#monetary value

“Engineers and architects are never asked to build unbreakable structures, impregnable walls. Instead, they are given a monetary budget and asked to do the best they can, according to certain criteria, within that constraint. Or they may be told: the bridge must bear a weight of ten tons, and must withstand gales three times more forceful than the worst ever recorded in this gorge. Now design the most economical bridge you can that meets these specifications. Safety factors in engineering imply monetary valuation of human life. Designers of civilian airliners are more risk-averse than designers of military aircraft. All aircraft and ground control facilities could be safer if more money was spent. More redundancy could be built into control systems, the number of flying hours demanded of a pilot before he is allowed to carry live passengers could be increased. Baggage inspection could be more stringent and time-consuming.

The reason we don’t take these steps to make life safer is largely one of cost. We are prepared to pay a lot of money, time and trouble for human safety, but not infinite amounts. Like it or not, we are forced to put monetary value on human life. In most people’s scale of values, human life rates higher than non-human animal life, but animal life does not have zero value. Notoriously, the evidence of newspaper coverage suggests that people value life belonging to their own race higher than human life generally. In wartime, both absolute and relative valuations of human life change dramatically. People who think it is somehow wicked to talk about this monetary valuation of human life - people who emotionally declare that a single human life has infinite value - are living in cloud-cuckoo-land.”

- Richard Dawkins, ‘Science in the Soul’