There aren't actually powerful interests advocating for reduced safety. What they want is increased profits.

One way to do that is by eliminating safety measures to save costs, but liability for harm already removes that financial incentive because the cost of the liability should be greater than the cost of the mitigation in any case where the mitigation is cost effective.

Another way to increase profits is to impose "safety regulations" on smaller competitors so they go out of business and larger incumbents can raise prices. Powerful financial interests do not oppose this, they promote it.

We were talking about aircraft a moment ago. Are low-status people known for their frequent flying? There are a lot of places where the problem clearly has nothing to do with valuing people - skilled workers aren't exactly treated like dirt, but they're often the ones that regulation cripples. I personally want to see nuclear scientists and engineers allowed to drop their standards to only 2-5x safer than current practice by other energy providers so that we can open up an economic boom in clean energy but obviously that ain't happening. Crippling safety standards continue to be the order of the day.

2)

We're living through the greatest expansion of living standards in the history of humanity. There has never been anything comparable to what has been happening over the last 70 years in Asia. Such an unprecedented rapid improvement that the English language doesn't have the words required to describe it.

There is something there that the US should aspire to emulate. I don't think we know what [0], but more effort should be going in to figuring that part out. If it was placing little value on human life then the US should do that, the results justify putting emotions aside.

How much is this "placing value on human life" worth anyway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tent_cities_in_the_Uni... paints a grim picture of how useful all this valuing is to the people on the ground. There is a force in politics that doesn't believe poor people have the capacity to improve themselves if given small economic opportunities. This blinding ignorance is leaving people worse off. In practice, 4% real growth in the economy would do much more for everyone than complaining that pro-growth policies seem kinda mean. Why should people care that they seem kinda mean? They work.

[0] I heard a cute theory that Maoism decimated the bureaucracy so much that it couldn't control China's economy.