G got a notice from work that they are ignoring the two day in the office requirement this week, because the air quality is that bad. Of course he got it after already biking to the office, but that’s nice.
Such a good analogy for “privatizing the profits, but socializing the losses.”
Taxpayers, not the wealthy owners of OceanGate, will be paying the millions of dollars in costs for the search and rescue—and I almost wouldn’t have a problem with that (the coastguard rescues hapless people every day, and I don’t think that regular citizens should be forced to pay for their own rescues, because saving people is what a society should come together and do).
But the owners of OceanGate not only knew of the risks, they eschewed any kind of government regulation (like having an emergency location beacon that would have made the search far easier) because they said it would inhibit growth and profits. And I can’t help but believe that the coastguard and the navy and all of the other public agencies, are searching just a little bit longer and a little bit harder, because it’s rich people who are missing.
And don’t even get me started on how Greece’s coastguard is most likely responsible for the murder of hundreds of refugees, or how Italy and much of Europe have made it national policy for their coastguards to not help refugees at sea.
Anyway, it’s well past time for more people to start seriously thinking about how our society always bails out banks and wealthy billionaires, but tells poor people to exercise better judgment and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
