alt Hacker News> Without going into the specifics of car seats, I do think we overemphasize safety. The article mentions saving 57 children. How much are 57 lives worth? The answer is not infinite - a life has a numeric value, ask any insurance company.
Sure, the value of 57 lives isn't infinite, but this particular comparison is a totally absurd one to make. Births and deaths are completely morally independent, it's not as if those 57 lives could be substituted using the surplus of births.
> Every safety regulation ought to pass a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis. Few of them do.
Actually I'm pretty sure that is in fact how safety regulations work.
Nonetheless, the concept of a "cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis" is paradoxical. Values are intrinsically subjective, hence we have democracy.
>Actually I'm pretty sure that is in fact how safety regulations work.
Of course the number "check out". Industry regulations are typically ghost written by some combination of industry groups, lobbying groups and academia. Who funds those? The industry either being regulated or industry that stands to benefit if some other industry is regulated.
80-100yr ago if you were inclined to screech about fire safety you'd have been citing numbers funded by the.... wait for it.... asbestos industry.
>hence we have democracy.
Democracy is a system for ensuring stable-ish power transfers by giving the people some semblance of control over the process and little more.