Markets and Mortality: Economics, Dangerous Work, and the Value of Human Life

People often take jobs they know are dangerous, and indeed, our economies generally depend on their doing so. But is that by itself a justification for letting them? After all, maybe the answer would be to change our economies instead. This book is a knotty but fascinating attempt to look at this knotty but fascinating issue. The author, a political scientist of a technical bent, rejects the received view that high-risk jobs can be justified by the payment of higher wages. And indeed, in the book's best section, he expands his argument into a general critique of the cost vs. benefits analysis of the value of human life. Dorman notes that historically the marketplace has not produced even remotely efficient accommodations between risk-creators and risk-bearers. The mainstream economic approach fails because "risk in its publicly meaningful sense is not the bare statistical probability of suffering a loss; it is a violation of the norms of care and reciprocity that ought to govern relations among people."