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On November 26th, 2001, Kenneth Feinberg began hardest job of his career. He described him as a “gruesome experience” years later. Everything has changed, his work, his life, himself. “I think for better,” he still writes, but he doesn’t seem to be quite sure.
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After two planes flew into World Trade Center and anor plane into Pentagon, government under George W. Bush had created a compensation fund that was different from all previous ones: a single person should pay money to families of Victims and injured. A lot of money, little bureaucracy. At your own discretion and as quickly as possible.
Kenneth Feinberg was that person. In following three years he met people affected day after day. He spoke to widows, whose men had died at fire brigade and when helping, with members of stockbrokers whose daily life in villas and private schools devoured a lot of money, which no longer deserved, and with parents of people undocumented to new York were drawn and cleaned for ors, waitresses, who had carried out post. Until y were killed. At moment of accident, everyone was same.
Death is a matter of status and fortune. But Feinberg task was to give each of lost or injured lives a value, a concrete sum that he could pay out to relatives. What was life of a mor worth, who had cared for her whole family? Does a man get less for his dead wife if y were not married? Does it make a difference if a person has last tried to enrich himself or help ors? What do you get for an ex-husband, a Zweitfrau or same-sex partner that nobody knew about? Feinberg immersed himself in great tangle of human constellations, life plans and feelings – and n completed his job.
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He distributed more than 7 billion dollars to a total of 5,562 people: for a man without papers, relatives were given 250,000 dollars. For a waiter 500,000 dollars. For a cop 850,000, for anor 1.2 million. For a stockbroker times 2 million, times 6 million dollars. Acts brutally. When Feinberg was asked by indignant widows why life of ir firefighters was less than that of stockbroker, he told m that America was doing just that. The Congress had given him a single guideline: income of victims should be used as basis for sums of compensation. Later he wrote in his book What Is Life worth? About his calculations and that he prays that someone should never again play such a role as he does.
Immanuel Kant said: “What has a value has also a price. But man has no value, he has dignity. ” Nobody wants to disagree with that. And yet, who looks around a bit: everything has a price. The life of everyone is evaluated and resolved – sometimes more, sometimes less subtle, but still continuously. We live in a capitalist world. And we die in it, too. We sell our work, our thoughts, our time. and get different amount of it. Companies and public authorities calculate pain, insurance premiums, security investments and treatment costs. Organs are traded on black market, people also.
The Basic Law says that all people are equal. But once you start reckoning, you quickly realize that life is not just a price. It has a lot of. and its value changes depending on wher a biochemist looks at it, a human resources manager, philosopher or economist.
Materially, our body, like everything in world, is nothing more than a composition of chemical elements, in our case especially of cheap. At 70 kilograms of body mass are almost 69 kilos of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and calcium. Only a good kilo yields remaining elements of periodic table. Even gold, silver and lithium are part of our mixture in traces. Neverless, material value remains low. Oxygen, our main ingredient, is free from air, coal and water are also cheap to have, gold is stuck for 0.7 cents, lithium for 2 cents in us.
