After watching a Believe It or Not show on TV, and learning about how this multimillionaire, Henry Flagler, built the overseas railway to the Florida Keys that eventually was responsible for the deaths of over 1000 people, I started thinking. To avoid the labor regulations of the time, he hired Illegals and bums and they dropped by the score. Then, in some areas, instead of building bridges across the shallows separating the keys, he filled in the seabed up to track level, ignoring warnings that he should not do this. So when the hurricane of the century hit, two things happened. People who had survived previous ones gathered at a spot to await the train, and perished when a tidal wave hit. His filling in miles of open water with track bed stopped the normal safety valve of the ocean during storms, piled up the water and generated the tidal wave.
He cut corners to make himself a hero and killed indirectly over 1000 people. He’s considered a Great Man in Miami and the Keys today for all of his works.
He should be considered a selfish killer.
Should people in major companies who make decisions, based on cost, that get others kill be treated as killers?
Look at the recent Goodyear tire fiasco. Goodyear executives knew up to two years previously that the tires were defective but someone made the decision to not recall them or warn the public. People died. No one went to jail.
In Vietnam, the first version of the M-16 jammed when it got dirty and this was known and lots of American Soldiers got killed. The people who made the decision to ship the defective guns were never sent to jail.
The Corvair flipped over, was advertised as being something like a jeep, the makers knew it was dangerous and someone approved it being sold with no warnings. The government had to ban it from the roads because so many people got killed and hurt in it. No one went to jail.
A Suzuki 4x4 was top heavy with a high center of gravity and it flipped over easily. So easily that buyers rapidly got rid of them. The makers knew this long before selling it but it took people getting killed and the government stepping in to get it pulled from the market. The person or persons who decided to sell this thing to the public were never jailed.
So, we know rich people and major industries will happily kill and injure people until they get caught, but there are usually 1 or 2 decision makers who decide to sell the product. Shouldn’t these people be jailed as killers?
Why aren’t they?
Flagler died before the tidal wave hit, but he allowed his workers to die by the dozens just to make a name for himself and instead of being a criminal today, he is considered a hero. Why?
So, why should the people responsible for approving known defective products for sale not brought up on charges?