Posted on 02/09/2009 6:56:56 PM PST by Asceticon
Assigning a monetary value to human life is something that is performed as a regular matter of business in society. In the early 1970's Ford Motor Company made an economic decision not to add eleven dollars to the cost of a Pinto for an improvement that would have prevented the gas tank from exploding in rear end collisions. It used a valuation of $200,000 per human life in its analysis, a figure that it derived from the government agency that was responsible for auto safety. Life insurance is a contact that assigns a monetary value to a human life. Juries are commonly asked to value human life in terms of dollars in wrongful death suits. A review of federal agency regulations by Gillette and Hopkins in 1988 concluded that the range was $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 per statistical life saved.
Using the high end of that valuation, an argument could be made that Madoff's alleged $50 billion dollar swindle caused an equivalent in social damage to 25,000 deaths. That's over eight times as many deaths that occurred on September 11, 2001. It is far more lives than were lost in the Bhopal disaster. So is it really unthinkable that there should be some level of financial crime that qualifies for the death penalty?
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Yeah, it's unthinkable - and I can't stand the creep Madoff. I don't want to live in a world where people are put to death for financial crimes.
I’m familiar with the Pinto case. The 180 lives “potentially” saved is garbaged, because the total number who died in all Pinto fires, regardless of cause, was about 20.
One of the handful of repeated “Pinto fires” was a van that plowed into the rear of a stopped Pinto at highway speeds. The impact killed the people inside, and a fire started afterward.
Notwithstanding that any 70s compact being rear-ended by a van going 50 or 60 would kill the people inside, it was a Pinto and there were flames, therefore it was a “Pinto fire”. Kind of like how if someone blows a stop sign, slams into you, and kills himself and your whole family, if you blow a .05 for the two beers you had with dinner then suddenly 5 or 6 “alcohol-related deaths” are added to the numbers, regardless of cause.
It was an ugly car, and like any tinbox of the era it wasn’t the safest in an impact with a larger vehicle, but categorizing them as fireballs of death intentionally designed to explode at the slightest touch is just keeping Nader & all the trial lawyers’ fraud alive.
If you are going to go after guys like Madoff for the economic ruin they visit upon us, up to and including the death penalty, then the US Congress should be lined up on the gallows right next to him.
Conservatives have gotten soft. 150 years ago, small town America would have taken taken scammers who cheated people of their life saving and strung them up.
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