There’s no shortage of examples. Insurers cover life and health. Vehicles protect their passengers’ lives more or less well, depending on how much is spent on it. Undertakers put a price on death. Public policy implicitly puts a price on safety, and therefore on risk. Safety standards strike a balance between protecting citizens more or less, and a cost borne by a company.

Saying that “life is priceless” is wrong. It’s a stock phrase that means nothing and only tries to dodge a complicated debate that nonetheless shapes our daily lives.

What is true, on the other hand, is that life has no absolute price.

• If I die of natural causes tomorrow, my life is worth more or less nothing;
• If I die in an accident, an insurer might compensate my partner, my company, my child and so on, depending on the cover and the loss suffered;
• If I die because of someone else, the price attached will be higher, because the courts will value the emotional harm, and someone can be held responsible;
• If I’m taken hostage, my market price will shoot up, because France will be valuing not my life, but the damage it would suffer itself if I were to die.

And I’m leaving out of this the money my parents and the State invested in my education, my health and so on, which would almost let you work out a rate of return 😅.

Putting a price on a human life isn’t cynical.
Because what we mean by price is the face value of a currency.
And currency was only ever created to give us a common yardstick for exchange.

The price of a life isn’t a value judgement between individuals, but between contexts.

Comparing the cost of holding a prisoner with the estimated loss after a parent’s death, itself compared with permanent disability, makes no sense.

But putting precise data against each situation means being able to make rational, logical, appropriate and fair decisions. And trying to bring back, in the absence of absolute justice, a little fairness.

So maybe we can say that life is priceless.
But the context in which you might lose it certainly has a price.

Many thanks to Pierre Kopp, university professor of “Law and Economics, Public Economics” at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, for sharing his notes.

My name is Benjamin Charles, and I do branding, positioning and content creation consulting for companies in finance, real estate and web3.

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