seafarer

Only those seafarers who were bold enough to take risks were rewarded.

If an early seafarer went down with his/her ship, it didn't affect a significant portion of the population.

The considerate seafarer might consider warning others, rather than sitting back with popcorn.

Their monarchs lived in relatively modest places and their barons had to strike bargains with independent-minded peasants and seafarers.

In the Philippines, on the other hand, seamen are offered payouts based on a predetermined compensation chart, in which each body part has a price tag. If there’s a spinal injury and the company-sponsored doctor says a seafarer’s back has lost a third of its mobility, it’s valued at $7,465.

Suppose there is a nation-state A. Further suppose a rival nation-state B captured vital trade routes and started charging trades exorbitant sums of fees, and the long-term well-being of nation-state A depends on its seafarers being able to find alternative trade routes to their trading partners.

But even among rich nations they did still find it a comparatively dangerous occupation: it's safer to be a Danish-flagged seafarer than most other flags, but still >10x the fatality rate compared to having a job on land in Denmark.

"This is basically the equivalent of early seafarers being afraid of uncharted waters and writing on their maps "here be dragons".edit: I should also point out that the complexity of a system does not necessarily mean that messing with it will cause problems.

For example:"Shrink the world": couriers, seafarers, caravans, riders, roadbuilders, railroads, telegraphs, automobiles, steamships, dockworkers, truck drivers, aviation, telephones, email, social networking, videoconferencing.