[donmcronald]

> Everything carrying current typically has a ton of safety margin built in

The thing that worries me is what happens when everyone is cutting corners because they're relying on someone else building in safety margin. Where's the tipping point when everything becomes unsafe?

[blagie]

My suggestion would be to travel the world, and see how people live in places with different margins. Life is sort of okay. Look at Soviet-era Eastern Europe, India, the diverse approaches across Africa, China, the rest of Asia, etc.

People get by. There isn't a sudden collapse or implosion.

It's also easy-to-manage. If there are suddenly a lot of electrical fires, regulators will step in before it goes out-of-control.

For my personal tastes, the US is too liability and safety-conscious on a day-to-day level, and not nearly safety-conscious enough on a system level. Risks like fires, where I live, are small enough that I'm not worried about them.

Antibiotic-resistant super-diseases? AI apocalypse? Thermonuclear war? Cyber-Armageddon (where every network-connected device is maximally bricked in the span of 30 seconds)? Climate change? Some weird super-pollutant? Systemic economic collapse? Civil war? Genetically-engineered super-bug? Running out of water in Arizona (or your other local issue)? ...

We have major disasters typically around once a century in any given location (WWI/WWII/30 years war/Bubonic Plaque/hurricane/etc.). It's hard to predict which one will happen; some are very unlikely, and some are pretty likely. If something hasn't happened in 50+ years, we stop worrying about it, and we completely ignore future previously-impossible risks.

I'm much more worried by those sorts of things than by fire safety.