MAY 14, 2020 – Paradoxically, one way to distract yourself from The Virus is to read all the lengthy articles on the subject by epidemiologists, statisticians, and the world’s leading conspiracy theorists.
Personally, I’ve checked out of the discussions. This wasn’t the case early in The Crisis. I found myself sucked into all sorts of mind-bending math and statistical comparisons between The Virus and other scourges, hanging my hat . . . er . . . face-mask . . . on the reassuring comparisons such as, death rate of The Virus vs. death rate of the “ordinary” flu. When that comparison was no longer favorable—it must have been when northern Italy got wiped out—I began to lose faith, then interest, in “the math.”
The other day when I skimmed some headlines, I noticed a shift from science-science to the dismal science—economics. Those to the left argue that control of the virus is paramount from a humanitarian perspective and a prerequisite to economic recovery. People on the right, meanwhile, assign priority to economic recovery, virus—and hoaxes, over-reactions, Democrats, and scientists—be damned, end of analysis.
All of which reminds me of the honors project of a college classmate of mine, Dave H. Dave was an economics major. I happened to stop by his room one day when he was in the throes of assembling his honors thesis. Marked-up pages replete with graphs and narrative were strewn on every semi-level surface, from floor to chairs to bed to windowsills. Not wanting to disturb Dave’s organizational system, I opened up a crumpled ball of paper atop his dresser. It happened to be a rejected version of the title page: “The Economic Value of a Human Life.”
“Are you serious?” I said, being a naive history/Classics major. “You’re trying to assign a dollar sign to a human being?”
“Not only ‘trying,’” said Dave, holding up a full draft of his three-inch thesis. “I’ve come up with a comprehensive and compelling standard of measure of a human life—and from multiple angles too!”
I knew Dave was smart. He’d aced Professor Freeman’s notoriously difficult course in micro-economics. (I was a lowly “stamp collector,” which is what Professor Hughes (chair of the “hard sciences” department) called history majors.) I asked him how he’d chosen his thesis and how his inquiry had affected his view of humanity. His answer was eminently practical, informed by his deeply analytical mind and mathematical view of the world. He’d reached a dollar figure of $2.1 million (1976 dollars) as the average value of a human being in America. (I don’t remember what he’d devised for other reaches of the world.)
Dave’s thesis—that life’s worth can be reduced to a dollar sign—remains valid, nearly everywhere but particularly in America. In setting policy against The Virus, for example, sooner or later you’ll hit the wall of economics. That wall will force hard-nosed choices. By what standard of measure, however, will society gauge any given individual’s suffering? The golden rule?
In America, (s)he who has the gold makes the rules.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
