Most of us believe in the sanctity of life. We subscribe to the sixth commandment: "Thou shalt not kill," but add more vaguely, "thou shalt not place a price on life, either." There is something repulsive in the suggestion that any amount of money could compensate for the death of a loved one.
It is not just life that we treat in this way. We say of certain works of art or animal species, that they are "invaluable," that their worth cannot be captured in the profane discourse of costs and benefits. Values are "incommensurable"-no gain in one thing can make up for the loss in another.
Despite our intuitions, however, we have to face the fact that we-or at least our politicians and public officials -are forced to trade off life and other priceless things against each other every day. Philosopher James Griffin cites the example of the French who maintain their beautiful tree-lined boulevards at the cost of an ascertainable number of fatal accidents each year. Here, beauty trumps life. A similar trade-off is made when, as a nation, we decline to put every last penny of the arts budget into the NHS, or turn every public library into a fire station.
Trade-offs are unavoidable, even over rail safety. No doubt the Paddington accident was preventable and some of the anger directed at the rail companies seems justified. They should spend more on safety. But to say now, as John Prescott does, that "money is no object," is a little crazy. Has he not heard of opportunity cost?
The fact is that rail travel remains much safer than most other modes of transport. One could save many more lives for every pound invested in road safety than in rail safety. And, as economist John Broome points out, diverting funds from rail safety to cancer treatment could save even more lives. But this skewing of public priorities-and we should remember that much of the money for rail investment still comes from the taxpayer-is part of a bigger pattern of anomalies. The value we place on life varies hugely from industry to industry, and from government department to government department.
Where the department of transport is willing to spend up to ?1m on roads to save a life, and Railtrack ?3m, the nuclear industry is happy to spend up to ?30m. At the other end of the scale, anti-smoking campaigns are estimated to save a life for every ?50,000 spent. A tiny proportion of that last figure could save a life in the third world. But what then, of the sanctity of life?
Of course we might, if the economists get their way, reach a point where we become too calculating, where life and other sacred values are treated like any other commodity. This is the nightmare Max Weber envisioned, of a society locked into a instrumental rational mode of reasoning. But we are far from Weber's world. Right now, what we need is more rationality, not less. One economist-philosopher I spoke to in the wake of Paddington, a specialist in this field, a mild, careful man, told me that Prescott's rhetoric in the days after the accident amounted to "pure cant." He was right. More people die on roads every three or four days than died in that accident, yet it dominated the front pages for a week. Has anything stirred up quite so much dust since the death of Diana? Are the two events by any chance related?
