Originally Posted by
cbn42
If you have $500,000 in life insurance and I offered you $600,000 for your life, would you accept it? If life insurance determines the value of life and you were a rational actor, you would gladly give up your life for any amount of money that is greater than your policy.
Ha ha.
Ok now that I've recovered from my red-eye flight, allow me to explain the punchline.
You have turned my scenario around and are arguing against a point I didn't make. I did not say, "what is a life worth when I will receive something from you or someone else?" I said, "what is a life worth when you have to pay something for it?"
Offering me something for a life, when I don't have to pay anything concrete for it, is meaningless because the price can always go higher when it's someone else's money. Shoot, look at Detroit, the US government, and various California cities for examples of how "easy" it is to be given something from someone else; there's no "worth" there.
But when I have to spend my money or my capital on something, well, then we see what that thing's worth is to me, because the price has a limit.
When government has "unlimited" money (taken from faceless taxpayers), it's always easy to argue "what's a life worth?" and spend untold amounts of money in extremely inefficient, ineffective, and illegal (my opinon) ways. Ask the AFS people to pay hundreds of dollars (and have it continue to increase) as a fee at the checkpont each time they fly, and suddenly the worth of what is being done will look different to them and to others.