The Economic Value of a Human Life, And Other Interesting Reads

Linkblogging is definitely allowed in a pandemic. Here are some words I believe are worth your attention.

How do you value a human life? Planet Money takes us through the economists’ lens with a history lesson on how this questions has been answered in public policy debates over the past several decades (which is different than say, damages for wrongful death lawsuits). Bunch of new information for me including:

“There’s a rule that any federal safety regulation that’s going to cost more than a hundred million dollars a year has to pass a cost-benefit test. So, for example, seatbelts that beep at you — how much would it cost to install beeping seatbelts, and how many lives, in dollars, would be saved by it?” “We do not adjust the value of statistical life for age. That means we don’t have a senior discount. That also means we don’t have a baby boost or child boost. It’s the same number, whether you’re 2, or 42, or 82. And I think a lot of people can see the problems with that.”

Matt has run WordPress/Automattic as a distributed team since the very beginning, even eliminating a beautiful SF office to ensure there wouldn’t be an implicit status bias towards “remoting” from SF. So I consider him one of the most thoughtful leaders when it comes to these questions, having accrued his “10,000 hours” of time on the issue (plus generally being a smart fellow).