> this must be weighed against the statistical value of life
Must it be? There are a great many regulations concerning safety devices and procedures that government and industry shell out for which cost more to industry than the statistical value of lives saved. Safety compliance is an added cost to virtually every aspect of commerce. You seem to suggest that any cost of compliance beyond the actuarial value of lives taken by noncompliance is unwarranted. But in this case we're going much further, since the addition of methanol is not merely a lax safety regulation but an added cost to manufacturing which serves no purpose other than to make the product less safe.
Consider safety caps on pill bottles, or seat belts in cars. Both those things had to be forced upon manufacturers, because the cost to manufacturers of fighting civil litigation - which we can assume both operates upon and inflates your $8M figure - didn't provide sufficient economic downside to spur costly implementation. Their existences are both examples of life being valued by society as more than its actuarial value, or value provable in court.
If, as a libertarian would, you argued that companies should never pay for any safety regulations beyond the dollar value of the internal and (maybe) external costs inflicted on the public by their products, implying that the value of human life should be reduced to a dollar figure, even then it would make no sense to pay more just to make a product more dangerous.
I feel like you mean your statement to be objectionable. And I feel like we're getting to the root of why your statements in this thread have generated such a bad feeling; your disdain for life is coming out. We could get into a discussion of the actual value of human life versus its average value in economic output - including the externalized costs manifested in social disorder and rebellion when life is snuffed out by neglect or malpractice. But again, this is why I think the motive for adding poison to products is suspect, and can't be attributed only to economic motives. It implies a hatred of humanity. Indeed, the value proposition for many governments to add methanol to industrial alcohol isn't based at all on actuarial tables, but on "moral" judgments. In Iran, the lacing of all industrial alcohol with methanol is part and parcel of the religious ban on personal consumption of ethanol, and it led to more deaths during the pandemic than the virus itself. So perhaps there, it could be justified economically by saying that the life of someone who indulges in drink is worth a negative actuarial value; but this is economics shaded by fanatical belief, and must not be taken as a proxy for the true value of life.
Must it be? There are a great many regulations concerning safety devices and procedures that government and industry shell out for which cost more to industry than the statistical value of lives saved. Safety compliance is an added cost to virtually every aspect of commerce. You seem to suggest that any cost of compliance beyond the actuarial value of lives taken by noncompliance is unwarranted. But in this case we're going much further, since the addition of methanol is not merely a lax safety regulation but an added cost to manufacturing which serves no purpose other than to make the product less safe.
Consider safety caps on pill bottles, or seat belts in cars. Both those things had to be forced upon manufacturers, because the cost to manufacturers of fighting civil litigation - which we can assume both operates upon and inflates your $8M figure - didn't provide sufficient economic downside to spur costly implementation. Their existences are both examples of life being valued by society as more than its actuarial value, or value provable in court.
If, as a libertarian would, you argued that companies should never pay for any safety regulations beyond the dollar value of the internal and (maybe) external costs inflicted on the public by their products, implying that the value of human life should be reduced to a dollar figure, even then it would make no sense to pay more just to make a product more dangerous.
I feel like you mean your statement to be objectionable. And I feel like we're getting to the root of why your statements in this thread have generated such a bad feeling; your disdain for life is coming out. We could get into a discussion of the actual value of human life versus its average value in economic output - including the externalized costs manifested in social disorder and rebellion when life is snuffed out by neglect or malpractice. But again, this is why I think the motive for adding poison to products is suspect, and can't be attributed only to economic motives. It implies a hatred of humanity. Indeed, the value proposition for many governments to add methanol to industrial alcohol isn't based at all on actuarial tables, but on "moral" judgments. In Iran, the lacing of all industrial alcohol with methanol is part and parcel of the religious ban on personal consumption of ethanol, and it led to more deaths during the pandemic than the virus itself. So perhaps there, it could be justified economically by saying that the life of someone who indulges in drink is worth a negative actuarial value; but this is economics shaded by fanatical belief, and must not be taken as a proxy for the true value of life.