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by stanleydrew 2766 days ago
Setting aside the barriers to getting a lawyer when you have no money which I think you dismiss too readily, I am more interested in how you would propose to determine whether consumers are willingly sacrificing safety for cost?
1 comments

People make cost-safety trade offs all the time, the probabilities are so low that they may not explicitly think of them as such.

Have you ever driven a long distance instead of flying? If so you sacrificed safety for price / convenience - over the same distance flying is much safer. Are you driven by a professional chauffeur in an armored S-Class? If not you are sacrificing safety for cost.

You could imagine pushing pro-regulation arguments to absurd circumstances, like making it illegal to drive more than 125 miles (requiring people fly instead) or banning all cars aside from the armored S-Class etc. The side effects of such rules would obviously be very bad, but smaller regulations could have smaller, still deleterious consequences. See the case of unsafe cars in India: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/05/sa...

Yes but I am really interested in my actual question, which is how we can tell whether any given behavior that exhibits desire for lower price is done willingly, knowing that there is a safety tradeoff.

I am absolutely not saying it doesn't happen. I am asking how can we tell?