As far as I know, some lifeboats on Titanic were left half-empty. (Sailors insisting that women and children get the places first, women refusing to abandon their husbands, everyone wasting time, then the ship sank before all places were occupied.) Perhaps auctioning the places would lead to less chaos, and greater total number of people saved.
And if they had the luxury of time, they might have been able to realise that. But they didnt have the luxury of time, and they didn’t have enough time to organise an orderly auction either.
Its all about what the default is. In an emergency, you cant hand craft a perfect solution. We are the descendants of people who have survived a lot of emergencies, so we default to things like “promote the group over yourself”, ie.”don’t guage” and “fertility counts more than accumulated wealth”, ie. “women and children first”.
Maybe it would.
As far as I know, some lifeboats on Titanic were left half-empty. (Sailors insisting that women and children get the places first, women refusing to abandon their husbands, everyone wasting time, then the ship sank before all places were occupied.) Perhaps auctioning the places would lead to less chaos, and greater total number of people saved.
Supposedly they were (mistakenly) afraid of putting too much weight in the lifeboats?
Most of them wealthy men. The point of women and children first is about rebuilding a society.
The society outside of Titanic wasn’t in a dire need to be repopulated by the survivors from the ship.
And if they had the luxury of time, they might have been able to realise that. But they didnt have the luxury of time, and they didn’t have enough time to organise an orderly auction either.
Its all about what the default is. In an emergency, you cant hand craft a perfect solution. We are the descendants of people who have survived a lot of emergencies, so we default to things like “promote the group over yourself”, ie.”don’t guage” and “fertility counts more than accumulated wealth”, ie. “women and children first”.
Because, in general, they work.