by David B. Shemano
Why is your personal opinion relevant? I mean, I am sure I can find somebody (Melvin P.?) who apparently highly values going 100. Therefore, your opinion is cancelled out. Now what do we do? ^^^^^ CB: Well, it's like why vote ? Your vote is only one in millions. How can it be relevant ? David Shemano's vote is going to cancel yours , so why vote ? In general, all we have here on email is opinions ,no ? For example, you recognized that opinions are readily expressed in this mediuam when you said to Michael Perelman: "I don't have a strong opinion on whether regulation should be done by legislation or litigation -- it seems like a peripheral issue." Would your opinion have been relevant if you had one ? ^^^^^^^^^ Why do you assume such facts for a socialist society? We have 75 years of experience with socialist inspired economies. Did they place a higher value on safety compared to comparable capitalist societies? ^^^^^ CB: Well, yea for automobile safety. The Soviet cars were like tanks, which , Justin mentioned, would be the direction that you would go to have safer cars. They had more mass transportation in the form of omnibuses, trains, trolleys than individualized units, as Melvin alluded to as a safer form, generally. Obviously, there can be train accidents too. We have too much capitalism in the world to get a full socialist test of more safety in general. Lets get rid of capitalism and find out what we can really do as humans. ^^^^^^^ Were they able to implement safety concerns more economically than comparable capitalist societies? ^^^^^ CB: Good question. I'm not sure how you would get a comparable capitalist society , but if you think my opinion on it is relevant, I'd say a comparable capitalist economy for the SU would be someplace like Brazil in some senses at some periods. It's hard because the Soviet Union (and all socialist inspired economies) had to put so much economic emphasis on military defense because capitalism was constantly invading them or threatening to nuke 'em. This throws off all ability to measure from Soviet and socialist inspired history what might be the benefits of a peaceful socialist development of a regime of safety from our own machines. ^^^ It seems to me that safety increases in value as a society becomes wealthier, and the value is not correlated to the economic system itself. ^^^^^ CB What do you mean by "safety increases in value" ? I'm not sure human life is valued more highly as society gets wealthier. Death and injury by automobile accidents is the main cause of premature death in the U.S., isn't it ?
