Price of Your Life(PART 1 OF 3)
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Kato, look at the above picture! What a disgusting scene it is. Are you talking about the price of a corpse?
Oh, no. I'm talking about the price of a human being in general.
Then how come you've pasted an abominable picture in the above?
Well ... to attract your attention. he, he, he, he, he, ...
This isn't a laughing matter, Kato. Why on earch are you talking about the price of your life and mine?
Good question. I borrowed the following book from Vancouver Public Library.
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■“Actual Catalogue Page”
I see... this is a Japanese book, isn't it?
Actually, this is a translated version of "Justice" written by Michael J. Sandel. I read this book twice, then I borrowed the English version.
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■“Actual Catalogue Page”
I think I've heard of the name of the author.
I know ... I know ... Professor Sandel is now world-famous.
Why is that?
Well ... His lectures are even aired in China... let alone in Japan.
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Putting a Price Tag of Life
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So, you really enjoyed reading the book, didn't you?
You bet on that, Diane. As I jotted down as comment, reading the book is just like taking his famous undergraduate course "Justice" at Harvard University without the troublesome parts such as term papers and exams.
Oh, yeah?
Yes, I think he is an excellent educator who has unique and fascinating teaching methods with lucid and illustrating examples.
What's so good about the book?
Well ... once you get into his world, you would have to rethink your assumptions and question accepted ways of thinking. Then you would probably come up with a more awakening way of thinking as well as a more enriching way of living your life.
So, tell me, Kato, what impressed you so much.
Before I'll talk about it, read the following excerpt.
Exploding gas tanks
During the 1970s, the Ford Pinto was one of the best-selling subcompact cars in the United States.
Unfortunately, its fuel tank was prone to explode when another car collided with it from the rear.
More than five hundred people died when their Pinto bursts into flames ...
Compnay executives had conducted a cost-benefit analysis ...
To calculate the benefits to be gained by a safer gas tank, Ford estimated that 180 dearths and 180 burn injuries would result if no changes were made.
It then placed a monetary value on each life lost and injury suffered---$200,000 per life, and $67,000 per injury.
It added to these amounts the number and value of the Pintos likely to go up in flames, and calculated that the overall benefit of the safety improvement would be $49.5 million.
But the cost of adding an $11 device to 12.5 million vehicles would be $135.5 million.
So the company concluded that the cost of fixing the fuel tank was not worth the benefits of a safer car.
Upon learning of the study, the jury was outraged.
...
Perhaps they thought that $200,000 was egregiously low.
Ford had not come up with that figure on its own, but had taken it from a U.S. government agency.
In the early 1970s, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had calculated the cost of a traffic fatality.
Counting future productivity losses, medical costs, funeral costs, and the victim's pain and suffering, the agency arrived at $200,000 per fatality.
SOURCE: pp. 43-44 "Justice"
by Michael Sandel
I think, $200,000 is too low for the price of my life.
I think so, too.
Besides, I don't like an idea to put a price tag on human life, which is immeasurable in the first place, I suppose.
I agree with you, Diane, but if you perform a cost-benefit analysis, you would have to come up with the price of human life.
Even if you somehow come up with a price, it is not possible to measure and compare all values and goods on a single scale.
I understand what you mean, Diane. Here's an interesting episode. Read the following passage.
St. Anne's girls
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In the 1970s, when I was a graduate student at Oxford, there were separate colleges for men and women.
The women's colleges had parietal rules against male guests staying overnight in women's rooms.
These rules were rarely enforced and easily violated, or so I was told.
Most college officials no longer saw it as their role to enforce traditional notions of s*xual morality.
Pressure grew to relax these rules, which became a subject of debate at St. Anne's College, one of the all-women colleges.
Some older women on the faculty were traditionalists.
They opposed allowing male guests, on conventional moral grounds; it was immoral, they thought, for unmarried young women to spend the night with men. But times had changed, and the traditionalists were embarrased to give the real grounds for their objection.
So they translated their arguments into utilitarian terms.
"If men stay overnight," they argued, "the costs to the college will increase."
How, you might wonder? "Well, they'll want to take baths, and that will use more hot water."
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Furthermore, they argued, "we will have to replace the mattresses more often."
The reformers met the traditionalists' arguments by adopting the following compromise: Each woman could have maximum of three overnight guests each week, provided ech guest paid fifty pence per night to defray the costs to the college.
The next day, the headline in the "Guardian" read, "St. Anne's Girls, Fifty Pence a Night."
The language of virtue had not translated very well into the language of utility. Soon thereafter, the parietal rules were waived altogether, and so was the fee.
(Pictures from Denman Library)
SOURCE: pp. 47-48 "Justice"
by Michael Sandel
Kato, this is a farce, isn't it?
Yes, I guess so.
Have you quoted the above passage for the laugh of the day?
No, of course, not. Actually, I have an interesting episode to share with you, Diane.
Tell me.
In the late 1970s, I visited Jane at St. Anne's College.
(To be followed)
