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Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

> You’re making the assumption that all of the regulations are just, requires and proportional.

> If 1 additional person falls overboard every million man hours worked but everyone gets cheaper shipping, do I care? No, not really.

If that's your problem, write your congressmen asking for the repeal of safety regulations because you want cheaper prices. However, that's totally orthogonal to the problem I was addressing with my proposal.

> If your answer is yes, then do you care about the safety conditions of the factories of the goods being transported? How far are you willing to take this?

Yes. Let's go for it and ban imports from those factories with shitty safety conditions, too.

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A million hours is over a century. One death per million hours is substantially better than natural attrition.

You going to shut down every factory where someone has a stroke?

The point is that in a world of natural variation and risk, we draw a line somewhere and call the other side unacceptable and this side acceptable.

What we have presently is no line at all for foreign vessels; I happen to agree that it would be better to have the US one.

One in every three boat workers should die by falling overboard at some point in their 40-year career?

Sure, those specific numbers suck - point well made.

Is one death per 10,000 careers too many? One in a million? No regulatory scheme short of "no goods may be transported anywhere" is going to create the latter outcome, so you can either accept that a line must be drawn or accept that anyone who doesn't live on a farm must starve.

Inflation machine go brrrrr

If people aren't able to get out of poverty because the job never existed in the first place, are they really better off?

> Inflation machine go brrrrr

Memes: the internet's least persuasive from of argument.

> If people aren't able to get out of poverty because the job never existed in the first place, are they really better off?

Yeah. Just tax you and give them the money.

You don't provide a path forward, and only make fun of something that is true, inflation and the money printer are running rampant. As for taxing, wealth redistribution is a way forward.

Next time please think about what you write, your useless comments don't advance conversation.

> You don't provide a path forward, and only make fun of something that is true, inflation and the money printer are running rampant. As for taxing, wealth redistribution is a way forward.

No one's talking about printing money except you. Meme comments and other regurgitations will get the responses they deserve.

> Next time please think about what you write, your useless comments don't advance conversation.

LOL. If you were serious you'd have replied to the GGP.

   > If people aren't able to get out of poverty because the job never existed in the first place, are they really better off?

i think this is a false dichotomy: there is no universal law that says people in poverty must put up with abuse, slave wages and unsafe work environments in order to dig themselves out

Awesome! How do you plan to monitor and enforce this?

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