A human or a dollar?

Whats worth more and why?

I don’t know… but I think people tend to monetize humans more than they humanize dollars

They’re both worth the same according to an old Western movie I watched last night … a single scalp was purchased for $1

Some human beings are worth more than others, that’s the prevailing theme of civilization after the neolithic era. Currency is merely an instrument of social control to achieve an end. What that end is currently being ongoing and nobody knows but I tend to be pessimistic on the issue.

Haha
well said

Depends. In elemental terms its worth about $4.50 strictly on basis of a chemical breakdown into various components.
On basis of sophisticated transplantation of healthy organs, it could be worth as much as 45 million.

If you’re talking about only 1 dollar . then either way a human is worth more.

But to the one who is not suicidal the comparison is inconceivable.

There is a caveat though , in the modern Western industrial world , few are those parents who would offer themselves for sale after being killed, for the sake of their loved ones.This is not the case in Eastern lands , where such generosity may not be as uncommon.

Always the human. Never judge by appearances or by the here and now. You can never know where this person came from, what this person achieved in his past, who this person was, or where this person may go in the future and what might be achieved by him/her.

homeless.jpg

What if THIS person had been a soldier, fought nobly for his country and for freedom, then came home and fell on hard times. Would you say that this person is worthless because of outer appearances? What if this person had, in actuality, saved the life of one of your family members, during his wartime? Yet you judged him/her to be worthless because of what you see NOW.

What if this person died in the street? What about his or her organs which would be able to save a few lives? Would this person suddenly become worththy or would he/she still be worthless in one’s eyes?

Only someone who sees value in money alone would chose the dollar. Pathetically so, they probably wouldn’t even spend that $ for a cup of coffee for this human being.

We are like the people who see only the tip or the top part of the iceberg. They do not see what runs or flows beneath.

Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that in our modern world, the dollar trumps human life.

Perhaps a better question would be whether human life has an intrinsic value; and my guess would be that it does not.

Trick question. Nothing has intrinsic value.

Value is not an objective property, it is subjectively attributed according to the objective properties of genetics and environment/circumstance. It’s possible for humans, dollars etc. to be valued to any extent, though in practice there certainly are current tendencies towards humans valuing humans quite highly - particularly kin - because those behaviours are what works best and thus gets passed on the most. It’s not the only way that works though, so plenty of humans don’t value other humans that much, and in some cases barely/not at all - and dollars might be the way towards what they value instead. And even if one values one more than the other in general, some circumstances might cause one to switch from valuing one more to the other.

Which is valued more on average today? A cynic would no doubt say the dollar, and in many cases this certainly has truth. Slavery still exists, human trafficking, prostitution, even wage slavery is the practice of people selling themselves to the purposes of another in exchange for the dollar - in this case it is a necessary choice to value your human self more than money by valuing money more than yourself part-time. Sometimes it’s possible to align these two to an extent, like if you get a lot out of your work and it brings out the best of your humanity. It’s an interesting experiment, to see how much you and others will devalue your humanity for what amount of dollars. It’s more of a sad experiment to see how much people will devalue other people than themselves for what amount of dollars - assuming you ever value humans more than dollars of course. Otherwise it’s not sad.

Sometimes humans are valued by paying money for other people to value them - e.g. charity. Cases like these highlight how money can just be a middle-man for humans valuing humans by being human and doing human things. Money is just an attempt to quantify how human value is given and received - so it actually doesn’t ever have value until it’s converted back into humanity, like two currencies being exchanged except one of them can’t be spent anywhere. But that’s when money is being converted into human action - not when money is accepted instead of action, or for action to the detriment of humans or to avoid human action.

Note this OP,
Are Bitcoins Real?
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=193685

and this,
Is the American Dollar real?
viewtopic.php?p=2688256#p2688256

A human is real, so it the American Dollar.
The American Dollar [$] has no intrinsic value but it is based on intersubjective human consensus [beliefs] of what its current value should be.

So the Dollar is a subset of human[s].
In this sense human has higher value than the Dollar.
The value of the Dollar like the Zimbabwe currency can be reduced to be worthless or just vanish into thin air when there is no intersubjective consensus on its value.

A human [normal] cannot be reduced to nothing.
So in this sense the human is ‘worth’ more than the dollar.

Another point is a human being has value, i.e. basic human dignity and at least basic self-worth which is not necessary based on intersubjective consensus.