Episode
S9 Ep27: The right to choose to die
- Podcast
- VoxTalks Economics
- Published
- May 1, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1380
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://audioboom.com/posts/8897863
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Summary
Content note: this episode discusses assisted dying, end-of-life choices, and suicide. Some listeners may find the content distressing. In April 2024, Daniel Kahneman — one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century — emailed his close friends to say goodbye. He was 90 years old, his kidneys were failing, his mental lapses were increasing, and he had decided it was time to go. He flew to Switzerland to end his life at an assisted dying clinic there, because New York, where he lived, did not permit it. Thirteen American states currently allow medical assistance in dying; most require a terminal diagnosis with death expected within six months. Canada, Belgium, and Switzerland allow it on broader terms. The UK introduced a bill to parliament, but it failed to pass. The debate on whether we have the right to end our own lives has not been resolved. This week Tim Phillips talks to Al Roth of Stanford University about how economics can contribute to the debate on medical aid in dying (MAID). Roth, a Nobel Prize laureate, has written a new book that argues this, and similar debates, often miss the key insight: the binary choice of “allow” versus “ban” rarely reflects reality. For example, in the United States, he explains that physicians in jurisdictions where assisted dying is illegal are familiar with the practice of administering doses of drugs that will relieve pain, but also end life. Roth's argument is not that assisted dying is always right. It is that a moral position that ignores the costs of a ban is not more ethical — it is less honest. Economists, he says, bring one specific thing to this debate: the insistence that trade-offs be made explicit. The book discussed in this episode: Roth, Alvin E. 2026. Moral Economics: What Controversial Transact…