The Chilean Miner Rescue

I have watched the first five miners being rescued and the story is heart-warming and wonderful and, of course, great PR for the president of Chile as well as the mining minister of Chile. The rescue has been extremely professional and an example the U.S. should learn from (coughneworleanscough).

At the same time, if the original disaster had altogether been prevented, would these politicians now have such high approval ratings? It's more likely that they would get no extra kudos from that prevention because nobody would know it happened.

That is a real problem with the way human minds work. One is a greater hero for fixing a problem one perhaps could have prevented than for preventing it in the first place.