On Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:51:48 -0400, Sum Guy wrote:

notbob wrote:

Safety is the curse of modernity.

I was either kidding here or only talking mower saftety devices and
selected other things.

While I'm sure insurance companies make mistakes, including big ones,
the requirements for insurance and the inspections that insurance
companies require are more thorough and more effective than what
government is able to do, and by far, not just on airlines. And it's
better for a private organization to be applying such rules than for
the goverment to make laws and regulations about all these things.
For one thing, it's much easier for insurance companies to change
them, including eliminate them, when the situation changes, that it is
for any part of the government.

As far as air travel, it would be hard to prove there is a
constitutional right to do it. The problem is that since there are
wicked people in the world, no set of rules provides both universal
freedom and universal saftety can exist. I'm not exhibitionist, but
if they wanted me, along with all the passengers, to be naked so that
everyone in the airport could see me, it would be worth it to not get
bombed to deeath. I couldn't care less if 2 or 3 people see an image
of me. It's not like these rules were imposed before there was
trouble.




....and the province of lawyers.

It's not to protect you, but to protect the lawn mower
manufacturer from brain dead users.

The reason why air travel is such a hassle, why we must practically be
sterile and naked and take almost nothing on-board with us, is to
satisfy the insurance industry.

AIG (the insurance company that was too big to fail) was bailed out
because it insured over half the world's air travel industry. If that
company had folded, world-wide air travel would have practically
stopped.

The insurance industry demanded that world gov'ts impliment increasingly
onerous and restrictive requirements on passengers, to the point that
you are basically surrendering many constitutional rights when you're at
an airport (searches, no-fly lists, the ability to travel anonymously,
etc) as a condition for continuing to provide insurance for the
carriers.