Are you talking about the life valuation argument? I think this is meant to be an approximation of what economists call "revealed preference": but it isn't quite an exact duplicate, so I'm not sure...
eg, the classic example is two people looking for jobs that require similar skills, except that one is riskier than the other (eg, maybe a coal miner versus a copper miner, where the expected lifespan is a year less for the coal miner than the copper miner). In a perfect economists world, the coal miner will get paid more to work the riskier job because otherwise he would go and get a copper mine job instead. And that pay premium will be exactly equal the value of 1 year of life: if it was more, the copper miners would all switch to being coal miners.
But I think it falls apart because the prisoners _don't_ have a choice. Eg, it only works properly if both people can trade their good away.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-08-03 01:11 am (UTC)Are you talking about the life valuation argument? I think this is meant to be an approximation of what economists call "revealed preference": but it isn't quite an exact duplicate, so I'm not sure...
eg, the classic example is two people looking for jobs that require similar skills, except that one is riskier than the other (eg, maybe a coal miner versus a copper miner, where the expected lifespan is a year less for the coal miner than the copper miner). In a perfect economists world, the coal miner will get paid more to work the riskier job because otherwise he would go and get a copper mine job instead. And that pay premium will be exactly equal the value of 1 year of life: if it was more, the copper miners would all switch to being coal miners.
But I think it falls apart because the prisoners _don't_ have a choice. Eg, it only works properly if both people can trade their good away.