[quote=Pepperm1nts]And I guarantee you people would flip shit if something happened and it was revealed that preventive measures existed but weren't practiced.
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Some people do, yes. Two prime examples are jumping out in my head.... there was a major tornado last year (year before?) in Oklahoma, crazy path of destruction right through downtown. Immediately in the aftermath, we had people (I wanna say Bloomberg himself) lining up to shout about why didn't they have more tornado shelters? Why isn't it a law for every house to have a $50k tornado shelter? Well, the answer was simple -- they cost like $50k. But you weren't supposed to be allowed to make that decision for yourself. Predominantly-blue areas couldn't stop pulling their hair out, and predominantly-red areas couldn't have cared less; the issue went away. The people who want to pay the money and get the shelter? They've got 'em. Nobody lost there. The people who didn't, didn't. Life continues.

Second example is the fertilizer factory in Texas that blew up (town of West). This would be your 'other side of the coin' example -- see in this case, the regulators (reportedly) didn't know certain goings-on in the factory, and their rules (while followed to the letter) were not sufficient to prevent a massive, deadly explosion. Now on the one hand, I might argue "Well doesn't that just prove that regulations are blah blah blah," but fact is, place blew the fuck [i]up[/i]. If there's one thing 99% of people agree on, it's 'Let's not explode and die today.' 

So what's the point of all this, well, two sides of the coin I guess. On the one hand, safety regulations can be expensive and futile (what good is a $50k tornado shelter in your home, if the tornado hits during work hours?), and people shouldn't necessarily be forced to take out a second mortgage on their home just to pass some inspection. On the other hand, if the safety rules people aren't looking, entire towns explode into actual fireballs (sometimes). [b]Obviously what we need is a balance, and basically nobody disputes that.[/b] The more intrusive your rules, the more likely you are to meet resistance -- like hey, most people who have their shoes untied trip more than people who lace up. Let's pass laws that put shoes-untied pedestrians on probationary ticket fine schedules after three shoes-untied violations. We'll need to pass out licenses so that we can revoke them in order to properly enforce the law. Crazy, right? At some level, this is what we're fighting against when we resist the 'nanny state.' Look, if I trip on my laces, I'll trip on my laces, and I'll learn from it, and I don't want anybody looking over my shoulder to see if I'm using the right bunny-ear knot. Does that make sense?