Author: W. Kip Viscusi File Type: pdf How societys undervaluing of life puts all of us at riskand the groundbreaking economic measure that can fix it Like it or not, sometimes we need to put a monetary value on peoples lives. In the past, government agencies used the financial cost of death to monetize the mortality risks of regulatory policies, but this method vastly undervalued life. Pricing Lives tells the story of how the government came to adopt an altogether different approach--the value of a statistical life, or VSLand persuasively shows how its more widespread use could create a safer and more equitable society for everyone. In the 1980s, W. Kip Viscusi used the method to demonstrate that the benefits of requiring businesses to label hazardous chemicals immensely outweighed the costs. VSL is the risk-reward trade-off that people make about their health when considering risky job choices. With it, Viscusi calculated how much more money workers would demand to take on hazardous jobs, boosting calculated benefits by an order of magnitude. His current estimate of the value of a statistical life is $10 million. In this book, Viscusi provides a comprehensive look at all aspects of economic and policy efforts to price lives, including controversial topics such as whether older peoples lives are worth less and richer peoples lives are worth more. He explains why corporations need to abandon the misguided cost-of-death approach, how the courts can profit from increased application of VSL in assessing liability and setting damages, and how other countries consistently undervalue risks to life. Pricing Lives proposes sensible economic guideposts to foster more protective policies and greater levels of safety in the United States and throughout the world. **Review From probably the worlds leading thinker on the valuation of mortality risks, Pricing Lives makes a fundamental, enduring contribution.Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law School This book presents the argument that not only should there be a monetary value placed on lives, but that the actual value used by regulatory agencies and courts is generally too low. Viscusi has done a real service by making these ideas accessible to the general public.Joseph P. Newhouse, Harvard Medical School Viscusi is the foremost expert on using benefit-cost analysis for safety decision making. In Pricing Lives, he provides a highly readable yet comprehensive overview of the value of a statistical life, a crucial component of such analysis. Importantly, he shows how it can be more fully exploited by corporations, courts, and government regulators as a basis for cost-effective safety decisions.John W. Ruser, president and CEO of the Workers Compensation Research Institute Pricing Lives is an accessible, example-rich, and interestingly written account of the ways in which lives ought to be accorded monetary value for the purposes of policymaking. Kip Viscusi is the foremost authority on the subject.Steve Shavell, Harvard Law School Written by an expert at the top of his field, this book explains how to perform better analysis of public and private decisions using the value of a statistical life, or VSL. Viscusi not only covers many substantive topicsfrom environmental to vehicle and occupational safetybut also provides invaluable guidance on how to deal with some of the thorny issues of VSL.Frank Sloan, Duke University From the Back Cover From probably the worlds leading thinker on the valuation of mortality risks, Pricing Lives makes a fundamental, enduring contribution.--Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law School This book presents the argument that not only should there be a monetary value placed on lives, but that the actual value used by regulatory agencies and courts is generally too low. Viscusi has done a real service by making these ideas accessible to the general public.--Joseph P. Newhouse, Harvard Medical School Viscusi is the foremost expert on using benefit-cost analysis for safety decision making. In Pricing Lives, he provides a highly readable yet comprehensive overview of the value of a statistical life, a crucial component of such analysis. Importantly, he shows how it can be more fully exploited by corporations, courts, and government regulators as a basis for cost-effective safety decisions.--John W. Ruser, president and CEO of the Workers Compensation Research Institute Pricing Lives is an accessible, example-rich, and interestingly written account of the ways in which lives ought to be accorded monetary value for the purposes of policymaking. Kip Viscusi is the foremost authority on the subject.--Steve Shavell, Harvard Law School Written by an expert at the top of his field, this book explains how to perform better analysis of public and private decisions using the value of a statistical life, or VSL. Viscusi not only covers many substantive topics--from environmental to vehicle and occupational safety--but also provides invaluable guidance on how to deal with some of the thorny issues of VSL.--Frank Sloan, Duke University

Author: Susan Buck-Morss File Type: pdf In this path-breaking work, Susan Buck-Morss draws new connections between history, inequality, social conflict, and human emancipation. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Hegels master-slave dialectic and points to a way forward to free critical theoretical practice from the prison-house of its own debates.Historicizing the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the actions taken in the Haitian Revolution, Buck-Morss examines the startling connections between the two and challenges us to widen the boundaries of our historical imagination. She finds that it is in the discontinuities of historical flow, the edges of human experience, and the unexpected linkages between cultures that the possibility to transcend limits is discovered. It is these flashes of clarity that open the potential for understanding in spite of cultural differences. What Buck-Morss proposes amounts to a new humanism, one that goes beyond the usual ideological implications of such a phrase to embrace a radical neutrality that insists on the permeability of the space between opposing sides and as it reaches for a common humanity.ReviewHegel, Haiti, and Universal History packs a powerful punch. Its strength lies in the development of a specific claim in the history of philosophy into a general theme concerning universality and politics.--BookforumThis brief review cannot do justice to the many ways [Buck-Morss] provocative and beautifully written book forces us to reexamine our academic labors. Buck-Morss also deserves praise for placing the Haitian Revolution firmly at the center of modernityand insisting that scholars in many fields contemplate its lessons.The AmericasSusan Buck-Morss provides a decisive reframing of Hegel in this wonderful book. The supposed idealist becomes a hard-headed realist whose concepts are formed while reading the morning newspapers. The idea of emancipation from slavery is itself emancipated from a model of noblesse oblige to one of struggle, risk, and sacrifice on the part of the slave. This is a thoroughly brilliant scholarly work that turns Hegel upside down in a new way, revealing this time that he was always already standing on his head.W. J. T. Mitchell, University of ChicagoFew books . . . contain as much fascinating material, new interpretations, intriguing possibilities and intellectual stimulation.Marx and Philosophy Review of BooksAmong the most innovative and stiumlating critical assessments of the Haitian Revolution.New West Indian GuideA revelation, on both scholarly and performative levels. . . . Among the most innovative and stimulating critical assessments of the Haitian Revolution.New West Indian GuideA provocative book and one that will be of interest to scholars in the field of race AND philosophy.Black Cultural StudiesAbout the AuthorSusan Buck-Morss is Jan Rock Zubrow 77 Chair of Social Sciences, and professor of political philosophy and social theory in the department of government at Cornell University. She is the author of Thinking Past Terror Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, Dreamworld and Catastrophe The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, The Dialectics of Seeing Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, and The Origin of Negative Dialectics Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute.