Creampuff, you asked about quantifying "the value of a life". Risk management calculations do this all the time.
Not sure what the "going rate" is today, but around 1976 it used to be about $4,000,000. Now multiply that by the probability of an occurance (ie once every X years) and do a discounted cash flow calculation at the prime rate and you have the annual "cost" of the accident.
What you then can say is that if you can spend (invest) less than that annual figure each year to prevent the occurance of the accident (or lower its probability from X to Y) then you make the investment.
These calculations are made every day by risk management people for all sorts of companies who want to mitigate their risks, however as with the Unicom and radioless flight fiasco, I've not seen any evidence that AsA makes use of such calculations.
To put it another way, its quite probable that the cost of, say, a lost and lonely bug smasher straying into controlled airspace and hitting an airliner will outweigh the entire profits and costs of AsA for a hundred years.
Of course, if there is good Government (and corporate Governance), AsA would be held to a strict long term risk management set of accountabilities that incorporate the long term net effect on the economy of their activities. But of course the temptation is to ignore risk management as its someone else who wears the cost of the accident, concentrate on the short term to maximise one's bonus and hope like hell nothing happens before you retire and take your super.
The insurance industry does something similar to risk management to calculate premiums but use a "worst case" model. I'm advised that the premiums for a B747 for example are set on the basis of the probability of a mid air collision over central London or Manhattan between two fully loaded aircraft..