> why wouldn't I want one if my only choice were to splat or char?
That isn't your only choice because the scenario is exceedingly unlikely to happen.
If safety is your thing, you'd be much better off spending the several thousand dollars on doctors visits, healthier food, gym memberships, and/or public transit throughout the year.
It's unlikely a seatbelt will save my life, but every car I go in has multiple.
The original argument presented here is equivalent to arguing it's too expensive and useless to carry enough lifeboat capacity for everyone on a ship after the Titanic sunk. It's extremely unlikely that I'll ever impact an iceberg.
How many times do you practice putting on your seatbelt, and how long does it take to put it on? For me, I put on my seatbelt every time I enter a car, and it takes me seconds.
I've never put on a parachute or practiced deploying one.
Lifeboats are not just for iceberg collisions. There are many reasons for a boat to sink that don't involve a collision.
Practically no one had put on a seat belt before they were introduced either. The cost of parachutes and placards to describe their proper usage is absolutely trivial in consideration of the budget of any building from which parachutes could actually be deployed.
Buildings don't just collapse from airplane collisions; fires, bombs, earthquakes, structural failure, hostile takeover, and more could all be scenarios where you might only survive if you have a chute.
How many people have died in building collapses over the last 50 years? Alternatively, how many people have died in car crashes? Large boats getting sunk? Lightning strikes?
Obviously these are rhetorical questions: it is far, far more likely to be hit by lightning than to die in a building collapse.
If you truly believe this risk is worth mitigating I would put my money/time where my mouth is and not depend on some building supervisor to keep enough parachutes around and keep them in good condition. Instead you should get some training*, buy a BASE jumping parachute and take it with you when you go above 60m. As you say, they are relatively inexpensive.
[1] Note: be careful -- you are much more likely to be killed in your training than you are to need to use it.
That's about the first sensible thing I've seen you say in this thread.
Yes: it's far more cost effective to avoid the risk altogether than attempt to mitigate the exceptionally unlikely event of a very-tall-building collapse or fire, particularly through use of, say, parachutes (into an urban landscape with many landing hazards and few readily accessible landing zones).
On the other hand, that decision also means foregoing opportunities, including the income potential of working for a firm in or near a dense downtown with such tall office towers in it. A cost you might be willing to accept.
Risks and costs can be balanced, though the cases in which people make decisions which are both fully informed and rational strike me as relatively rare.
The supply of highly suspended office space is quite limited and I'd guess that almost none of the highest paid workers work in one. If the cost of a few dozen parachutes is deemed too expensive to hold in reserve for emergencies then I have to seriously doubt that such a space could have much real-increase on income. At best, I'd expect the ownership to collect much of the increase in rent as the small supply is fought for.
I'm sorry, would you care to answer the question of how many times you've put on a seatbelt versus how many times you've BASE jumped? For me, that ratio is whatever 50000 divided by zero is.
Cost of installation is by no means the only factor or cost in making a safety feature. In another comment, you appeal to the many number of paratroopers who have jumped out of planes as prof that it can be cost-effectively, as if the cost of a paratrooper's jump could be reduced to the cost of a parachute.
I don't 'practice' (that is, with no intention of immediate utility) putting seat belts on. On the occasions I do put them on, it takes some small number of seconds to put on, depending on how complicated the system is and how accessible the various parts are.
Even if it took someone several minutes to strap on a backpack-like device, it would likely save lives in many scenarios.
As to my appeal to the cost of paratroopers' parachutes, that was in direct response to a very specific claim in the post I responded it to:
>It would be expensive to outfit all tall buildings with parachutes
That isn't your only choice because the scenario is exceedingly unlikely to happen.
If safety is your thing, you'd be much better off spending the several thousand dollars on doctors visits, healthier food, gym memberships, and/or public transit throughout the year.