Since our goal in #life is maximising {well-being, quality of life, happiness, flourishing, utility} both for us and in the universe as a whole (nobody sits at either extreme of that spectrum; ie nobody’s absolutely selfish or absolutely altruistic), I would like everybody to know about QALY’s and use them more often than they use dollars, hours or calories.

We all have internalised (imperfect) convertibility between time and money already: we routinely give away the former for the latter (work), or vice versa (outsourcing, entertainment, services). Less clear is the relationship between those two dimensions and others such as physical health, physical safety, mental health, power, fulfilment, transcendence, etc… and yet we know there is one — because if pressed we know how many € or weeks we’d trade in exchange for more of those (or vice versa).

Perhaps a robust and granular version of QALY is the most comprehensive and least biased unit with which to assess individual an collective decision-making.