Re: Moral Hypothetical
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Where is the $1 billion coming from? If it is newly created wealth, then the government should encourage its creation. But if the company would just make $1 billion by taking it from someone else, then the government should forbid it, because the death resulting would be a net decrease in social wealth.
For example, you could imagine that the company discovered a tax loophole whereby it could gain a $1 billion tax credit is one (or three) of its employees is killed. Obviously, the government doesn't want to encourage the exploitation of this loophole.
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This is all irrelevant. Not the point of the question.
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It is my understanding that John has agreed to a 3% chance at dying.
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Which makes it ok to kill him with 100% certainty? Agreeing to a 3% of being killed = agreeing to be murdered 100% of the time as long as you aren't aware of it?
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You forgot, in your equity analysis, to account for possible friendships within the social world that the company is. Therefore, the equation would be more along the lines of 0.03 (death) + 0.97 (5M) + n/100 (losing a friend) + n/99 (losing a friend) +n/98 (losing a friend) where n is the number of friends hyou have in teh company. You could also write it as 0.03 (death) +0.97 (5M) - 0.03 (VF) where VF is the value you attribute to the company's personnel, as a whole.
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No. Everything you added undoubtedly factored into the employee's decision to agree to the deal. The precise values assigned to the opportunity costs of death, not making 5 million, etc. etc. are unimportant. What matters is that they all voluntarily agreed to the deal.
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