I read "safe" differently than you did; now I'm on the same page. With or without a GC, if you want to guarantee safety in that sense no matter what, you're rig

I read "safe" differently than you did; now I'm on the same page. With or without a GC, if you want to guarantee safety in that sense no matter what, you're right - you just can't allocate memory. So in the worst case running in a managed environment doesn't buy you much, but often the guarantees you need are a bit looser than that, and in that case managed memory can be really beneficial.