Michael Sandel

This dilemma points to one of the great questions of political philosophy: Does a just society seek to promote the virtue of its citizens? Or should law be neutral toward competing conceptions of virtue, so that citizens can be free to choose for themselves the best way to live?

Critics of utilitarianism point to such episodes as evidence that cost-benefit analysis is misguided, and that placing a monetary value on human life is morally obtuse. Defenders of cost-benefit analysis disagree. They argue that many social choices implicitly trade off some number of lives for other goods and conveniences. Human life has its price, they insist, whether we admit it or not.

For example, the use of the automobile exacts a predictable toll in human lives—more than forty thousands deaths annually in the United States. But that does not lead us as a society to give up cars. In fact, it does not even lead us to lower the speed limit. During an oil crisis in 1974, the U.S. Congress mandated a national speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour. Although the goal was to save energy, an effect of the lower speed limit was fewer traffic fatalities.