"Michael" wrote in message
ups.com...
That's certainly an interesting way to asess safety. The implicit
assumption here is that it's OK to have more fatalities if you draw
sufficiently bigger crowds, as this will make your death/spectator
ratio lower. ...snip...

That was not the purpose of the comparison.

But it's a necessary assumption for the comparison to be meaningful.
So do you agree with it or don't you?



Oh, sure I agree with it.

It is not much different that having 50,000 automobile fatalities per year,
but we accept that as "OK" because auto travel is useful and necessary.
Well, maybe all that auto travel is not all that necessary, but it is
extremely difficult to make that judgement.

Similarly, these performances may be doing some more or less "good", whether
in terms of the economic impact of thousands of visitors, or simply
providing people a few minutes of awe and enjoyment.... also extremely
difficult to judge for value.... and so about the only judgement of value
that we have, is a count of their "satisfied customers".

In both cases, nobody suggests that the safety record should not be
better.... but it is what it is, we expect that the Powers are doing as
much as reasonable to improve it, and as long as those directly involved are
okay with it, then so am I.


As for government funding.... as I said before, governments fund many
other
way-less-useful projects

I'm not in favour of them either, and I don't think that's a good
argument.


It ceases to be a good argument, only when Governments cease funding idiotic
projects. That is unlikely to happen in my lifetime, YMMV.