At times in my career I have been a “pioneer”, at times a “settler”, and at other times a “town planner”. While university friends took up offers from Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, I started work at one of the first ISPs. Terrible pay, zero benefits. Funding the company partly on our own meagre personal credit limits, but the thrill of building something from scratch that we were sure would change the world and that should be built. If not us then who? We thought. It worked out well for us, but most others didn’t make it.
This is the version where you take the risk, pay the price, and/or reap the rewards. When we talk about casualties, there is another story for people who didn't take the risk, did not reap any rewards, but paid the price anyway. When we talk about externalizing the costs, those are the people meant to pay them.
So, excuse me, but when someone talks about inevitable casualties while enthusiastically pushing against regulations, it means that they do not intend to be the casualty and are looking for ways to push someone else under the bus.
Progress is something wonderful, but it should prove itself before us, not we in front of it.
