[benwr]

I did find the policy of rejecting proposals with costs higher than $3MM/life-saved very interesting. If saving lives made up the entire extent of the federal budget, that sort of thing would clearly be appropriate. But as it is, is the money saved by the rejection of such proposals always redirected back into other lifesaving efforts?

If not, that would also seem to imply that a life's value is significantly less than $3MM. The author does specify that that figure is an upper limit.

[jessriedel]

>But as it is, is the money saved by the rejection of such proposals always redirected back into other lifesaving efforts? >If not, that would also seem to imply that a life's value is significantly less than $3MM. The author does specify that that figure is an upper limit.

No, it would just imply that we value other things. Also, it's crazy to think we can infer a consistent set of societal preferences from government actions. Individual humans aren't even consistent, much less when they get into groups.

[benwr]

Of course I was referring to the apparent value based on the metric used in the article, and not any socially normative value.

[DavidSJ]

No one's claiming that every dollar saved will be directed back into lifesaving efforts, but the mere fact that we could be doing that is proof that what we're doing right now is not the best option we have available to us. Once we accept that, we can decide if saving more lives is the best use of that money, or instead we'd rather pursue other objectives such as actually going to Mars.