Quote Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
How much do you value a life?

Certainly a difficult question, it depends on what position you are taking, and who's life it is of course, but either you accept a life has an intrisic value or you don't, in the latter case it can still have an economic value of course, but then you're just looking at things from a utilitarian perspective.

In the end money only has value in as far as it can be used by humans to provide in their needs, amongst them the need for (personal) survival, so perhaps expressing things in terms of money is rather abstracting the problem to an unnecessary level for sake of comparison.

Oh, I know how precious they are, and how of course we'd do nothing to end one...

In the UK, NICE values lives at £30,000 per year.
What's NICE ? Seems like a reasonable figure to me, in line with most other economic estimates of the value of life I've seen. But like a said, economic value is just *a* means for comparison, it can be quite necessary to have a figure when making a budget for healthcare, but just because there's number doesn't mean it's the right number.

But funnily enough most people do close to nothing to stop deaths in the world, except say how terrible it is.
Does the fact that many people do something make it right ?

Luckily many people are prepared to cherish treasures for future generations. I'd rather private collectors had them than no one at all.
I never disagreed on that point. I just stated that wasting soldiers on protecting a bunch of old pottery when real, living people need protection is rather twisted.