How Much Should the Life of Victims be Worth?

How much was that life worth?

I’m noticing on my timelines in facebook and twitter that people are railing against the $20,000 the government has decided to pay as a compensation to the victims of the collapsed Ashrafieh building. “Cheap”, “insulting” and “demeaning” are words that I kept reading.

The question is: How much would you pay if you were the Lebanese government? Are you saying that the government shouldn’t pay anything at all? Or are you saying that the government should pay say $1 million per head? If it’s the latter, why would $1 million be closer than $20,000 to the value of a priceless life?

It should be a given, on a personal, moral, philosophical and even legal basis, that life is priceless, and that one extra day of life is worth more than any money in the world. But there are many situations especially in government and medicine, in which an exact quantitative measure is regularly placed on lives. There’s an entire science behind it that bases the “value of a statistical life (VSL)” on many factors, including age, productivity and other measures.

Now of course I’m not saying that our government used a scientific method to come up with the $20,000 figure. Far from it; the amount probably came out of thin air. What I’m saying is that our moral indignation against the act of compensation itself could be toned down a bit.

Update: More on this by Angie, who actually spoke with the people responsible for such things in Lebanon.