Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexjeffrey | Hacker News Reader

You place more importance on $1M than on a human life? What if it was your child, would you be doing a cost/benefit analysis and turning to your wife and saying "sorry honey, it will cost more than $100,000 to save our child. might as well get her put down"?

View on HN

This depends on how much I need $100K (odds are I can pull this together if I'm attached to the child), and, crucially, on the age of the child. I place essentially no value on a child at negative eighteen weeks old.

I mean, would you personally pay a million dollars to save my child? I'm no more attached to a new nonviable fetus than you are to my (imaginary) 11-year-old.

Your clearly limited imagination can't even begin to give you an idea of what having an 11-year-old child will do to how you live and think.

If I ran a business that turned over $1.05B, and you and I had some form of relationship be that employment or friendship, of course I would. If I had any reasonable number of resources I would prioritise saving lives over building a collection of sports cars or properties. Especially so if I ran a hospital.

Of course this perspective is easy to take from the UK where we don't have to face tough financial decisions over healthcare.

> If I ran a business that turned over $1.05B, and you and I had some form of relationship be that employment or friendship, of course I would.

Sure. But you don't; we've never met.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com