[grantismo]

It seems like the value of a human life should be greater (than solving male baldness) in financial terms in addition to humanist terms over the long time period. Wouldn't it make more sense for Gates to make a capitalist argument for why investing in malaria research should be more profitable than investing in male baldness?

[CodeCube]

But that's the problem ... it's not, or at least is very difficult to convince the average person of it. If you're a middle aged dentist in Wyoming making $127k (http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Dentist-Salary-Details-Ca...), what are you more likely to spend your money on ... large donations to malaria research, or a monthly payment to the hair club for men so you can look better and try to have an affair with the hot dental assistant?

That may be a very jaded view of what the average person would do, but tell me it's wrong.

[guard-of-terra]

You can't compare that. You can't compare a person spending on themself versus a person donating to a cause.

Or else you'll make a suggestion that we all move to slums because it's not fair that we get to live in an actual house when not everyone can afford that.

[nightski]

It's wrong because it makes the assumption that it is either hair club for men or malaria research. Also I don't think hair club for men = large donation to malaria research. It is far cheaper.

[xyzzy123]

Sadly the capitalistic value of a life is relative and it correlates with earnings.

There are public policy numbers which generally aren't talked about. In most western countries you can figure the value of a life on order of about 10 million dollars or so.

Empirically, lives are valued on the high side of lifetime possible earnings, something like double the average wage * 100 years or so.

Do we fix an intersection to prevent the high statistical likelihood of a death? What about a swimming pool danger PR campaign? Political swing matters more, but the dispassionate (and rational) way of doing it uses life valuation.

Giving people with money hardons and a full head of hair is enormously more profitable than public spending (or charity expenditure) in poor countries. To the point where it is rational expenditure based on numbers :(

Also, you can't really charge people for not getting malaria. You can try and get their government to pay for it though.

I'm not saying this is right.

[liberte9]

Can you explain more about what you mean by "value"?

[xyzzy123]

Yeah, sorry about that.

What I mean is that on a wider level, public policy decisions about saving lives need to have a ballpark dollar valuation on human life in order to make allocation decisions.

It would not make sense to spend $20MM on an intersection upgrade which saves 2 lives per year when spending $10MM each on two other intersections might save 5 lives per year. It gets more complicated when you're comparing different things, like a dialysis machine versus a PR campaign for type II diabetes versus a traffic upgrade.

The minute you acknowledge that line of reasoning makes sense, it is easy to get trapped in this messed up alternate reasoning where the market cap of facebook is 5,884 American lives.