Making the people who are so poor that the VAT is the deciding factor on if they get birth control become parents seems like a very questionable tactic.

And that’s ignoring the fact that condoms are also supposed to stop STDs from spreading, not just pregnancies from happening, so I guess China’s lower (middle) class can look forward to a massive spike in STD rates in the coming years.

Yeah, it is a downside that this may discourage EV adoption, but tbh. if you chose your car based on the fines you’d get when speeding is…questionable, to say the least.

“the consequences of doing an illegal and dangerous thing with my product” should, in my opinion, not be a choice criterion.

Though a scaling that takes both size and weight into account might be even better. Particularly for crashes involving pedestrians, cyclists and bikers, the size, and particulalry the height of the bonnet, are almost more significant than just the raw weight. A hollowed out F-450 weighing 1 ton is probably still more deadly to those people than a ~1.5-2 ton electric sedan.

This isn’t really aimed at reducing adoption of big cars, more at getting the people who drive more dangerous vehicles, to drive with more regard for safety, and be penalised heavier when they don’t.

I mean they’re not mutally exclusive. Fines could, and should scale with both.

I’ve always said that the fines for moving traffic violations need to be scaled to the weight of the vehicle.

It’s insane that going 20 over the limit on a 250kg moped gets you the exact same fine as doing it in a 4 ton F-450.

I was referring to the effect being opposite of the effect that would have been motivated by capitalism.

This is a single company making a decision. It is neither capitalism nor socialism nor any other economic system, because it’s not a system. It’s one company making one decision. I just assumed that was obvious from context.

And my point was that this decision is quite literally the opposite of the decision that capitalist incentives would drive the company towards.

And yes, government regulations could accurately be described as the opposite, or in direct opposition to, free market capitalism.

There’s two sides to this, both of which are equally true.

1. Cars are a fuck ton more dangerous than most people realise/think

2. Violent crime is a whole lot LESS common/of a risk than sensationalist media makes most people assume.

Except, Airbus fixing this has fuck all to do with capitalism. They are legally mandated too. If it was Worker owned, they’d still fix it. If they were state owned, they’d still fix it. If anything, the actual forces and incentives that are inherent to capitalism, and not just existing alongside and in opposition to it, would drive them to not fix it.

Fixing it has literally nothing whatsoever to do with Airbus being capitalist or profit driven.

Just because something happened in a capitalist system doesn’t mean it happened because of the capitalist system. That’s kind of like saying capitalism caused workers rights, because companies nowadays have an incentive to not get sued for worker rights violations, which is obviously nonsense.

Yeah I think Boeing’s recent history pretty objectively and undeniably proves that manufacturers don’t incorporate safety because they want to. They do it because they have too, and if they think they can get away with skimping on it, they do.

If what you’re saying were true, then there should be no need for any safer rules and regulations in industry, as profit incentive should drive companies to just make their products safe by themselves. Which is, pretty objectively and historically demonstrable to be completely untrue.

This is literally the opposite of capitalism. Capitalism would be to cover up the issue, and hope nothing to bad happens, so you can keep raking in profits.

No capitalist company is ever going to voluntarily recall a product. Recalls happen because they are legally forced onto companies.

Doesn’t have to be cling film. Any flexible, non toxic, non permeable sheet will do. You could cut a square out of bag of chips, and fold it up. Or cut a corner out of those emergency blankets, if you have a spare. They’re impermeable to liquid, and ultra thin and lightweight.

You should include some flexible plastic, like cling film. In case you have to bandage an arterial or jugular wound, you need something that is impermeable to stop the bleeding. In case of jugular wounds, it’s also necessary to stop the heart from sucking air in through the dry end of the severed vein, which could make a bad situation worse.

Given how famously unreliable AI detectors are, and how often they FP, I’d say there’s a decent chance a few students just lied, and falsely “admitted” to using AI, because they didn’t want to risk flunking the class over a FP.

Weighing the benefits of an action vs its effort is a bizzare way to look at things for you ? Interesting stance to have, I’m curious how you decide if something is worth it or not.

And the goal of my comment was obviously not to make or save money, so that’s a shit comparison. If you take an action with the explicit and singular goal of saving money, I do think it’s absolutely worth it to consider if you even save enough money to be worth the bother. Yes switching on and off an outlet is only a tiny effort, but you’re literally doing it JUST to save money, and the amount of money you save is EVEN MORE tiny and miniscule.

The plug contacts are basically never the limiting factor current wise. They are massive solid metal prongs, they can easily handle 20-30 Amps without getting too hot. The cable will always be limiting factor for current.

a 110/220 auto sensing plug

There’s no real need for a plug to be able to sense what voltage it’s plugged into. That would be handled device side, not plug side. And for devices for which handling both 110 and 220 makes sense, well those pretty much universally already have a switch mode power supply that does so automatically, or at least a dip switch with which a user can manually select their grid voltage (check your phone or laptop charger, I can virtually guarantee it already supports both).

And the issue with devices that don’t already do this, is generally that they are basic resistive or inductive loads (anything along the lines of heaters or motors), with little to nothing in the way of digital control electronics, which need to be designed for a specific input voltage in order to achieve a specific power output. Making these devices both 110V and 220V compatible would require either giving every single one of them a voltage transformer, or to include a 110V motor/heating coil, and a 220V one, that can be switched between. Both of which would massively increase the price of these devices.

I’m not being hostile, I just fail to understand how your point with multi phase standards has anything whatsoever to do with safety. Multiphase standards, and standard intercompatability are convenience issues, not safety issues, and therfore irrelevant to the discussion.

And other standards notably, explicitly do NOT include all those safety standards. For example, the ground pin on UK plugs is longer than the L and N, which A) can be used to place child safety shutters in every single outlet, that are lifted out of the way when the ground pin is inserted and B) in the same vein ensure that GND is always the first prong to make contact. The wiring of UK plugs also requires a some slack in the L and GND wires, so that if the cable is yankes so hard the wires tear out of the plug, L is always the first to go.

The internal fuse also allows you to safely use super thin gauge wiring on low power appliances, and allows you to create cheap, low power extension cords, that are still safe because they have a fuse in the plug (yes, in theory any country could do that, but resetable breakers are expensive, and replaceble fuses are inconvenient for the user, unless the contry already has a decades old standard surrounding them, and they’re already available for sale basically everywhere).

If other plugs provide safe alternatives for the issues I’ve reiterated, shouldn’t we be looking at those plugs as safer alternatives?

No. Not unless the current plug is outright dangerous. Rewriting an entire countries electric code, and introducing an entirely new type of plug, especially one which would be neither forward nor backward compatable with the old one, costs billions, and is a major nuisance for consumers in the transition phase. It’s simply not worth it, unless it’s necessary for fundamental safety.

Rule of thumb: If a small electronic appliance (e.g. phone charger, power brick etc…) isn’t warm to the touch, it’s using less than 1 Watt of power, which at UK electric prices, is less than half a penny per 24 hours. If you value your own time at UK minimum wage, and it takes you 3 seconds to switch off, and 3 seconds to switch back on, you won’t break even unless you keep it switched off for at least 4 days. So maybe worth it if you’re going on holiday. As an everyday thing, unplugging/switching off idle electronics to save power is a complete waste of time.

There’s also no real reason to unplug something, even if the plug isn’t switched. Modern electrical appliances have idle power draws of less than a watt.

Rule of thumb: If a small electronic appliance (e.g. phone charger, power brick etc…) isn’t warm to the touch, it’s using less than 1 Watt of power, which at UK electric prices, is less than half a penny per 24 hours.

If you value your own time at UK minimum wage, and it takes you 5 seconds to unplug, and 5 seconds to replug, you won’t break even unless you keep it unplugged for at least 7 days. So maybe worth it if you’re going on holiday. As an everyday thing, unplugging idle electronics to save power is a complete waste of time.

As for electrical safety, generally speaking if something is unsafe whilst plugged in but switched off, it’s typically not legal to sell in countries with properly enforced standards anyway. And with whole house RCD protection being relatively universal in western europe, even if something were to go wrong, chances are the RCD, or AFCI if the breaker panel is real fancy, will stop the bad thing happening real quick.

Oh and quick PSA: Regardless of it’s whole house protection, or individual socket protection, you should test the function of your RCDs every now and again. Officially at least once a month. Every RCD breaker has a little button somewhere labeled “test”, that connects L to GND across a resistor, to check if the breaker actually does it’s job. If you’ve never done this (and haven’t recently had the RCD trip for an actual fault) GO DO IT NOW. THOSE THINGS ARE LITERALLY LIFE SAVERS AND IT’S IMPORTANT TO MAKE SURE THEY’RE ACTUALLY WORKING.

Women may not not be a mathematical minority, but they absolutely are a cultural/societal minoritiy.

Cultural minorities have nothing to do with the absolute number of members the group has, but how much political and social power and influence the group holds.

That’s why black africans during apartheid Africa would still be considered minorities, even though they made up the mathematical majority of inhabitants.

No, the topic is the UK electric code not being safe.

You’re literally arguing that merely BECUSE the code needs safety devices it is therefore unsafe, which is utter nonsense.