[flacaltenn]

D-Ray:

Several new prospectives there.

1) Corporations spend big bucks disseminating the message that they want the public to hear. When there is an accident, everyone gets involved in the game of blaming someone else - and the company can afford better PR people than the elevator inspector. The elevator inspector's office gets a bigger budget and maybe legal immunity. Companies can certainly TRY to recover from drilling bad holes in the ocean, that's why I'm against restricting their "speech". But in a LOT of cases, the WHOLE INDUSTRY suffers because of the actions of one. That's why they have an incentive to define standards on an INDUSTRY WIDE basis. Which is a surrogate for regulation and often much more efficient.

2) The customer might be happy with the cheapest elevators, but the public using them has no control over that decision.True. You haven't known fear until you check into a Paris Hotel and see the 80 yr old 4sqft elevator that they expect you to use.

3) One of the things high on the Chamber of Commerce's wish list is "tort reform" limiting the amount of damages that a person could recover, no matter how bad the injury no how egregious the misconduct. In terms of market forces, the potential for large awards is what attracts lawyers to represent clients who otherwise could not afford them. Put a limit on tort damages, and those lower on the economic totem pole are less likely to obtain competent counsel. I don't know of anyone calling for limiting ACTUAL damages (including lawyer fees). What we want to cap is the discretionary outrageously punitive "other" payments in excess of damages. If lawyers want to serve as speculative vigilantes, they can survive on their wages.

4) Safety ain't cheap. Sometimes environmentally sound policies come with a price tag as well. Those who are willing to cut corners on safety and pollution are going to have a competitive advantage over those who are conscientious about safety. In a marketplace where survival of the fittest is the rule, and where and expensive conscience is a weakness, companies who provide more safety, when the competitors are not required to do so, are less likely to survive. Regulatory requirements of essential safety measures level the playing field for those companies who insist on doing the right thing. If cutting corners on safety and pollution was all the rage, we wouldn't be bombarded with all this GD GREEN crap advertising. Buy SunChips because we open the windows on hot days instead of using air conditioning. And based on my last trip to the store, being GREEN is profitable. I don't need the SAFEST chain saw on the market. (I mean the model that comes with a safety helmet and a jockstrap, because I'm not an idiot. People can calculate their OWN risk adversion factor and weigh the consequences. YOU HAVE CHOICES. (Whereas the goal of most statists is to make conforming everything.) Sometimes these risk factors collide. Such as in driving a SmartCar. You're trading your life for one degree Centigrade in the enviroment. I say allow those tradeoffs.

5) Contractual law is only going to protect those in privity of contract. The contract will not protect innocent bystanders. Moreover, if one party to a contract realizes that the cost of litigation will make it cost ineffective for the other party to enforce its full rights under a contract. I've seen this way too many times. The party with the greater financial resources will screw someone out of five or ten thousand dollars because it's expensive to take the steps to recover that money. Certainly you know that contractual law's contribution to this is to track the liability. Things spelled out in contract that can be used to ascribe % of responsibility for any legal action that occurs. EVEN to an innocent bystander. Like laptop batteries exploding because the vendor to the computer company skipped a specified testing step.

The market is not necessarily immoral - it is amoral. Nevertheless, what the market values does not necessarily reflect the values that provide the best place for most people to live.

Your and others have referred many times to China as an example of what you believe the left wants. To the contrary, China reflects the worst of capitalism. They invite business to operate without regard to environmental impact or the health and welfare of the workers. That attitude is attractive to businesses for whom the bottom line is the only concern, which is why we have seen so much manufacturing move there. What we with a leftward tilt advocate here is a system where we can balance the bottom line motivation with such concerns as safety, honest representation of products, fair competition and a cleaner environment

I've certainly never claimed that the left wants a Chinese economy. I don't ANYONE is really jealous of their "efficiency" or track record. It sucks. But they are making progress sooo quickly, that efficiency or track record doesn't matter to their society AT THE MOMENT. It WILL in their future. And they will change.