Pricing statistical lives obscures harms that are real only at the collective scale

Evidence

Statistical risks, however, represent “none of us” and “all of us” at once. Thus, the full import of statistically identifi ed harms only appears visible— only emerges— when evaluated from the perspective of the same entity through which the data were derived, that is, from the perspective of “all of us.” Because interest aggregation approaches like costbenefi t analysis refuse to see “all of us” as interest holders, they struggle to treat environmental, health, and safety regulation with the moral richness that the fi eld deserves. Indeed, as Lisa Heinzerling notes, by pricing human life and sanctioning actions that place it in jeopardy in advance of those actions occurring, “the most basic kind of right— the right to be protected from physical harm caused by other people, on equal terms with other people— is denied to those whose lives are framed in statistical terms.” As a consequence, we tolerate treatment of statistical victims that would be considered well nigh criminal in ordinary contexts. We do this simply because the body and the fi ngerprints necessary to establish the crime become invisible once they are reduced to individualistic shares. From the perspective of “all of us,” air pollutants cause thousands of premature deaths each year in the United States; from the perspective of any par tic u lar victim, however, no cause and no perpetrator can be clearly identifi ed and, thus, “none of us” are ever seen to be harmed. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 301

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The none-of-us/all-of-us structure — a harm with no identifiable victim per capita yet thousands dead collectively — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting framing of why cost-benefit aggregation fails morally.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s soundscape interest: statistical noise victims are the same ‘everyone and no one;’ also bridges to Garrett Hardin-type collective action problems. — connects to: Pricing option value masks the ethical nature of grave collective choices — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 249; Statistical risk comparisons can normalize accepting innocent deaths as collateral cost — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1926; Corporate cost-benefit analysis can explicitly price human life against repair costs (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Corporate cost-benefit analysis can explicitly price human life against repair costs #exemplifies (0.85)
• Scientific rationality reduces individual life to statistical ratios #corroborates (0.85)
• Statistical risk comparisons can normalize accepting innocent deaths as collateral cost #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1926