So, for those who havent noticed, last week there was a train crash in Ohio that spewed toxic chemicals everywhere and turned the area into a literal hellscape. It happened near the Ohio Pennsylvania border, just short of Pittsburgh, and if it happened any later than it did, it could have gone off in downtown Pittsburgh, where it could have harmed orders of magnitude more people.
As it is, they appear to have evacuated everyone within like a mile of the site, and even a weak later people are talking about how the area is still hazardous to be in. It's pretty messed up.
Originally, I was gonna talk about the tradeoffs between gas pipelines, and trains, and how reducing the amount of pipelines in use causes more use of transporting harmful chemicals like oil and natural gas on trains and how you get more ecological disasters that way, but Vaush ended up doing a good video on the subject today I'd like to talk about instead.
He ended up talking about rail safety in general and how these businesses are making all of this money but then they're cutting corners with safety to maximize profits. Sounds about right. Anyway, what happens under capitalism when a company fixates on maximizing profits at the expense of safety? You guessed it, you get crap like this, as more accidents happen and it leads to ecological disasters. Rail companies have been deregulated in recent years/decades too, and this is leading to putting people at risk as well.
I won't agree with Vaush's idea of like 30 conductors on a train as that seems like a prime example of BS jobs under socialism to me, but it seems clear that we need to regulate these companies more. Companies WILL put their profits above public safety if not regulated. Also, reconsider breaking up the rail strikes. Vaush also pointed out this comes just weeks after Biden broke up that rail strike and uh...maybe we shouldnt have done that, guys. Between the horrid working conditions and the safety issues, yeah, maybe a right to say no here would've done these companies some good, as it would've forced them to address safety issues better.
And yeah. Sadly, these things are going to happen, but honestly, given we're dealing with LITERALLY HAZARDOUS MATERIALS, yeah, maybe we should regulate this stuff to MINIMIZE it happening, rather than just letting corporations make record profits while the environment goes to hell in a handbasket, literally.
Seriously, I saw pictures when this first happened, it looks like A LITERAL HELLSCAPE like out of an action movie or video game. It's ridiculous. Seriously, how do we screw up so bad as a species here? We develop these crappy coercive systems based around maximum profit, and then crap like this happens. I may not be a "socialist" or anything like that, but i DEFINITELY believe in regulating the everloving crap out of companies that do this. It seems to happen every few years. We had the BP oil spill, the Exxon Valdez back in the 90s, not to mention various ecological disasters from fracking, oil pipeline leaks, train crashes, truck crashes.
I mean, I know that we need to move stuff around, and as they say, "time is money", but yeah, safety is kind of an important priority in these situations. not everything should be about squeezing every cent out of the economy. This is inhumane as fudge, that we live like this. Wtf, people.
Anyway, that's all I'm gonna say on this. I'd like to say this is a literal dumpster fire, but sadly, in this case, that is a LITERAL understatement as a LITERAL dumpster fire would be preferable to this. Heck, most kinds of fire would be. You'd literally need to be actively setting the elephant's foot in Chernobyl on fire to create an ecological disaster worse than this (*gives the Russians in Ukraine the stinkeye so they don't get any ideas*). And yeah, this never should have happened.
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