scott wrote:
>>> Would you choose that 60 million people
>>> were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single 
>>> life?
>>
>>  Yes?
> 
> Because you are looking at the problem selfishly and not the whole 
> system. Of course, if you said to an individual that if they were forced 
> to wait an extra 30 minutes every day to save a life, they might say 
> yes.  But goverments need to look at the whole system in order to make a 
> decision, try the following:
> 
> How much would someone have to pay you if it meant you lost 30 minutes 
> each day to being stuck in traffic?
> 
> Ask 60 million people that question and add up all their answers, what 
> do you think the total would be?  I'd guess around $10 per person on 
> average, so say $600 million.
> 
> A hospital near you wants to buy some new piece of equipment that will 
> save more lives than the old bit.  It's very expensive, let's say it 
> will save an extra 10 lives, and costs 10 million dollars.
> 
> So, what you are effectively saying is that you'd rather waste $600m of 
> peoples time, to avoid having to spend $1m to save a single life.  Good 
> job you aren't an economic adviser for your government ;-)
> 
> BTW you can substitute the hospital equipment for anything that puts a 
> value on human life.  Actually, whenever you buy or use anything that is 
> not 100% safe, you are putting a value on your life.
> 
> 


here is something related

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/05/crashes.costs.ap/index.html

Post a reply to this message