Re: Do we value saving lives independently of the good feelings we get from it?
Sure: there’s the issues of rewards, reputation and status to consider. The effect of saving lives on the former may scale somewhat linearly—but the effect on the others certainly does not.
Re: Do we value saving lives independently of the good feelings we get from it?
Sure: there’s the issues of rewards, reputation and status to consider. The effect of saving lives on the former may scale somewhat linearly—but the effect on the others certainly does not.
Valuing lives on a sliding scale makes sense to me… Saving 1 person for X dollars is good citizenship, 100 lives at 100*X is being taken advantage of.
Maybe that’s the long and short of it though. We aren’t ‘buying’ lives, we’re ‘buying’ communality.