The Value of a Human Life PDF Download

Author: Karel Innemée
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789464260571
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Experts from different disciplines present new insights into the subject of ritual homicide in various regions of the ancient world.

Author: John Keown
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521009331
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Whether the law should permit voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is one of the most vital questions facing all modern societies. Internationally, the main obstacle to legalisation has proved to be the objection that, even if they were morally acceptable in certain 'hard cases', voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide could not be effectively controlled; society would slide down a 'slippery slope' to the killing of patients who did not make a free and informed request, or for whom palliative care would have offered an alternative. How cogent is this objection? This book provides the general reader (who need have no expertise in philosophy, law or medicine) with a lucid introduction to this central question in the debate, not least by reviewing the Dutch euthanasia experience. It will interest all in any country whether currently for or against legalisation, who wish to ensure that their opinions are better informed.

Author: Stephen R. Kellert
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The Value of Life is an exploration of the actual and perceived importance of biological diversity for human beings and society. Stephen R. Kellert identifies ten basic values, which he describes as biologically based, inherent human tendencies that are greatly influenced and moderated by culture, learning, and experience. Drawing on 20 years of original research, he considers: the universal basis for how humans value nature differences in those values by gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, and geographic location how environment-related activities affect values variation in values relating to different species how vlaues vary across cultures policy and management implications Throughout the book, Kellert argues that the preservation of biodiversity is fundamentally linked to human well-being in the largest sense as he illustrates the importance of biological diversity to the human sociocultural and psychological condition.

Author: Josef Popper-Lynkeus
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847680368
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
A translation of a German humanist tract written popularly for a wide audience by Josef Popper (1838-1921), most widely known by the pseudonym "Lynkeus." On the first page, Popper provides the ethical ideal that is meant to serve as the foundation for his program of social reform: "The obliteration of any individual who has not willfully or forcibly endangered another...is a much more important event than all the political, religious, and national events, and all scientific, artistic, and technical progress of all centuries and people taken together." Introduction by Joram Graf Haber. Paper edition (unseen), $21.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author: Binyamin Appelbaum
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316512273
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
In this "lively and entertaining" history of ideas (Liaquat Ahamed, The New Yorker), New York Times editorial writer Binyamin Appelbaum tells the story of the people who sparked four decades of economic revolution. Before the 1960s, American politicians had never paid much attention to economists. But as the post-World War II boom began to sputter, economists gained influence and power. In The Economists' Hour, Binyamin Appelbaum traces the rise of the economists, first in the United States and then around the globe, as their ideas reshaped the modern world, curbing government, unleashing corporations and hastening globalization. Some leading figures are relatively well-known, such as Milton Friedman, the elfin libertarian who had a greater influence on American life than any other economist of his generation, and Arthur Laffer, who sketched a curve on a cocktail napkin that helped to make tax cuts a staple of conservative economic policy. Others stayed out of the limelight, but left a lasting impact on modern life: Walter Oi, a blind economist who dictated to his wife and assistants some of the calculations that persuaded President Nixon to end military conscription; Alfred Kahn, who deregulated air travel and rejoiced in the crowded cabins on commercial flights as the proof of his success; and Thomas Schelling, who put a dollar value on human life. Their fundamental belief? That government should stop trying to manage the economy.Their guiding principle? That markets would deliver steady growth, and ensure that all Americans shared in the benefits. But the Economists' Hour failed to deliver on its promise of broad prosperity. And the single-minded embrace of markets has come at the expense of economic equality, the health of liberal democracy, and future generations. Timely, engaging and expertly researched, The Economists' Hour is a reckoning -- and a call for people to rewrite the rules of the market. A Wall Street Journal Business BestsellerWinner of the Porchlight Business Book Award in Narrative & Biography

Author: Howard Steven Friedman
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520383125
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
How much is a human life worth? Individuals, families, companies, and governments routinely place a price on human life. The calculations that underlie these price tags are often buried in technical language, yet they influence our economy, laws, behaviors, policies, health, and safety. These price tags are often unfair, infused as they are with gender, racial, national, and cultural biases that often result in valuing the lives of the young more than the old, the rich more than the poor, whites more than blacks, Americans more than foreigners, and relatives more than strangers. This is critical since undervalued lives are left less-protected and more exposed to risk. Howard Steven Friedman explains in simple terms how economists and data scientists at corporations, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies develop and use these price tags and points a spotlight at their logical flaws and limitations. He then forcefully argues against the rampant unfairness in the system. Readers will be enlightened, shocked, and, ultimately, empowered to confront the price tags we assign to human lives and understand why such calculations matter.

Author: Nate Soares
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
The goal is to address the guilt that comes from a feeling of listlessness, the vague feeling of guilt that one might get when they play video games all day, or when they turn desperately towards drugs or parties, in attempts to silence the part of themselves that whispers that there must be something else to life.This sort of guilt cannot be removed by force of will, in most people. The trick to removing this sort of guilt, I think, is to start exploring that feeling that there must be something else to life, that there must be something more to do---and either find something worth working towards, or find that there really isn't actually anything missing. This first sort of listless guilt, I think, comes from someone who wants to find something else to do, and hasn't yet.Unfortunately, addressing this sort of guilt isn't as easy as just finding a hobby. In my experience, this listless guilt tends to be found in people who have fallen into the nihilistic trap---people who either believe they can't matter, or who believe that no one can matter. It tends to be found in people who believe that humans only ever do what they want, that nothing is truly "better'' than anything else, that there is no such thing as altruism, that "morality'' is a pleasant lie---that class of beliefs is the class that I will address first, starting with the Allegory of the Stamp Collector...

Author: Charles Gray Shaw
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Life
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Author: Jeffrey H. Reiman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847692088
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
In this text, Jeffrey Reiman argues that an overlooked clue to the solution of the moral problem lies in the unusual way in which we value the lives of individual human beings - namely, that we value them irreplaceably. We think it is not only wrong to kill an innocent human child or adult, but that it would not be made right by replacing the dead one with another living one, or even several.

Author: W. Kip Viscusi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120859X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
How society’s undervaluing of life puts all of us at risk—and the groundbreaking economic measure that can fix it Like it or not, sometimes we need to put a monetary value on people's lives. In the past, government agencies used the financial "cost of death" to monetize the mortality risks of regulatory policies, but this method vastly undervalued life. Pricing Lives tells the story of how the government came to adopt an altogether different approach--the value of a statistical life, or VSL—and persuasively shows how its more widespread use could create a safer and more equitable society for everyone. In the 1980s, W. Kip Viscusi used the method to demonstrate that the benefits of requiring businesses to label hazardous chemicals immensely outweighed the costs. VSL is the risk-reward trade-off that people make about their health when considering risky job choices. With it, Viscusi calculated how much more money workers would demand to take on hazardous jobs, boosting calculated benefits by an order of magnitude. His current estimate of the value of a statistical life is $10 million. In this book, Viscusi provides a comprehensive look at all aspects of economic and policy efforts to price lives, including controversial topics such as whether older people's lives are worth less and richer people's lives are worth more. He explains why corporations need to abandon the misguided cost-of-death approach, how the courts can profit from increased application of VSL in assessing liability and setting damages, and how other countries consistently undervalue risks to life. Pricing Lives proposes sensible economic guideposts to foster more protective policies and greater levels of safety in the United States and throughout the world.