Opinion - Death clocks are ghoulish, whatever you think about billionaires in subs

We don't get to pick and choose who's lives have value, even if they do something risky or stupid.

But isn't that exactly what happens? Was there as much of a rescue effort to find the hundreds of missing Pakistani migrants who went missing off the coast of Greece last week? Was it even as widely covered in the media as 5 missing rich people in a sub? Have you even heard that they were missing before this comment?

What about the 5,000 missing and murdered indigenous women who disappear every year? Are we mobilizing the military to find them?

We absolutely pick and choose whose lives have value. That's the problem.

I think there's a difference between choosing whose lives have value and choosing who to empathize with. I'm not celebrating their deaths, but aside from the teen who was on there, I can't say I feel much about it one way or another. They knowingly chose to take the risk, signing waivers saying that they knew the trip could result in death, and it ended badly.

Looking at it from a different angle, I can also see why people would be frustrated that an incredible amount of attention and resources are being spent on people who intentionally put themselves at risk for a pleasure jaunt, while if a fraction of that (on a per capita level) was spent on everyone who was at risk of dying from issues brought on or exacerbated by poverty, we'd be saving a lot of lives.

We have to choose where to spend the limited material and human resources we have.

These people made their own bed. Those rescue resources were wasted on them. Don'tkird yourself that poor people in a boat accident would've got a 10th of that attention.

We don’t get to pick and choose who’s lives have value

Lol, on an individual basis, yes we do

I remember years ago a bunch of people were removed about the cost when some family that got rescued in the middle of the ocean. The coast guard response to the money complaints was,"Look, if we weren't rescuing them, we would be running drills to prepare to rescue them at the same cost."

It's like when people removed about having fighter jets fly over a baseball game. We don't rent F-16s from Lockheed every time we want to take one out, they're paid for already, and pilots need training. But I'm sure they're the same kind of people who don't understand why it's useful for military pilots to run drills on things like being in a specific place at a specific speed and making it line up at the exact right time. I say complain all you want about glorification of the military-industrial complex, but don't take the line that it's some atypically expensive cost to the taxpayer.

If it was some experimental space aircraft that lost pressure and got stuck in orbit it wouldn't be the same as a normal aircraft going down. I would also say to leave it there as a reminder of man's hubris.

That's true. None of what I said applies to the 19 year old who seems to have been either cajoled or coerced onto that submarine.