344. Who Decides How Much a Life Is Worth?

Freakonomics Radio

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Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 32K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2018

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

After every mass shooting or terrorist attack, victims and survivors receive a huge outpouring of support — including a massive pool of compensation money. How should that money be allocated? We speak with the man who’s done that job after many tragedies, including 9/11. The hard part, it turns out, isn’t attaching a dollar figure to each victim; the hard part is acknowledging that dollars can’t heal the pain.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When something terrible happens, something truly terrible, a mass shooting or a terrorist attack,
0:10.6	there is a man whose phone eventually will ring.
0:15.3	My name is Kenneth Feinberg.
0:16.3	I'm a lawyer here in Washington, D.C.
0:19.4	Feinberg grew up near Boston and Brockton, Massachusetts.
0:23.4	Brockton High School graduate, University of Massachusetts, graduate, New York University
0:29.9	School of Law, and then I was asked by the Chief Judge of New York State to clerk for
0:37.8	him.
0:38.9	This was in 1970.
0:40.5	As Feinberg's career progressed, he got to know many of the Chief Judge's other former
0:45.0	clerks.
0:46.0	One of home was the very distinguished, eminent, federal district judge Jack B. Weinstein
0:52.7	in Brooklyn.
0:54.0	One day, in 1984, Feinberg got a call from Judge Weinstein.
0:58.7	By this time, Feinberg had put in time as a federal prosecutor and as Chief of Staff
1:03.2	or Senator Ted Kennedy, now he was in private practice.
1:07.1	What did Judge Weinstein want?
1:09.2	Weinstein had assigned to him the Agent Orange litigation brought by Vietnam veterans
1:17.3	against the chemical industry, Dyle Monsanto.
1:21.7	A ledging certain physical injuries and deaths attributable to inhaling or swimming in the
1:30.3	herbicide Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam.
1:33.5	For those who don't recall or know, Agent Orange was an ex-folio meant to burn the shrubs
	...

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