----- Original Message -----
From: "John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: Ransom Re: Europe, the US, and Environmentalism
> At 09:51 PM 7/28/01 -0500 Dan Minette wrote:
> >Yea, but it is a certain number of units of value that one would not
> >receive. Let me give you an example, what is the value of my house? I
> >would argue that it is not what I would agree to sell it for if I knew a
> >charity of my choice would get the benifits of the sale, while I would be
> >left with a mortgage and no house.
>
> That's because you are confusing two transactions.
>
> 1) You sell your house
> 2) You spend the money from the sale of the house on something - in this
> case a charity.
>
> The real question you are suggesting above, is can your house be valued by
> your willingness to donate your house to charity - which is obviously a
bad
> question.
>
Yea, but that's the question you set up when you asked "how much is you're
life worth." You sell your life, and then give the money away. I was just
trying to illustrate the difficulties with that as an example.
> Probably not very much. That means in any given year, I have a .99999
> chance of living. Taken to the 80th power, the odds of me making it to
my
> 80th year alive are .9992. Given that there are inherent risk factors in
> life that are of greater odds than that, I am probably unwilling to pay
> much to eliminate this risk.
>
I'd argue that if you multiply whatever that amount is by 100000, that will
be what your life is worth to you. (BTW, this illustrates why risk
assessment as well as cost/benefit needs to be part of the discussion.)
Dan M.
Dan M.
