You are not addressing the fact that nuclear has been safe precisely because of government oversight. And until recently most of us felt safe flying the skies. But how did Boeing get complacent without the FAA knowing?
The problem is who makes the decision of how much “red tape” is good or not? Sure, more people die by lightning than...whatever. But do you not want to transport your family in a car that is safer than those of 30yrs past?
The smog of Pittsburgh in the late ‘40s was cleaned up simply because people wanted to live better. But why did the industries allow that smog to get oppressively bad in the first place?
Nuclear is safe because it is not an inherently dangerous power source, and this is due to the fact that it is good for business to have it that way. If a nuclear power plant melts down, it is gone, done, no further ROI. So it is good business to make sure it does not fail. This is exactly what companies, on their own, are doing right now, trying to make it absolutely fool proof and come up with the next generation of reactors that are more efficient and powerful. But government has gotten in the way so much so it is impossible to get a new nuclear plant built, and even harder with newer better designs.
Pretty funny, there are safer better designs but because of how slow government runs, the government would rather you build an older type plant instead of a new one.
The red tape is so thick that coal plants release more radiation then what nuclear plants are allowed to. How silly is that.
Insofar as Boeing, what's your point. I believe the accident was caused by a programing glitch no one realized existed until an accident occurred. It's tragic but how do you foresee it until after the fact. Most responses on how the government could have prevented it are filled with hindsight bias. The government did nothing, nor would have been able to, to prevent it. And do you really think Boeing is fixing the problem due to government? No!. They are fixing it because they want to continue selling planes. If they ignored it, no one would want to fly in a Boeing plane and they would loose business. It just make sense to fix the problem.
It also makes sense to make planes safer and safer as time goes on. Do you really think a company would make planes to the same safety standards of the 30s if they could? Come one, you're being irrational.
Cars you say, well the cars of 30 years ago were not less safe because of less red tape. They were less safe because innovations we have today had not yet been invented. The government did not just all of a sudden think up some safety innovations and products and force them onto the car makers. The car makers thought of these things and implemented them before the government even had a whiff of them. Stop kidding yourself.
Ahhh, the smog of Pittsburgh. Guess what, no one really knew how bad smog was for your health pre 1940s. The industries let it get that bad simply because no one, including them, knew any better. It was not until the 1948 Donora smog crisis that people started to take it seriously, Of course, when they found out how unsafe it was, they cleaned it up. So what is the point? It is a great example of a local government getting together and implementing a policy that hd direct results. Not a large federal government run amuck with regulations, some of which no one can really explain.
