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By: Patrick
Everyone acknowledges that they would spend any money they could get their hands on to pay for a family member taken hostage. But paying ransoms puts future people in danger, as the bigger the reward...
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By: James
“Everyone acknowledges that they would spend any money they could get their hands on to pay for a family member…” Not everyone. I can think of several people whose families might not pay all that much...
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By: Rick Forrest
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.@Patrick: you write “a scorched earth policy can be the most humane” It’s only ‘humane’ when taking a view of the whole system, and that is decidedly...
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By: kilroy
It’s logical, but not necessarily humane. For it to be the humane choice, you’d have to value future victims lives the same as your own family. That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what Love is. 3 2
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By: James
Why this unthinking assumption that everyone loves their family members and will either pay as much as they can raise to get them back if they’re kidnapped, or not become a pirate because it might...
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By: frankenduf
reminds me of the jack benny joke about a robbery: ur money or ur life! (pause) im thinking… 1 1
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By: Seth
“For it to be the humane choice, you’d have to value future victims lives the same as your own family” Except that its not the policy makers’ families involved. For the family, of course they value...
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By: AC
I have to say Jon makes a point: if you’re worth nothing, they’ll just kill you. But (extreme cases aside) it’s true that it would be hard to argue against a family and tell them not to pay a ransom...
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By: Voice of Reason
This is the Freakonomics-style positive externality vs. negative externality, or external diseconomy question. Similar to the club vs. the lojack argument, paying off the random helps your family, but...
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By: Paul
There’s are several logical errors with many of the comments here so I don’t know where to begin. Consider that the hostage is Louis Pasteur. Does the utilitarian argument work? 0 0
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