Jim Grant on risk tolerance and life's tradeoffs

I am seventy-four years old and every day I get out of bed I am beating the odds.  The idea of suspending ordinary living pending the arrival of a vaccine is absurd.  Still worse is the forced suspension of the lives of people seventy years younger than I.  My grandchildren, for instance.  “We can’t sacrifice our children out of our own fear,” said Dr. Scott Atlas in so many wise words. 

Life is a matter of tradeoffs.  And early on people would plague you if you held this view in public by saying, “You mean to tell me that you are willing to trade off profits for human lives?”  Well no, I’m willing to trade off risks, and it’s what we all do, whether we realize it or not, whether we can express this or not.  We are all, at least subconsciously, living according to our tolerance for risk.  We look both ways or no, we don’t look both ways.  We scrupulously observe fifty-five miles an hour or we are young and quick and bold and drive seventy-five miles an hour and probably not run a risk to ourselves or others.  So people by and large, not exclusively and not entirely, but people by and large know these things about themselves.

~ Jim Grant, "Bulls, Bears, and Beyond: In Depth with James Grant," The Austrian, Jan-Feb 2021