So... I’ve been trying to find supporting arguments for my intuition that even though death rate is far lower than Spanish Flu (2%) and European Black Death (25-30%), the civilizational damage is comparable. I’ve found a pretty good one...
It's an interesting theory but there's no good evidence that suggests people considered life cheap and disposable, neither in family nor battle.
https://medievalists.net/2015/06/medieval-warfare-and-the-value-of-a-human-life/…
https/radicaldeathstudies.com/2019/08/20/child-death-and-parental-mourning-in-the-middle-ages/amp/
You’re also conflating valuing in the sense of dignity, and valuing in an economic/technological sense as a necessary component of societal mechanisms. I’m mainly talking about the latter. Mexican farm laborers are not valued in dignity terms in the US but highly valued as labor.