On Jan 2, 4:45 am, "William Connolley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 02/01/2008, Michael Tobis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > It seems to me that future catastrophe appears absurdly undervalued
> > because there is a uniform uncertainty about the future built into the
> > system.
>
> > Morally, a behavior that has 100% chance of killing somebody 5000
> > years from now is not different than a behavior that has 100% chance
> > of killing someone in 500 years. Economically, the choice is clearly
> > to defer the killing further to the future. It seems to me, thus, that
> > the discount rate acts as an uncertainty discount, **preventing** me
> > from effectively making the statement that, discount rate aside, I am
> > certain that the far-future consequences of this action are tantamount
> > to homicide and so I have to resue to do it.
>
> I don't think this argument works. *morally* its bad to kill people,
> but there is no price attached (unless your moral system works with
> blood-money). If you are attempting to attach economics to people
> being killed, then you are accepting that there is a price. Economists
> then tend to measure this price in terms of what people will pay to
> avoid death - health care, seatbelts, road improvements, that kind of
> stuff. You end up with inconsistent numbers, of course. You also end
> up with 1st world lives being worth more than 3rd world, which causes
> trouble.
>
> -W.
>
Come to think of it, we use a process somewhat similar to asking the
cow at the Restaurant and the End of the Universe if she is willing to
be killed.
Of course we can't just pay people to be killed to figure out the
value. We draw the line somewhere between a 1/6 and 1/100 chance of
being killed here in the US. Hence we permit hang gliding (with a %1
death rate for those who reach Hang 4) but not Russian Roulette.
But there is a problem, since Ehrlich showed that we are about 10,000
time more willing to die due to our own choices vs another's choices.
Hence a %1 threshold becomes a 1 in a million when it's a coal company
doing the killing.
Global warming is a grey area. Is it our own choice or not?
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