Lockdown: Governors Playing God
The pandemic has endowed state Governors with God-like power: who dies, who lives, and under what conditions. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, when confronted with the question of human life in the context of lifting the mandatory pandemic lockdown, declared, "To me, I say the cost of a human life is priceless. Period." Others, residing this side of the metaphysical curtain, might qualify such an absolute by invoking that old tagline and say, yes, yes, but for everything else there's Mastercard. Governor God turned cost accountant.
Thrust into the "real" world -- the one of economists, accountants and bureaucrats -- they might begin their analysis by framing trade-off decisions in monetary terms. The monetization of human life was carried out way back in the Pleistocene era of 1982 -- the figure back then was around $300,000 ($800,000 in today's dollars), derived by taking the present value of Johnny Paycheck's lost earnings in a wrongful-death case. Assumptions and methods evolved and, factoring in quality of life and applying something called the value of a statistical life ("VSL"), the number was boosted to roughly $3 million. Since then various federal agencies, applying their respective cost-benefit analyses to justify hazard mitigation, further bumped the number to now approach the $10 million mark.
It is here where the reckoning becomes stark, crass. One range estimate suggests between one and two million Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. could be avoided through a continued lockdown. Multiply the lowest end in that range by the $10 million dollar per life and the number is $10 trillion dollars -- roughly half the country's gross domestic product.
But wait, let's challenge certain assumptions. Any legitimate trade-off decision would surely distinguish between dying from as opposed to dying with the disease i.e. comorbidity. A more compelling approach might be in measuring the overall "excess death rate" i.e. the rate of total deaths for a current period compared to the equivalent period of previous years, including those marked by the garden-variety seasonal flu epidemics. The mere posting of the ongoing gross number body count lends itself more to hysteria than to rational analysis.
Even stickier is the harsh reality of factoring in the so-called deaths of despair -- the result of the economic devastation and social isolation -- attendant to the continued lockdown. Then there are the less quantifiable effects on societal mental health, such as the "learned helplessness" that comes with what might be seen as arbitrary, capricious and whimsical decision-making. Finally, there's the one factor that's rarely discussed in polite company -- ignoring demographic differences, such as age, in the assumed life valuation of the victim pool (is an otherwise healthy young adult to be regarded in the same way as a centenarian?)
The above simply highlights the immense difficulty in lockdown decisions that addresses people as piece parts. We approach Oscar Wilde territory where, "The cynic knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing." Enter the Texas lieutenant governor commenting on the trade-off between capitalism and the the lives of America's senior citizens, "there are more important things than living." Okay, sir, please expand.
Our focus discussion essay (America's Chilling Experiment in Human Sacrifice) does exactly that by embracing the sentiment of a late 19th-century political economist who maintained, "There is no wealth but life." The piece probes the unstated assumptions about capitalism in its implicit requirement of human self-sacrifice at the altar of the market. How is it that we should understand the relationship among people, the economy, and the state, especially during this pandemic crisis?
The fundamental questions about the meaning of wealth and its dark opposite "illth" -- a term coined from an old Norse word for "bad" -- certainly predated the Covd-19 risk. We now venture beyond the meaning of (David Bright's) multi-dimensional wealth to now embrace all the "negative externalities" affecting the society at large. At the very center of the question about wealth and illth comes the one about implicit human sacrifice.
So, now it becomes real. You, as governor, have now been handed those three requested draft executive orders to deal with the state lockdown: continue; lift; qualified (must list specific conditions). The "known unknowns" are the same ones out there in the public domain. Pen in hand, which one do you sign?
And, as to the question at the outset about what is the value of a human life, there is but one correct response . . . . that depends on who's doing the asking.