[james_s_tayler]

On a personal level we tend to say "life is precious and I value it." or at least those are the virtues we attempt to signal.

When we act in concert through markets we tend to say "life is cheap and I don't really care that badly."

People always lament and say that the market gets it wrong but does it? Or is the truth about how we really feel just a little too horrifying uncomfortable?

[ibash]

More the latter, but it’s a bit more nuanced: It’s more honest to say the each of us values a select few others (for me, maybe a dozen) and everyone else’s life I don’t value.

[james_s_tayler]

That's a fair comment. Though I would say it's not that you don't value those with a greater psychological distance from you it's that you value them in the abstract and it doesn't concretely translate to materially caring about them.

[djcjr]

As a rule of thumb, consider writing "I" instead of "we".

[james_s_tayler]

I'm actively making a generalization about a behavioral pattern I see playing out among an aggregate of people with regards to what they say with their actions vs. what they say with their words.

"I" doesn't make sense in that context. I could change it to "people" but I don't think I'm excluded from the behavioral pattern, so "we" it is.