2023.06.23
So the other day I said "It's a bummer, and while I don't begrudge the rich some adventure tourism, the 'new frontiers' they were exploring were those of deregulation and lax safety and engineering standards."
Or as one friend quipped "We imploded while convincing rich people to ride in the cheapest way possible!" (and google scrapes from their website say similar things)
And while even famously protocol heavy NASA messed up (not listening to their engineers who thought it was too cold to launch the Challenger), there is a long history of folks saying "look these regulations are blocking me from making as much money as I could, let get rid of them"
And too often this attitude gets people killed (like with the subs) or the taxpayer bails things out (like also the sub) or it bites the company (like Norfolk Southern having to pay 1/3 of a billion dollars for cleaning up the East Palestine Ohio train wreck after years of lobbying to relax regulations. But of course, if that cost is less than what they think they save pushing everything to the limit, it's just a cost of doing business)
Or Elon Musk "Aspiring to have no flame diverter in Boca, but this could turn out to be a mistake" and he trashes his launch pad. But if you look at how much worse his rocket is for the local wildlife etc - it's not just a matter of cost efficiency for him, we all get to pay some of that.
Even a similar vibe for the deregulation that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
There's a common thread to all of these, that a small group can make boatloads of money by taking risks, but they've moved the cost of those risks to the public or other folks in general. Conservatives vowing to roll back "over-regulation" kind of assume every rule is there for funsies or to assert government control. And I'm not sure there's never over-regulation, but it would be great if we had a bit more connection between risk taking and actually paying the consequences.