By the same token, Rust has no type safety because std::mem::transmute exists. In practice, it's not a problem because transmute is not a valid way to construct

By the same token, Rust has no type safety because std::mem::transmute exists. In practice, it's not a problem because transmute is not a valid way to construct or interact with values (outside of a few special cases). By calling transmute you're explicitly opting out of all safety and abstraction, and entering here-be-dragons territory. (That said, the Go syntax looks far less "scary" than `unsafe { transmute::<_, Colour>("orange") }`, which I'd definitely call a design issue.)