How Much is a Human Life Worth?

2013-03-22 · explainer · Hank · 3:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Economics (also: Internet & YouTube, Philosophy & meaning) · mode: Explainer · tags: heavy topic

Hank surveys ways of pricing a human life (wages, organs, ad-sold attention, economists' risk-premium and willingness-to-pay methods, both near $10 million) and argues that valuing life is not crass: its value lies in enabling life, not in preventing inevitable death.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Can a life be priced? Minimum wage and lifetime wages as a first answer

★★ Hank asks what dollar amount a human life is worth; the easy answer is that pricing it is immoral and incalculable, but he says we do it. — 00:00:01
★★ Hank says the US government sets the minimum price of an hour of your life at $7.80, and average lifetime wages are about $2 million. — 00:00:13
- a number in question (doubtful): "$7.80" — check against the recording
★★ Hank says lifetime wages measure a person's economic input, not the value of a life: wages are only a surrogate for value created. — 00:00:27

00:00:35 — Black-market organs and the fallen-soldier payment, both about $500,000

★★ Hank says, playfully, that selling his organs on the black market, everything from his eyeballs to his forearms, would bring in about $500,000. (playful) — 00:00:44
★★ Hank says $500,000 is also what the US government pays to the family of a fallen soldier. — 00:00:56

00:01:02 — Selling your attention to advertisers; online ads pay a tenth of TV, so the brothers avoid pre-rolls

★★ Hank says a 30-second TV ad costs about $24 per thousand viewers, i.e. $2.88 per hour of attention, about $2 million over a lifetime. — 00:01:10 · online advertising
★★ Hank says selling only waking hours to TV advertisers would give about $1.3 million, and online video ads can go for less than a tenth of that. — 00:01:25 · online advertising
★★★ Hank says that besides being annoyed by pre-rolls, he and John avoid them because they undervalue this community's time; valuing it at a tenth of TV viewers' time is 'dumb'. — 00:01:37 · online advertising, Nerdfighteria

00:01:51 — How economists value a life: risk premiums and willingness to pay, both near $10 million

★★★ Hank explains the first economists' method: extra pay demanded for a job with a death risk; asking $10,000 more for a 1-in-1,000 risk values a life at $10 million, statistically. — 00:01:58
★★★ Hank says, using this measure, various US government departments value a human life at about six to nine million dollars. — 00:02:22
★★★ Hank explains the second method, what people would pay to save a life: about $130,000 per year of high-quality, non-painful life at the high end, so ten years is worth about $1.3 million. — 00:02:28
★★ Hank says 78 years of high-quality life by this method comes to a remarkably similar ten million dollars. — 00:02:46

00:02:52 — Opinion: pricing life is not crass; value lies in enabling life, not preventing inevitable death

★★★ Hank says putting an economic value on life may seem crass, but insisting on preventing death in every situation is a blindness to the inevitability of death. — 00:02:55
★★★ Hank says value is not created or lost at the moment of death but in enabling life, the finite moments we have together; it is not about preventing a death that will happen anyway. — 00:03:13

00:03:25 — John fantastic on the Late Late Show; discussion of online video to continue; sign-off

★★ Hank tells John he was fantastic on the Late Late Show. — 00:03:29 · John Green
★ Hank says they will soon continue their discussion of how to make online video strong and awesome. — 00:03:29

00:03:41 — Closing clip, apparently John on the Late Late Show: sorted into Hufflepuff on Pottermore

★ John: In a closing clip, apparently from John's Late Late Show appearance, the speaker says Pottermore's Sorting Hat made him 100% Hufflepuff, which he wears with pride: badgers are ferocious, excellent finders. (playful) — 00:03:41

In the description and comments

★ In the description, Hank recalls that at about ten, looking at a school auditorium's fire exits, he realised there must be a calculus for how much trouble or money a human life was worth. — video description
★★★ Hank says the value of a life should not vary: if we would sell all the moments of our lives for $2 million, why value not dying at far more? Perhaps we treasure our histories more than the moments to come, which seems wrong to him. — video description

Threads in this video

restate · Is ad-supported media good for audiences and society? — Hank says the brothers avoid pre-roll ads not only because they annoy him but because they undervalue the community's time. (00:01:37)
restate · Is death fair, and should we accept mortality? — Hank says insisting on preventing death in every situation is blind to the inevitability of death. (00:03:05)
refine · Does every living thing have moral value just for being alive, and can a life be priced? — Hank accepts that a human life can be given an economic value (about $10 million by economists' methods) and locates its value in enabling life rather than preventing death. (00:03:13)
told · John appears on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2013) — Hank tells John he was fantastic on the Late Late Show. (00:03:29)

Mentioned

Central: value of life

Also: Works: The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson

Organizations: Federal government of the United States · Pottermore

Concepts: minimum wage · online advertising · organ trade · quality-adjusted life year

Characters: Hufflepuff · Sorting Hat

Only in the description or credits: Gizmodo · The New York Times · The Washington Post · Time

Also centred on value of life: Google Is Alive! · There is Only One Source of Value

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