3 ms·

I think the 'safest' part is due to regulation, not market forces.

macspoofing 8y ago
Regulations are certainly part of the story, but make no mistake, regulation don't work without market buy-in. If a regulation stands in opposition to market forces it will fail miserably. For example, car fuel efficiency regulations tend to lead to cheating, and non-compliance (which leads to non-enforcement because regulators give up on them) if they stray too far from reality. Furthermore regulations don't innovate. It took aviation engineers to design and build super-safe passenger jets, and airlines (along with engineers) to maintain them - bureaucrats don't do any of that. But yes, regulations have a place.
- jpmoral 8y ago
  >It took aviation engineers to design and build super-safe passenger jets, and airlines (along with engineers) to maintain them - bureaucrats don't do any of that. Companies won't do that unless forced to by regulations. Also, your post that I replied to implied that it was all market forces.
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    >Companies won't do that unless forced to by regulations. Even if you were to take a cyncical view that companies don't care about people, they sure as heck would not want to lose a $300 million plane. I'm not arguing against the utility of regulations. I'm saying don't overstate it.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      Companies don't care about people, for one and for two, the problem is that safety is one of those things that companies will gladly brush right against the edge of for the sake of profits. To draw a point of comparison many companies know that their infrastructure is vulnerable to hacking or data leaks. The reason why they don't fix the problem in the first place is because they've ran the cost analysis and realized that the cost of securing their system is more than the potential ramifications of losing customer data.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      > Even if you were to take a cyncical view that companies don't care about people, they sure as heck would not want to lose a $300 million plane. If safety didn't matter, you might have $200 million planes with a 3% chance of crashing during their service life. Nobody 'wants' to lose equipment, but optimizing for zero crashes ever is not done for cost reasons.
- akiselev 8y ago
  The FAA and the NTSB are the reason there is market buy-in to begin with. Consumers would never have adopted air travel and driven global economies of scale to the extent that they have without those two agencies reassuring the public that they wouldnt go up in a giant fireball along with 200 others just to go to Cabo.

Regulations are certainly part of the story, but make no mistake, regulation don't work without market buy-in. If a regulation stands in opposition to market forces it will fail miserably. For example, car fuel efficiency regulations tend to lead to cheating, and non-compliance (which leads to non-enforcement because regulators give up on them) if they stray too far from reality. Furthermore regulations don't innovate. It took aviation engineers to design and build super-safe passenger jets, and airlines (along with engineers) to maintain them - bureaucrats don't do any of that. But yes, regulations have a place.

jpmoral 8y ago
>It took aviation engineers to design and build super-safe passenger jets, and airlines (along with engineers) to maintain them - bureaucrats don't do any of that. Companies won't do that unless forced to by regulations. Also, your post that I replied to implied that it was all market forces.
- macspoofing 8y ago
  >Companies won't do that unless forced to by regulations. Even if you were to take a cyncical view that companies don't care about people, they sure as heck would not want to lose a $300 million plane. I'm not arguing against the utility of regulations. I'm saying don't overstate it.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Companies don't care about people, for one and for two, the problem is that safety is one of those things that companies will gladly brush right against the edge of for the sake of profits. To draw a point of comparison many companies know that their infrastructure is vulnerable to hacking or data leaks. The reason why they don't fix the problem in the first place is because they've ran the cost analysis and realized that the cost of securing their system is more than the potential ramifications of losing customer data.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    > Even if you were to take a cyncical view that companies don't care about people, they sure as heck would not want to lose a $300 million plane. If safety didn't matter, you might have $200 million planes with a 3% chance of crashing during their service life. Nobody 'wants' to lose equipment, but optimizing for zero crashes ever is not done for cost reasons.
akiselev 8y ago
The FAA and the NTSB are the reason there is market buy-in to begin with. Consumers would never have adopted air travel and driven global economies of scale to the extent that they have without those two agencies reassuring the public that they wouldnt go up in a giant fireball along with 200 others just to go to Cabo.