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+4 votes
What is the "value" of a human life from anarchist perspective?
Do you believe it is priceless? Can/should it be measured in money?

I do get this question a lot by "an"-caps and other pro-capitalists, social darwinists and similar minded people...
by (640 points)
life is still that cheap? i thought with inflation and all...where did you git one for that price? walmart? target? is yours american made?
well, this black friday i hear target is selling life 30%! Come out and enjoy the savings!
black friday! yes, maybe we can cause a run on target, and get them to sell out of lives!

because after all, once there are no more lives for sale...

[y'all did see "team america", right?]

Freedom isn't free and it costs folks like you and me. If we don't all chip in, we'll never pay that bill. :P

yeah i love everything from matt and trey parker, despite whatever their political opinions may be

1 Answer

+3 votes

Such a question, or the assertion (that life has a value), smacks of absurd ridiculousness to me. Despite its implied appeal to 'objectivity,' it remains, within the confines of critical thinking, an example of begging the question. Put another way, it's a circularity; an implied valuation on valuation; values are valuable. Does this mean valuing is valuable? Anyway, there's a subtle shiftiness from activity (verb) to thing (noun) becomes which becomes apparent very quickly.

From another angle:

Say your interlocutor is named Bob. Is Bob living? Or does Bob somehow have 'life'? Does Bob believe 'Bob' is somehow separable from 'his life'?   Where did 'Bob' manage to catch or seize 'life'? Or, conversely, how did 'life' pick up this 'Bob'? If Bob isn't irritable by this time, Bob, according to the demands of this logical play, should be able to define 'Bob' and 'life' unhesitatingly and clearly.  Otherwise, Bob has just shown they're speaking gibberish while at the same time demanding clarity from you.

If such 'things' ('Bob,' 'life') cannot be 'defined,' then questions pertaining to 'value of life' may be seen easily as nonsense and hardly have anything to do with living and continuously re-valuing, or preferably (following my own penchant toward etymological broadening), re-worth-ing.

For me this kind of logical heel-digging comes across as nothing but a deep-seated fear and distrust in the messiness we call 'world.'  Attendant with this fear/distrust, is the drive to shape 'the world' into something more malleable and controllable toward ends I desire to see perennially unrealized.

by (7.5k points)
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