Life's value

An interesting post at Cato by Jim Harper. He talks about how the EPA revised the value of a statistical life downward and how this is uncomfortable this is to people to think of. I've said before how we do this all the time, even if we don't think of it. For example, of course we value our lives, but we all drive fast or eat unhealthy food anyway. To live our lives in a way that completely eliminates any risk of danger, would, in my opinion, make life hardly worth living. Anyway, the paragraphs I like:

If you value life too highly, you will take steps to protect life and health that undermine the value of living. Why is life “precious”? Some say for it’s own sake. But most people believe it’s because of the wonderful range of experiences, adventures, tastes, emotions, and relationships we get to enjoy in life. The freedom. If we give up too much of that, focusing strictly on keeping our hearts pumping and air flowing in and out of the lungs, we’ve lost track of the reason for living. Simply maintaining bodies in a state of sentience is not what it’s all about. So regulatory policy must do what we must do as individuals: strike a balance between life and living. Fall too far out of balance in either direction and you’re either prematurely dead or living a life without meaning.

But if you disagree with the value the EPA is placing on human life, there might be something to that. The regulatory process makes a huge collective judgments about the value of life, lumping us all together into one big average.

We should be as free as possible to make our own judgments about risk and the value of life. It’s difficult with things like air pollution, but even those kinds of risks can often be controlled through individual judgments.