[self_assembly]

And what is to stop anybody from extending the economic argument to that very person in Kentucky. "This fella has an economic value of X... We could get on just fine without him/her". This is already being done to an extent with companies buying "dead peasant" life insurance on their employees [1].

The point is that is that people along with the environment and the species we share it with have value that is outside of their economic contributions.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/is-there-a-dead-peasant-life-...

[edanm]

What's wrong with putting an economic "value" on a human life? It is something we all implicitly and explicitly do every do. Implicitly, by deciding how much money to spend on increasing our own safety (e.g., how much extra to pay for a safer car). Explicitly, by things like insurance as you mentioned.

Burying your head in the sand and refusing to understand that the world is full of trade-offs, which can most easily be expressed via economics, doesn't help at all.

[Retra]

It's because they are most easily expressed via economics, but a far cry from most accurately expressed that way.

[therealdrag0]

Because most of us already have a value system that wants to protect human life. But many people's values around money is more weighty than around protecting other things in our environment. So it is easier to piggy-back on existing values when possible than convince people to adopt new ones.