Takin' on water..

[flacaltenn]

JonL:

My point, and it's happened time and again, is that companies will take short cuts on safety to make more money. Not every company, but some. Maybe even most. The most callous of them will actually do a cost-benefit analysis and accept a certain risk of death and dismemberment and figure what the lawsuits and insurance premiums will mean to the bottom line. If you don't believe this is true, you'd better grow up fast.

I think Pete had the right reaction to this. It's everyday science and fact of life that risks are evaluated this way and NOT just by industry in regards to consumer/worker protection..

Right now today, I'm mitigating my risk of having my palacial Tenn estate wiped out by a tornado watch. It's a calculated risk that 10s of MILLIONs take. But a more pertainent example would be water.

There is no such CONSUMER commodity as pure water. PURE water only exists in industry and laboratories. (Costs about $20/gallon, and I've drank some) Risks are evaluated based on science and established for acceptable containmination. Most consumers get their water FROM GOVT. The GOVT establishes mins for content and testing procedures. Do you think that there's a muni water system that tests DAILY for coliform bacteria? That's a contaminent that could kill immune depressed people as it did in Milwaukee a decade or so back. Why don't they? Because there is no incentive to. They meet the standard. Their customers in fact are CAPTIVE. In the free market, regulations on water content actually RESTRAIN producers from offering choice of even purer water because their competitors can claim the same govt approved purity level in labeling. It's like the meaningless label of "GOVT APPROVED" organic.

So what you THINK is just an overdriving fixation on profit -- is not really that. It's an argument (often made political) over what are "acceptable risks" -- as in the case of muni water. Arsenic in minute amounts is essential to life. So go from there in defining "water purity".

I HAVE grown up. And I've learned to evaluate risks (like tornados/earthquakes/sun exposure on my own. And I believe that most people are capable of doing the same. They just might not care. Not ALL of need a nanny. But some of them need a spankin'.