College of
Business
Administration
College of
Business
Administration
Dalton, D.R. &
Cosier, R.A.
An Issue in Corporate Social Responsibility: Experiential Exercise To Assess the Value Of Human Life
Journal of Business Ethics, 10(4), 311-315 (1991)
You are a relatively prosperous property owner in some community with an annual income of some $150000. Your current property tax assessment for your principal residence in this community is $3000 per year.
It has come to the attention of local authorities that there is some problem with the potable water supply for the area. Outside environmental chemists have been employed to assess this problem and their report is disquieting. It seems that the water supply is contaminated. A carcinogenic substance which has been definitively associated with increases in human mortality is above acceptable maximum levels. It has been creditably estimated that if this water is not treated, ten people who otherwise would not have contracted this probably fatal condition will die.
Of course, nobody knows which ten. This scenario is not unlike an insurance company's ability to predict - with startling accuracy - how many houses will burn in some region over some time period. That is a probabilistic assessment; they do not have even a vague clue about which houses in particular will be destroyed.
Understandably, the unsafe state of the water supply has been quite newsworthy in the local press. A host of environmental consultants and chemists have provided a report to the local authorities that suggests the "problem" can be mitigated for approximately $20 million.
The local authorities have decided that the appropriate manner by which to fund this water project is through an increase in the property taxes. Since increases in this particular tax have been most unpopular historically, they have further decided to circulate a referendum to the property owners in the community. The point is to discover the extent to which the property owners will suffer an increase in their tax assessment.
The issue then is straightforward. The community is trying to raise money to treat this contaminated water. This is to be accomplished by raising the property tax assessment. If sufficient funds are raised, the water will be improved and ten lives will be saved. Now, the property owners must merely vote on the referendum.
The Assignment
(1) Your tax assessment is currently $3000. Would you vote "yes" on the referendum if your assessment would be raised to $3050? $3500? $4000? Since you will not be sharing this information with anyone else, you may want to consider at what point you would vote "no" on such a referendum.
(2) Please briefly discuss approaches in which a value is applied to human life. Setting aside the evaluation of your own life, how would you set a value on the life of someone else?
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