There’s this fascinating idea called a millimort - a thousandth chance of dying. And that’s useful in valuing a life. Not in the legal system (that would be offputting I suppose) but in the administrative system. If you’re willing to work at X job for $Y that has Z chance of death, And I’m working at a different but otherwise equivalent job that has a different-from-Z chance of death, we can figure out how you price your chance of death, and then we can figure out how you value your life, and then if we have to decide whether a certain regulation is “worth it,” we have ways to figure out what that means because we can compare not just the hard costs but the, you know, lives too.
I suppose it’s a process. (If this is your jam, I’d probably start with the archived Becker Posner blog.)
Or a boat. You buy a boat for $X, you fix it up and you put it to work a couple months later. Is it worth $X plus the dollars spent? $X plus the dollars plus the time? Or is it worth something completely different - is it just worth what it’s worth to you?
Or let’s say it’s a really fancy boat - something that’s unique to you, and you sink $1m into it, but nobody would ever pay you $1m for it. What’s it worth then?
Hard questions all. One judge’s opinion on these issues. On the boats I mean. Not the life.