One of my virtuous neighbors was talking about evil corporations that prioritize profit over human life, not making products as safe as possible.
Of course I had to agree that this was, shall we say, Deplorable.
I asked “What about our own town?” We don’t have Danish-style bike infrastructure, in which a curb separates an automobile road from a bike lane and a second curb separates the bike lane from the pedestrian sidewalk. A cyclist was killed in our town recently, an accident that wouldn’t have happened with a Danish-style system.
I then pointed out that we have several busy roads through town that aren’t divided, thus inviting a deadly head-on collision. Since we do not want to put a price tag on human life, wouldn’t it make sense to raise property taxes sufficiently to widen these roads and insert a concrete divider in the middle?
Had he stood up at town meeting (at which recently the good townsfolk voted to spend $110 million on a new school for about 440 town-resident K-8 students) to demand these initiatives for safer roads?
The corporate critic was horrified at these ideas: “That would cost a fortune,” he said, “to acquire the strips of land and build the barriers. It would never make sense.”
This post could be improved. There’s very little detail there about regarding what this person said about corporations.
Off topic.
Interesting article about a flying-V passenger plane designed by a Dutch university in partnership with KLM. Very cool looking, and supposedly very fuel efficent.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/06/radical-new-airliner-could-save-fuel-but-ride-like-a-roller-coaster/
Ars Technica mentions that the plane would be barf-bag inducingly thrill-ridey during banked turns, since the passengers would not be on the axis of turning, but rather further out. That would have meal service implications also.
Ars Technica links to an older article about blended wing airplanes. McDonnell Douglas pioneered the concept, and Boeing continued to look into it after they acquired them. And they verified the added efficiency with engineering calculations and model testing. So why not develop it?
— It wouldn’t fit at some airport gates
— A freight version would need to land at even more primitive airports where it wouldn’t fit
— The in-wing idea won’t work for small passenger planes, since the wing would be too small and thus the passenger compartment would be like a capsule hotel
— The plane would have to be pretty big to accommodate 95 percent of men (apparently the standard) without stooping, plus carry-on baggage, plus various physical plant stuff under the floor or in the ceiling
— Esoteric math problems relating to balancing weight of freight versus range
— Incompatibility with freight loading infrastructure
— Can’t be cheaply stretched into a different version to match market demands
— But might work for the military
I’d love to see one of these things be built! Can’t they just shut down a few “educational reform” or “diversity” programs and use the money to develop one of these designs?
Your example is poor. There’s no comparison. The city isn’t misleading customers and there is no exchange of money. Sure, safety wasn’t improved, but nor was a dollar spent. If the people who are paying taxes want increased safety, they can lobby for and vote on a public works measure. It’s not for profit. Other than parking enforcement or similar, their generally not scheming to fleece citizens. Companies actively mislead customers in pursuit of sales. Tobacco companies knew smoking was a hazard and concealed that fact in exchange for profits. Oil companies knew about global warming and also concealed or later mislead customers. Boeing and auto companies cut corners because the cost of settling wrongful death lawsuits is ultimately cheaper than getting it right. And on and on. Profiting at their customers expense, or of that of the general population. Privatized profits and socialized risk and damages.
The profit-focused entity here is the citizen — any particular citizen, whose profit (or income) would be reduced by higher taxes, and the customers are other citizens and residents (including undocumented) who would benefit from public works.
> Tobacco companies knew smoking was a hazard and concealed that fact in exchange for profits. Oil companies knew about global warming
How exactly do you picture these two industries being open and honest? You want them to pay PR people to go out and say “our product is bad for you/the planet”? Everyone involved would be instantly fired by the shareholders. They’d probably be extremely vulnerable to a massive lawsuit by the shareholders as well for violating their duty to act in the company’s best interest.
Meanwhile, everyone knows alcohol is bad for you and we have no problem with those industries. You might think the lesson is be honest, but if Beer Co ran a public service announcement tomorrow that drinking is bad and their sales dropped 1%, they’d all be fired and possibly sued.
It’s the government’s role to fight industry – industry shouldn’t be asked to fight itself. Focus on making lobbying illegal so government can hold up it’s end, not on suing companies providing things consumers want.
I agree with the others that Phil should hire an editor for this blog ASAP; otherwise how can we read it? Also, it’s very much preferred that the editor is a truly woke individual.
> Since we do not want to put a price tag on human life
Who do you mean “we”, Kemosabe?