What is one life worth?

The answer, as in every other case, depends on who's paying for it.

In one of my monthly rants, I pointed out that it made sense for a car company to try to avoid paying a small amount for a safety feature that might prevent one or two deaths over an entire car line. Needless to say, a correspondent took me to task for this cold, calculating, devaluation of human life.

In the ensuing exchange, I pointed out that he, himself places a finite value on human life, including his own. The fact that he is not driving the safest possible car is proof of that. (I didn't know for sure, but the probability approached certainty, given the price of the safest possible car.)

With more knowledge, I could have pointed out any number of other choices that were not the safest possible choices, but which he made anyway. In fact, people make any number of decisions for reasons other than absolute safety. These decisions are based on cost, convenience, enjoyability, and doubtless many other concerns I'm not thinking of right now.

So now that Thomas Sowell is discussing the same thing in one of his pieces, I have an excuse to rant on it again, and link to his article.

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.