Sneaky27 Posted:

Wait, so you’re placing a monetary value to human life?

Partially yes, to demonstrate that more lives could be saved with less money. Ultimately you have to place some kind of limit or we would all be paying 80% taxes so that as many deaths could be prevented as possible. The question is prioritizing and except for nuclear terrorism the current resource use is wasteful compared to the alternatives.

I’m giving some numbers here, pulled out of my bum Wikipedia and comparisons on how many lives could be saved: (the numbers bumume terrorist attacks reduce 50 years from the victims’ life expectancy)

IAO: $1 750 000 000

The Information Awareness Office is relevant to the Patriot Act since it was established to develop surveillance.

By using a figure of $20 000 for 1 life-year (medical treatments) the IAO would need to have prevented 1750 deaths from terrorism to be cost-effective.

By a figure of $5000 (fire detection and similar measures) the number is 7000.

In developing countries this could have saved at least 50 000 – 200 000 lives with a conservative estimate.*

Iraq War: $1 900 000 000 000

That money could have saved 1 900 000 lives with medical treatments but if we are reasonable and bumume that adopting the successful late-war strategies early on could have saved one quarter of the money the number of saved lives drops to 475 000: about the same as died in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and London bombings in WW2 and approximately the number

of deaths one could expect from one to a few improvised nuclear attacks.

This money could also have saved at least 50 000 000 lives in developing countries even bumuming extremely diminishing returns; likely way, way more.

Every time you allocate money to something you are making a choice and even if we bumume that the US government has only a responsibility to protect the lives of its own citizens it did a pretty bad job prioritizing. No offense, but if people stopped throwing a hissy fit at terrorist attacks and looked at the numbers objectively government policy would be pretty different.

Also, civil rights.

* The cost of saving lives in developing countries is estimated as much higher than aid agencies report since the calculations bumume that lives must also be significantly improved; saving a child from diarrhea to suffer near starvation is not considered saving a life here, instead one has to gain real opportunity and a moderately good standard of living.