It’s not clear to me that objection is meaningful in this case. I’m not ducking the question- I’m making the statement that lives have dollar values associated with them, and you need to use those values for judgments rather than counting heads. If, in the LCPW, everyone were equally valuable, then my approach gives the answer I would expect it to give: it’s better for 5 people to live than 1.
I’m comfortable with how this reasoning extends. Consider a real-world example: instead of a magic box this is an actual policy question- “should we run a polluting power plant which is personally profitable and powers a hospital, thus saving lives, even though we know the pollution will kill someone?” Put a dollar cost on the life lost due to pollution, put dollar values on the lives saved by the hospital, add the values to your profit and subtract the life lost, and you have a cost-benefit analysis.
Rather than being a vague ethical question, that highlights some practical policy advice. Pollution should be taxed, so that the cost of the life lost due to pollution is forced to be part of my calculation. That’s also advice I live, whereas I don’t know if I would push fat men towards trains: I think that the optimal level of pollution is not 0.
LCPW wouldn’t have this issue.
It’s not clear to me that objection is meaningful in this case. I’m not ducking the question- I’m making the statement that lives have dollar values associated with them, and you need to use those values for judgments rather than counting heads. If, in the LCPW, everyone were equally valuable, then my approach gives the answer I would expect it to give: it’s better for 5 people to live than 1.
I’m comfortable with how this reasoning extends. Consider a real-world example: instead of a magic box this is an actual policy question- “should we run a polluting power plant which is personally profitable and powers a hospital, thus saving lives, even though we know the pollution will kill someone?” Put a dollar cost on the life lost due to pollution, put dollar values on the lives saved by the hospital, add the values to your profit and subtract the life lost, and you have a cost-benefit analysis.
Rather than being a vague ethical question, that highlights some practical policy advice. Pollution should be taxed, so that the cost of the life lost due to pollution is forced to be part of my calculation. That’s also advice I live, whereas I don’t know if I would push fat men towards trains: I think that the optimal level of pollution is not 0.