Takin' on water..

[JonL]

Originally Posted by flacaltenn

JonL:

I stripped that quote from Whell's post at #98. The words are no longer there OR in your original at #95.. Didn't make them up. You can retract them if you want to.. Despite the last rant that it's all about profits, I'm sticking to:



MANY other considerations in the board room, the conference room and water cooler OTHER THAN profits. Profits are not chased ""with a disregard for things that happen outside of the immediate financial view"" without first considering the 5 fundamental checks above. (Could be more, I'm not an expert).

An elevator manufacturer that routinely kills low-income people is no more immune from market pressures than one that kills Park Avenue residents. And in that case, HOW DO YOU excuse the failure of

1) The govt agency who accepted and bought those low-income elevators.
2) The city inspector whose name appeared in the deadly elevator.
3) The warnings from the competitors who tried to tell you not to go with the lowest bidder or insist on a "minority owned enterprise" because they might kill people.

What motivates all THOSE PEOPLE to be moral and competent? What's their incentive to remove all risk from the equation.. That's my point JonL. I've given you SEVERAL solid motivations beyond profit for the mean greedy capitalist. You give ME a couple for all of these equalizers you value so highly. Do they have a job after the bodies are pulled from wreckage?

A SINGLE accident is not neccessarily a failure of design. Could be a fluke. Could be misuse. Could be maintenance. Your blanket assumption that this stuff happens SOLELY because of GREEDY manufacturers, is a little too convienient. And not just for elevators.

Oh boy. Here we go again. What part of what I wrote said that accidents happen SOLELY because of GREEDY manufacturers? 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.

My admittedly bad example of the elevators was a demonstration of what would happen in YOUR world where there is little to no government oversight. In my example of YOUR world, the low income housing was privately built an owned and the builder bought the cheapest elevator he could find. Maybe the owner is a legal resident of Bermuda and isn't afraid of being sued. Maybe the elevator company is in China. It's your world. There is no gov't agency that accepted and bought the elevators. There is no city inspector. As for your list of five fundamental checks, tell me... which ones are not directly related to maximizing profits (or cost avoidance, really the same thing)?