51–60 of 750 posts
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Just because the ground is more stable than the air doesn't mean there aren't train collisions. Air travel actually has a lower fatality rate per mile than trains do. Rail crossings can be dangerous places.
The Shinkansen has had one fatality in its entire existence. Domestic air travel is insanity, and I say this as a pilot and a flight instructor.
It's going to be interesting to hear how the plane ended up flipped upside down. There's ice on the ground so maybe a skid on braking resulting in hitting something near the runway causing the flip.
Not-insignificant winds may also have played a factor.
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If you agree that all people are fundamentally "good". But that's not true, so the barber will start skimping on barbicide and people will start getting infections. We need regulation because people are not fundamentally "good", even if they mean well. I'm glad you're "half-libertarian" because you are halfway there!
However, in reality, barbers (at least in the US) are not dangerous places. If a barber starts acting in a way that makes their customers come down with infections, customers will take their business to the other barber down the street. If this new barber does the same, you will simply go to the next barber. In this scenario, the first barber to treat their customers well (in a manner that does not pass on infections…
Which, in the real world, is the case with almost everything.
Vendors don't tend to cheat or cut corners or perform malfeasance on shit that's easy to spot.
Worse yet, the customer often can't tell the difference between malfeasance and bad luck. Without an independent regulator looking into this crash, I will have no idea if the airline operating it was staffed by morons and cutting corners, or it did everything right and got unlucky.
And no, the legal system doesn't solve this problem, because any sane company will have a strong preference towards a quiet, confidential settlement, to expose as little of their dirty laundry as possible to the public and prospective customers.
Libertarianism collapses upon contact with the real world, because it depends upon informational symmetry. Yet the way businesses actually operate, it's all informational assymmetry. I don't have the time to devote my life to trying to pick out which vendor will try the least hard to fuck me over, and even if I did have that time, I wouldn't have the information necessary to make an informed choice.
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The comment said specifically "Major" accidents within specific time frame. I don't see anything in your link contradicting them. The claim was not that there were not any accidents.
And the convenient thing about a word like "major" is, you get to define it however you want!
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The Shinkansen has had one fatality in its entire existence. Domestic air travel is insanity, and I say this as a pilot and a flight instructor.
That's cherry-picking to the extreme. Not only are most trains not Shinkansen, not even most trains in Japan are Shinkansen.
That's incredible. The plane literally turned over and burnt but no casualty. The flight staff must have done as amazing job keeping everyone calm and helped everyone get out of the upside, burning plane.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you agree that all people are fundamentally "good". But that's not true, so the barber will start skimping on barbicide and people will start getting infections. We need regulation because people are not fundamentally "good", even if they mean well. I'm glad you're "half-libertarian" because you are halfway there!
However, in reality, barbers (at least in the US) are not dangerous places. If a barber starts acting in a way that makes their customers come down with infections, customers will take their business to the other barber down the street. If this new barber does the same, you will simply go to the next barber. In this scenario, the first barber to treat their customers well (in a manner that does not pass on infections…
Food poisoning is actually a great example of why we need health regulations and inspections. In a given day, we eat so many different things, it would be nearly impossible to accurately attribute a single incident to a single source. Imo the only reliable way to increase safety is to have a common set of standards that are enforced by the state.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you agree that all people are fundamentally "good". But that's not true, so the barber will start skimping on barbicide and people will start getting infections. We need regulation because people are not fundamentally "good", even if they mean well. I'm glad you're "half-libertarian" because you are halfway there!
Yes, in addition to competitiveness, complete information must be available. The customers must know that the barbers are skimping on barbicide, and also have a full understanding of the consequences of that. It's not a default situation, and a lot of regulations are about providing that transparency so that customers can make an informed decision.
* Buy any brand of meat in any grocery store and be confident it won't make my family sick.
* Visit any barber and be confident I won't get a weird scalp infection
* Fly with any airline and be confident I'll get to my destination alive
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Can you work out the logical connection for someone who wouldn't understand it?
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> I don't understand why... Spend some time talking to a Libertarian zealot. Not saying that you should believe any of their assertions. Let alone adopt their worldview. But you might get a sense of how less-government-is-always-better "logic" works.
As a half-Libertarian, the problem with a lot of libertarian logic is that it's too black and white. Less government/regulation is good if and only if the underlying market is highly competitive. High competition protects consumers. Examples: restaurants, barbers, tailors, spas, almost anywhere small businesses exist. All ancient, well-functioning industries that are comparatively minimally regulated. The problem wit…
With airplanes, you have not only the risk to paying customers, but to bystanders who in many cases cannot be made whole in the event of an accident (i.e., you might get a financial settlement if an airplane crashes into your house, but that won’t bring your family members who were in the house back to life.)
I’m all for cutting superfluous government regulation, but deregulating airline safety is quite possibly the dumbest possible place to do it.