I do not think the illusions of life being invaluable are a concern for society. They serve as a reminder that life and morality are more important than money and therefore as a pointer to the direction forwards for society. We would all do well to avert the misinformation of the illusion and remember there are two distinct currencies to evaluate people. When money is involved in the equation it is unwise to forget the monetary value of people however distasteful. Any attempt to use the monetary value of people outside the scope of things relating to money, such as philosophy or theology, will lead however to moral bankruptcy. It is hard to say what the value we should use is even if we can give this currency a name and is really the subject of yet another essay. We can at least be content to say that we can make assumptions regarding the moral currency and theoretically tinker with it entirely without affecting the monetary values of life. We can be happy to know that there is no direct link between each persons moral and monetary worth. If we believe that people have equal values in the moral currency then you should be strongly in favour of minimising the wealth gap. If you believe people have different moral values you would be illogical to assert that anyone doesn't deserve more if it were practical to offer more.