This "right-wing trolley-problem exercise" is something that we do all the time. Work at a union job and in your first week they'll give you a spreadsheet telling how much your arms, your legs, and your life are worth. When people decide to work in dangerous jobs like logging and petroleum extraction, they're putting a value on their own lives. If we ever institute government-run healthcare we'll also have to put a value on life. How much money will the government spend on the elderly for expensive medication? At what age do we let cancer patients forego therapy and instead get palliative care? This isn't social Darwinism, putting a value on life is something we do every day.
Some countries are engaging in social isolation. Others, like South Korea, Japan, and Sweden are not - or at least conducting much less restrictive isolation. In time, we'll see how well those countries fare as compared to the ones that did isolate and then we can get a sense of whether shutting down much of the economy was worth it.
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This "right-wing trolley-problem exercise" is something that we do all the time. Work at a union job and in your first week they'll give you a spreadsheet telling how much your arms, your legs, and your life are worth. When people decide to work in dangerous jobs like logging and petroleum extraction, they're putting a value on their own lives. If we ever institute government-run healthcare we'll also have to put a value on life. How much money will the government spend on the elderly for expensive medication? At what age do we let cancer patients forego therapy and instead get palliative care? This isn't social Darwinism, putting a value on life is something we do every day.
Some countries are engaging in social isolation. Others, like South Korea, Japan, and Sweden are not - or at least conducting much less restrictive isolation. In time, we'll see how well those countries fare as compared to the ones that did isolate and then we can get a sense of whether shutting down much of the economy was worth it.