Economists also figure out economic strategies that can sway economic decisions.
On and on. That people are choosing to discount life is only because most people today are specialists of one sort or another. Unless someone has a background from which to understand the issues they remain critical, suspicious and apathetic due to the subtle and sophistically conflicting information they are fed via the media. Placing the burden of culpability on the public is itself another form of externalization. It has been applied to the destruction of rainforest too, while in fact it is the economic pressure of international development finance that forces the issue in an unsustainable direction.