Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing [Hardcover]

Frank Ackerman (Author), Lisa Heinzerling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 24, 2004

An economist and a law professor debunk the use of cost-benefit analysis in deciding whether human life and the environment are worth protecting.

EPA estimates of the value of one human life: in 2000: $6.1 million. In 2002: $3.7 million.

Is the price of human life going down? Does it cost any less to protect the natural world? There is no meaningful dollar price for life or nature, say economist Frank Ackerman and law professor Lisa Heinzerling in their critique of recent market-based assaults on health and environmental protection. Though cost-benefit analysis sounds like a reasonable way to gauge the extent to which we should regulate private industry, when applied to "priceless" concepts such as childhood disease or the value of a stable climate in years to come, the paradigm is misguided.

Decisions such as removing arsenic from drinking water or weighing the risks of cell phone use while driving should not be left to back-room bean counters. Such issues call for informed public debate drawing on moral, philosophical, and societal considerations beyond market-based assessments. Debunking the overall concept of cost-benefit analysis and the fuzzy math behind it, Priceless is the first comprehensive rebuttal of a strategy at the heart of the current administration's anti-regulatory binge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

How does one put a cost on a human life? And what effect does air pollution have on our health? Ackerman and Heinzerling focus on such questions in this volume, a skeptical and instructive look at how economists put a dollar value on intangible risks and rewards. What sounds like a purely technical process has enormous political implications, thanks to the pervasive use of cost-benefit analysis in government decision making. Because this analysis is used to quantify the impact of often controversial regulatory and tax policies, the economists' numbers loom large in public policy, which Ackerman and Heinzerling clearly deplore. They've composed a lively and engaging attack, both well reasoned and well documented, on the myriad ways that these little-scrutinized figures are manipulated for political gain. While it's no surprise to anyone who has worked with statistics that numbers are frequently massaged to advance a particular point of view, the authors argue that in some cases the massaging leans toward misrepresentation or outright incompetence. For example, one study attempted to downplay the hazards of toxic waste dumps by noting that accidents with deer hurt more people every year; but then, there are many more deer than toxic waste dumps. This is a thoughtful book that is partisan but not strident; at the same time, it assumes a certain degree of mathematical sophistication.
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Review

A damning indictment of cost-benefit analysis applied to health and environmental protection. -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Combines sophisticated criticism and a provocative policy perspective with an accessible style and an eye for contemporary political issues. -- Harvard Law Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (February 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565848500
• ISBN-13: 978-1565848504
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #236,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hugely important book - brilliant and scary, March 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing (Hardcover)

If someone tells you that a regulation will cost $100 million but produce only $50 million in benefits, you'd probably think it was a good example of government bureaucrats running amok. But what if you then found out that what the regulation would really do was force polluters to cut emissions in order to prevent thousands of cases of life-threatening illness over the next three decades? And that the $50 million benefits "pricetag" was developed by a bunch of green-eyeshade types who regard each life as worth about $3 million, and who then use a statistical trick to make 87% of that value disappear?
Ackerman and Heinzerling have written a brilliant and scary book that lays out in chilling detail just how widely such techniques are now being used in making decisions about when to adopt health and environmental safeguards - and when NOT to. They also reveal that many of the horror stories repeatedly trotted out by critics of environmental and health standards NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
The authors' prose is engaging and their arguments are compelling. Essential reading for anyone who cares about health and the environment - and who thinks that industry shouldn't be blindly trusted to do the right thing in safeguarding them.

10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very readable, very important!, March 4, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing (Hardcover)

This book will truly open your eyes. This book presents a rare chance to peak behind the curtain and see how our government goes about making life and death decisions.