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'.

[whell]

Originally Posted by merrylander

So tell me, what are you worth alive vs dead?

Depends on who you ask!

[JonL]

And my response to Pete recognized that risk-benefit analyses are done all the time, and should be done all the time, AND that a backstop of effective regulation is necessary to assure that society's needs are met even when they are contrary to a corporation's cost/benefit analysis. I don't know why that's so hard for you to accept.

Regarding your water example, perhaps you haven't noticed the popularity of bottled water? Many people buy it because they feel it is more pure or more healthy than municipal tap water. I don't see how the regulations that assure a minimum level of safety of municipal water supplies have gotten in the way of that.

I don't understand this statement: "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." What does that mean?

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

My company is in insulation. I'm a little bit familiar with old asbestos sellers/users - good luck selling a company that has ANYTHING to do with that at any time....

My statement regarding Airlines is true, at least according to iirc Frontline.

Rob, I really believe as a society we need that discussion. Regardless we do put prices on life, otherwise cars would be so expensive we couldn't own them.

Pete

Most of the time with cars it is the nut behind the wheel that fails.

[merrylander]

Our water comes from 300 feet down under our front lawn, a bit acid but we have a gadget that neutralizes it, county test lab says it is potable.

[piece-itpete]

Originally Posted by merrylander

Most of the time with cars it is the nut behind the wheel that fails.

LOL! Did I ever learn it when I got my moped, and later motorcycle. People are idiots.

Pete

[hillbilly]

We're taking on more than water at the moment. There's a good bit of hail droppin' out of the sky too. Sounds lovely on tin.

[flacaltenn]

JonL:

Regarding asbestos -- one of the largest users of the crap was the military. Thousands of claims from shipyard workers and refitters. Where did the govt get the balls to cash in on such "future liability"? Was it PROFIT MOTIVE? And I don't remember you actually answering my question of what motivates all these altruistic govt watchdogs to be moral and diligient. That's an important part of the discussion.

When your biggest motivating factors are finding the lowest bidder and counting up how many women and minorities are in the vendors workforce, or whether your product contains "conflict minerals" a political term that most people have to look up -- can govt POSSIBLY be making safer and sounder decisions than corporate directors?

[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.

[flacaltenn]

Originally Posted by JonL

And my response to Pete recognized that risk-benefit analyses are done all the time, and should be done all the time, AND that a backstop of effective regulation is necessary to assure that society's needs are met even when they are contrary to a corporation's cost/benefit analysis. I don't know why that's so hard for you to accept.

Regarding your water example, perhaps you haven't noticed the popularity of bottled water? Many people buy it because they feel it is more pure or more healthy than municipal tap water. I don't see how the regulations that assure a minimum level of safety of municipal water supplies have gotten in the way of that.

I don't understand this statement: "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." What does that mean?

Well JonL -- when I moved to Tennessee from California, I did a relative risk assessment (earthquakes VERSUS tornadoes), and a cost/benefit analysis. It's part of life. Today, we're under weather warnings (as HillBilly gets pounded by hail -- I have to hope he's not got a $1M solar panel on his tin roof ) so I've got my (govt regulated) weather radio going off with alerts. (that's the mitigation part) May lose the house, but maybe the family and pets will survive. These choices that people make on their own are FAR MORE consequential than percentage of skin in "white meat turkey" as regulated by the FEDs. In fact, that addresses your 2nd question of how regulation "gets in the way" of offering products that are BETTER than the minimum standards. We could do water, but I'm fond of turkey.

You can use the label "WHITE MEAT TURKEY" on your product if you meet the MINIMUM standard. Surprisingly (or not) that allows a considerable amount of junk in the "WHITE MEAT TURKEY". What incentive do I have as a deli slice producer to produce a better product if both I and my competitors can label the product with the same claim? Now a few companies do the extra advertising to get that message to potential customers. But that's expensive. Hebrew National (We answer to a HIGHER Authority!) comes to mind... But also folks who don't trust the GOVT certificate of ORGANIC have tried to advertise the alternatives to the MINIMUM standard.

Now that was trivial, but I'll give you a different example. I asked in a tech meeting one day "what cost point do you want"? It was for a medical product. The marketing guy laughed and said "not important" because we were replacing a reimbursable procedure that included "outpatient hospital care" with an at home method of treatment. And the GOVT was gonna reimburse the same way for either. We had NO INCENTIVE to make a reduction in medical costs. And that's VERY sad JonL. And you wonder why ObamaCare had virtually nothing to say about controlling costs?

THAT's the kind of pertubation of the free market that has angered me into becoming a zealot.. And I want people to know what happens when they place their faith in centralized govt meddling..