Are Some Human Lives Worth More Than Others (w/ caveats)?

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Another ethical question for y'all. Please read the question and I'd also say, limit your consideration to value of their human life on Earth without consider any afterlife you may believe in.

Are certain countries' citizens more valuable because they have potential? Are people with families (or large, close networks) more valuable because they reach so many others? The highly intelligent/creative/able? Are certain professions (of scarcity or reputation) more important?

Often times we hear specifically about loss of American lives (or police/military lives).

Does any of that hierarchy matter to you?

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I mean, the boilerplate answer is going to be "No! Of course all lives are equal!" and at the hypothetical level, everyone is going to agree on that. Honestly, however, if someone was given a choice between saving one group and letting the other die--say "A" is two or three important thinkers, scientists etc., and "B" is a much larger group of the impoverished, those of average intelligence, those of little accomplishment--I'm sure a number of "rationalist utilitarians" (or whatever) would have their case for saving the former over the latter. One might reply, then, that this is entirely the problem of viewing humans in terms of material or distinct value; after all, look at the faults of Hitler's Germany. Nevertheless, in an age where government A) has limited resources, B) is asked to behave "rationally", and C) is tasked with looking out for the "greater good", such questions are bound to arise, especially as we slip closer and closer into the warm [451 degrees/the temperature of a nuclear holocaust/global warming] embrace of Armageddon. The fact that this may at one point be an actual question and not a hypothetical will mark a terrifying epoc in our history. Presumably, if we run into the situation where there's the spaceship to another planet and you have to choose between a group comprised of the uneducated, the poor, the infertile, and so on and a group of well-educated, high-achieving, fertile survivalists and scientists, the latter would be a better representative of our race to the stars, and more suited to perpetuate the people. I'm assuming we would all end up--rather rightfully so--in Hell for doing so, though.

[Murica!]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Speaking less in the hypothetical, your references to the following--"American lives are lost!", "soldiers are dead!", "police are threatened!"--present a far less difficult question to answer. Frankly speaking, a government's primary job is to protect the people under its watch. This would naturally extend to the people who enforce this basic premise--soldiers defending the nation's "interests" abroad, police maintaining order at home--in the sense that they carry a special status in the government's eyes. If a government can't protect its own citizens, what good is it? And if a government is seeing the people it tasked with carrying out its primary responsibilities dying, then that is symbolic of a government's failure towards its primary responsibility. Obviously, American lives matter more to an American government, and the same principle should apply to any government. Does that mean Americans are "special"? Far from it, they're mere subjects of the application of natural governing principles. And soldiers or cops? Only in that their ability to be protected and to feel secure in their own country represents a government's legitimacy.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I like your first answer a lot, Cathcon, I think that's more what I was going for, and then I threw some more options out at the end. Thanks for laying that out properly

[TJ in Oregon]

Speaking less in the hypothetical, your references to the following--"American lives are lost!", "soldiers are dead!", "police are threatened!"--present a far less difficult question to answer. Frankly speaking, a government's primary job is to protect the people under its watch. This would naturally extend to the people who enforce this basic premise--soldiers defending the nation's "interests" abroad, police maintaining order at home--in the sense that they carry a special status in the government's eyes. If a government can't protect its own citizens, what good is it? And if a government is seeing the people it tasked with carrying out its primary responsibilities dying, then that is symbolic of a government's failure towards its primary responsibility. Obviously, American lives matter more to an American government, and the same principle should apply to any government. Does that mean Americans are "special"? Far from it, they're mere subjects of the application of natural governing principles. And soldiers or cops? Only in that their ability to be protected and to feel secure in their own country represents a government's legitimacy.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything in this comment, but I'd like to add that the very idea of lives having worth is to say they have some intrinsic value in and of themselves, not because the government places it upon them or because people respect that value.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

Always has been, Always will be.

[YaBoyNY]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

BLM isn't about black supremacy. It's about blacks not being worth less than whites.

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

Always has been, Always will be.

Oh, that's right, you're an idiot.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

The vast majority of black people alive today in this world are, from birth, condemned to a lifetime of crushing institutional poverty, of state repression and of corrupt, inefficient and barely functioning governments and a life of subsidence farming. They are far more likely than any other race to suffer from crippling childhood malnutrition that hampers their development, far more likely to lack even basic education up to age 11. Whether in rural or urban areas, their dwellings are lacking in basic infrastructure so that black communities are far more likely than any others to suffer from routine epidemics of cholera, diphtheria and other diseases that kill indiscriminately.

The current system doesn't need a hashtag to prove its point. It knows White Lives Mattter and Black Lives are little more than a somewhat sad, yet inevitable statistic. By all means, though, act as though #BLM is some kind of radical black supremacist group rather than a somewhat fruitless interner campaign.

Indeed the nation-state is very interesting in this regards. How many times have I heard that "Charity Begins at Home" and that foreign aid should be slashed? It's very curious. Why is a human life in Swaziland or Laos or Haiti worth more than one in Sweden or Japan or Canada? Because that's what the current system promotes implicitly.

[dead0man]

Obviously a person that makes a good living in a job that helps a lot of people, who then uses that income to support a large group of people who would have issues supporting themselves without this person is worth more than a sick, old homeless person who spends their free time stealing from other homeless people.  Not everyone's worth is equal, it's rather obvious.

[Murica!]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

Always has been, Always will be.

Good to know that your both homophobic and rascist.

[Bigby]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

Have you seen the rhetoric a few of these BLM activists have openly tweeted? At least a sizable minority of them are.

[Clark Kent]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

Have you seen the rhetoric a few of these BLM activists have openly tweeted? At least a sizable minority of them are.

Not saying that I don't believe you, but do you have any evidence of this?

[Murica!]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

Have you seen the rhetoric a few of these BLM activists have openly tweeted? At least a sizable minority of them are.

BREAKING NEWS: PEOPLE SAY STUPID sh**t ON THE INTERNET

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

Have you seen the rhetoric a few of these BLM activists have openly tweeted? At least a sizable minority of them are.

Not saying that I don't believe you, but do you have any evidence of this?

Even if true, the presence of loudmouth radicals on the internet is nothing new and should not be taken to represent the views of "most" Democrats.

[Clark Kent]

No. But I imagine most dems will say yes due to the influence of BLM.

Since when is BLM an African-American supremacist movement?

Have you seen the rhetoric a few of these BLM activists have openly tweeted? At least a sizable minority of them are.

Not saying that I don't believe you, but do you have any evidence of this?

Even if true, the presence of loudmouth radicals on the internet is nothing new and should not be taken to represent the views of "most" Democrats.

No, of course not. I don't think relevant person actually believes that.

[RINO Tom]

Of course.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Yes. An American life is not worth spending because of muh UN Human Rights Charter.