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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:34:57 -0400 (EDT)
To: Dave Morris <thecat &AElig umich.edu>
cc: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu, Steven Reeves <steven &AElig aptigi.com>,         reeves-hayos &AElig umich.edu, reeves-kalkman &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: Re: mind the gap

I'm not trivializing, I'm making a strong claim:
   In terms of public policy, literally everything can and should be 
measured in dollars (or yootles).  (I'm not certain we entirely disagree 
about this as we've kind of gotten hung up on some nitty gritty. I have no 
defense for the ERIM CEO and he may well have been a crook; I agree that 
US health insurance is a disaster; I agree that we should pump way more 
tax dollars into children's education (and I don't think it's so hard to 
(roughly) quantify the long-term value of that).)

Human life itself has a dollar value. [1] We can infer this from our 
choices about how much to spend on safety features on cars, or additional 
pay for risky jobs, or how often to overhaul airplanes.

Here's an example, a very flawed one [2], but the underlying point 
remains: (from my undergraduate AI textbook)

   Paradoxically, a refusal to put a monetary value on life means that life
   is often undervalued. Ross Schachter relates an experience with a
   government agency that that commissioned a study on removing asbestos
   from schools. The study assumed a particular dollar value for the life
   of a school-age child, and argued that the rational choice under that
   assumption was to remove the asbestos. The government agency, morally
   outraged, rejected the report out of hand. It then decided against
   asbestos removal.

Dave makes 7 other points, listed here, that I haven't addressed.  Little 
help, anyone? :)

Dave's points:

1. Regulations on stock trading should factor in the decreased happiness
    of the screwed-over ERIM employees.

2. Poor people derive more benefit from museums than they are willing to
    pay for.

3. Slavery is an example of how making money can be worse than losing
    money.

4. Capitalism does not respect basic human rights.

5. There is such a thing as bad profit when one party doesn't realize the
    bad consequences of the deal they're making.

6. How, in a purely free-market system, does anyone decide it's a good
    idea to have a mental hospital for the poor?

7. Speed limits are an example of why it is too simplistic to allow all
    consensual behavior.

OK, I'll do #7:  To take a principled approach I would prefer, instead of 
speed limits, an extremely dire punishment for causing an accident while 
exceeding the "recommended speed" [3].  In general, I'm all for outlawing 
behavior that harms others (directly).  I'm all for getting cars off of 
this island I live on -- they quite directly decrease my utility (everyone 
I know seems to agree).

Oh, and #3 is covered by footnote 1.  Explicitly value human freedom and 
slavery is unjustifiable.

This leaves 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 up for grabs! :)

Danny

Footnotes:

[1] If human life itself has a dollar value then human freedom (not being 
a slave) must too.  Perhaps the two should be the same, a la Patrick 
Henry ("give me liberty or give me death").

[2] My grandfather explained that the government agency in question was 
probably quite right in the case cited:

>   Asbestos was used as efficient insulation material for buildings,
> ships, and a number of other applications in the approximate timeframe
> of 1925-1975. By about 1975, there was solid clinical-epidemiological
> as well as animal-experimental evidence that inhaled asbestos fibers
> cause lung cancer. The use of asbestos for these applications was
> abandoned but the question arose what to do with insulation already
> in place. Infuriated lay groups demanded immediate removal. Actually,
> well compounded and competently installed asbestos insulation is, after
> a period of settling (1-2 weeks) no longer a significant source of air-
> borne fibers but school boards would seldom listen to such arguments.
> The mere presence of such a horrible poison in school buildings was
> deemed outrageous. "Asbestos removal" became the great fashion of the
> decade, and hundreds of companies were hastily founded to do such jobs,
> frequently with barely any expertise. Typically, fiber count in an
> indoor air sample after "removal" was 10-100+ times higher than before.
> When the federal EPA realized what was going on it issued a pamphlet
> trying to explain these facts and if indoor air samples in a building
> were not in excess of a certain threshold (which was changed 3 times
> in the 1970's) removal was contraindicated.

So I should find a real example of how refusal to quantify the value of 
human life can lead to undervaluing it.  But I think the point is clear. 
No one thinks it's worth paying an extra $1000 per airline ticket to 
reduce the one-in-a-million chance of dying in a plane crash.

[3] Perhaps criminal culpability for injuries/deaths caused. Right now, we 
tend to weigh the risk of a ticket. That's the wrong risk to be weighing! 
And when the freeway's completely deserted you really should feel free to 
exceed the speed limit.  As for teenagers who don't know how to assess 
risk, they shouldn't be driving at all.

-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"

"It was suffering and fun." -- Rieko Kojima on Half Dome Hike