this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Ignoring the fact that some of these people were billionaires, I think all of them forfeited any respect for their lives when they chose to step into a metal tube and put several miles of water between them and the breathable atmosphere, for fun. Same as mountaineers choosing to climb into a "death zone". If you choose to go there for fun then that's how much YOU value your own life and your relationships. I don't see why I should then have a huge amount of sympathy when these people inevitably die.
I cannot understand why the military was mobilised at huge cost? Surely these people should sign a much more wide ranging waiver saying they are doing this at their own risk and should not expect any rescue attempts beyond what the organisers insurance policy covers?
This viewpoint is misguided and inhumane, I'm sorry to say. We don't get to pick and choose who's lives have value, even if they do something risky or stupid.
Ugh
I think there's a difference between choosing whose lives have value and choosing who to empathize with. I'm not celebrating their deaths, but aside from the teen who was on there, I can't say I feel much about it one way or another. They knowingly chose to take the risk, signing waivers saying that they knew the trip could result in death, and it ended badly.
Looking at it from a different angle, I can also see why people would be frustrated that an incredible amount of attention and resources are being spent on people who intentionally put themselves at risk for a pleasure jaunt, while if a fraction of that (on a per capita level) was spent on everyone who was at risk of dying from issues brought on or exacerbated by poverty, we'd be saving a lot of lives.
But isn't that exactly what happens? Was there as much of a rescue effort to find the hundreds of missing Pakistani migrants who went missing off the coast of Greece last week? Was it even as widely covered in the media as 5 missing rich people in a sub? Have you even heard that they were missing before this comment?
What about the 5,000 missing and murdered indigenous women who disappear every year? Are we mobilizing the military to find them?
We absolutely pick and choose whose lives have value. That's the problem.
We'll be sure to let the U.S. Coast Guard know about their lackluster presence in the Mediterranean Sea
How could anyone who's been on beehaw in the last few days not have heard about the Pakistani migrants?
How could anyone in this thread not have heard?
I don't know who you mean when you say "we". If you mean governments and power structures then yes, I agree and it's one of the biggest flaws in our society. If you mean individuals, then yes, some people do, but it's wrong to do so whether it's billionaires, migrants, or anyone else. And I know a lot of people have a hard time with this.
We have to choose where to spend the limited material and human resources we have.
These people made their own bed. Those rescue resources were wasted on them. Don't kid yourself that poor people in a boat accident would've got a 10th of that attention.
The US military spends 2 trillion a year. I'd much rather see those resources go into rescue operations than the opposite. Poor people in a boat should absolutely get access to the same resources, and the crime here is not that billionaires did, but that the migrants didn't.
These weren't people on the job, or people doing anything remotely necessary. This was a joy trip for spoiled richies, and I don't see any justification for spending societal effort on it.
Not to mention rescue was most likely doomed from the start considering how far beyond the depth of any successful rescue, ever, that this was.
Lol, on an individual basis, yes we do
Fair, let me amend...
We don't get to pick who's lives have value unless we want to be hypocrites and no better than "them"
"When they go low, we go high" mentality got us trump in the oval office, an insurrection when he lost, an easier repeal of RvW and the SCOTUS hijacked by Christian activists, over a million people killed by a pandemic "they" claimed was a democrat hoax because they wanted to keep their businesses open, and an ever further erosion of civil rights in order to feed the 0.1%er's voracious greed. Enough of this high road bullshit, all it does is make you feel good while the elites continue to pilfer society
I thought this at first. However, it was the Coast Gaurd who was doing a lot of the rescue operation. Rescuing people from their bad boating decisions is most of what the Coast Gaurd does - if we don't want to pay for it then we'd need to disband the Coast Gaurd. The only options were for us to pay for them to sit and watch or pay for them to try to help. At least they got more experience with these sort of rescues by trying to help.
I remember years ago a bunch of people were bitching about the cost when some family that got rescued in the middle of the ocean. The coast guard response to the money complaints was,"Look, if we weren't rescuing them, we would be running drills to prepare to rescue them at the same cost."
That is the one good thing that comes out of this. Lot of really good training. Something might come out of the investigation though these guys probably violated so many standard practices that may have little value.
It's like when people bitch about having fighter jets fly over a baseball game. We don't rent F-16s from Lockheed every time we want to take one out, they're paid for already, and pilots need training. But I'm sure they're the same kind of people who don't understand why it's useful for military pilots to run drills on things like being in a specific place at a specific speed and making it line up at the exact right time. I say complain all you want about glorification of the military-industrial complex, but don't take the line that it's some atypically expensive cost to the taxpayer.
Sure, I think it's maybe fair to say that about ceo, who cut all sorts of corners with the construction (and it was a carbon fiber tube, not metal, which was the main problem)
However, the 19 year old kid on board was dragged along by his dad, and was reportedly terrified and didn't want to go. I think it shows an extreme lack of empathy to say his life had no value because of the situation he was put in.
That's true. None of what I said applies to the 19 year old who seems to have been either cajoled or coerced onto that submarine.
Thousands of people step into a metal tube and put several miles of air between them and the ground on a daily basis. Some of them do it for fun, or at least in order to travel to the place where they plan to have fun.
That's not the problem. The problem is that those metal tubes are competently engineered. Usually.
If it was some experimental space aircraft that lost pressure and got stuck in orbit it wouldn't be the same as a normal aircraft going down. I would also say to leave it there as a reminder of man's hubris.
The way I see it Stockton Rush conned them onto that boat, I might not like these people as people, but I don't put blame on them they probably should have done more research but we all sometimes jump into something without much, they probably assumed that because deep sea submersibles are a mature technology at this point with a pretty damn good safety record considering what it is that it would likely be fine.
He refused to allow non destructive testing of the Hull before and after dives or even on completion/delivery of the hull and relied on sensors to alert him to issues with the hull. Considering the relatively low cost of non destructive testing of composites it's wildly negligent.
Actually think it was a plastic tube. Carbon fiber and resin maybe.