United States Chemical Safety Board (USCSB) Thread

[Morphic Tide]

Walmart gets away with a lot of shit because all it has to say to a politician is 'nice unemployment figures you've got there, it would be a crying shame if something happened to them'.

No, plenty of the time they're the ones pushing regulations, or funding the civil suits for slip-ups, because they have the money to afford minor violations and standards upholding as a cost of business and their single-location competitors don't.

Here's the thing, every single of those regulations is written the blood of dead workers and citizens. Every. Single. One. All because businesses would rather pull shit like this than do anything for safety because safety cuts into the bottom line.

The issue is that the giant-ass companies tend to have enough weight to get ahold of the blood-soaked pen and just use it to cross out their competitor's bottom line.

The core thing you have constantly ignored is that massive centralization of power as needed for what you want has literally always collapsed due to corrupt jackasses wielding it to line their own pocket.

It is exactly this vein of policy-making responsible for "show me the man and I'll show you the crime". It just keeps accreting until you have to turn to anarcho-tyranny to keep things functional because nobody could ever hope to follow every regulation.

At some point, you have to accept that accidents happen and people will be assholes. You cannot stop all of it, you need to focus on the big-picture serious shit that can fuck over everyone. You need to leave some part of it to the population at large.

 

[Aaron Fox]

Morphic, are you still pulling that anti-regulation spiel? That's just sad, man, especially when history says otherwise.

 

[Morphic Tide]

That's just sad, man, especially when history says otherwise.

You mean the history where literally every single hyper-centralized state we've seen has descended into atrocities? You're the one constantly calling for totalitarian-level top-down controls over society out of terror of basement bioweapons and nukes, yet we're all living in the era where the world's most powerful state is one of the least centralized and controlling.

You cannot pass regulations against every single problem that comes up individually, because eventually even the lawyers cannot hope to keep track of it. So you end up with laws constantly being broken from unavoidable ignorance and genuinely unpayable cost. Once that happens, your system is fucked because corruption is mandatory.

More simply put, there is a limit to regulation complexity. At some point, people will die from accidents or unsafe practices. There are limits to how much these risks can be mitigated, and thus you have to prioritize. When you refuse to, eventually things start being enforced selectively because they cannot be enforced generally.

Edit to put it most bluntly: Bureaucracy is finite, human stupidity is not. Thus, the former must focus on the worst of the latter.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Basically, a company hid their high-pressure water vessel (basically an oversized water heater) from the city

A bit different, but I got reminded about this incident by the video. A local supermarket decides to build an extension of their building for electronics store. A small problem, there is a main water pipe running where they intend to build and you do not build buildings over main water pipe, so you either pay for a change of water pipe line or do not build. Money must have changed hands and it was shown in the building plans that it does not go over the water main, despite the fact it was.

So the building was built and the weight of it started bending the pipe until it burst one night, water pressure basically eating it's way through soil and building materials, until it burst through the floor, water jet damaging the ceiling, muddy water (it displaced more than a cubic meter of material) filling the store until the locked doors gave away, spilling the flood into the parking lot. Since it was during the night there were no injuries, but there was considerable damage.

 

[Wargamer08]

Criminal companies are breaking the already existing law in order to be more profitable or efficient? I know we'll add more laws that will stop them.

Past a certain point regulations just exist to let the government pick winners. Wouldn't you know it, the companies with lots of money just keep on winning.

 

[Robovski]

I say bring criminal charges because a pressure vessel is just another form of bomb when handled improperly. If it is a crime, and not just a fine that the company pays but a jail cell awaiting someone for a preventable failure that cost lives then some may consider actually doing something safe like doing maintenance, shutting down, doing it right instead of cheap...

 

[ProfessorCurio]

Here's the thing, every single of those regulations is written the blood of dead workers and citizens. Every. Single. One. All because businesses would rather pull shit like this than do anything for safety because safety cuts into the bottom line. Don't give me the 'people are willing to pay for safer work environments' spiel, that doesn't work. That is why we need every single of those regulations.

1.Does this somehow magically refute and/or nullify any point and/or claim that I have presented?
2. Two wrongs do not make a right and it is best to avoid gravitating towards any regulatory extremes on some flimsy emotional, dogmatic, and/or ideological basis.
3. At what point have I presented, implied, and/or clearly moved towards presenting the "'people are willing to pay for safer work environments' spiel"?

 

[Bacle]

Look, OSHA is one of the few agencies that justifies why we have a federal gov at all.

You can never engineer a foolproof system, because nature will always create a more clever or desperate fool.

OSHA is a our best defense against that rule of nature.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

OSHA is a our best defense against that rule of nature.

meh...OSHA suffers from a lot of overreach.

 

[Zachowon]

And that is why I love the military. OSHA doesn't have shit on us.
We break it all the time

 

[Aaron Fox]

I say bring criminal charges because a pressure vessel is just another form of bomb when handled improperly. If it is a crime, and not just a fine that the company pays but a jail cell awaiting someone for a preventable failure that cost lives then some may consider actually doing something safe like doing maintenance, shutting down, doing it right instead of cheap...

They'll consider it 'just the price of business'. Quite literally.

Look, OSHA is one of the few agencies that justifies why we have a federal gov at all.

You can never engineer a foolproof system, because nature will always create a more clever or desperate fool.

OSHA is a our best defense against that rule of nature.

The thing is that we always need government. Always. Just like we need a lot of regulations and rules.

meh...OSHA suffers from a lot of overreach.

No, it doesn't, if anything it suffers from lack of reach.

 

[Morphic Tide]

They'll consider it 'just the price of business'. Quite literally.

As I previously mentioned, they actively push for more regulations and call for them to be enforced for exactly this reason. They can afford that price, plenty of competitors didn't.

Just like we need a lot of regulations and rules.

No, you are a risk-averse wretch who cannot stomach there not being a Daddy State to turn to for every problem. Regulations for critical infrastructure and weapons of mass destruction are necessary because without we could all get fucked because of one asshole. Everything less has to be weighed against the risk of oppressive overreach and opportunity costs.

 

[Bacle]

As I previously mentioned, they actively push for more regulations and call for them to be enforced for exactly this reason. They can afford that price, plenty of competitors didn't.


No, you are a risk-averse wretch who cannot stomach there not being a Daddy State to turn to for every problem. Regulations for critical infrastructure and weapons of mass destruction are necessary because without we could all get fucked because of one asshole. Everything less has to be weighed against the risk of oppressive overreach and opportunity costs.

Counter-point: Deep Water Horizon, Exxon Valdez, the chemical fires on various rivers, Upton Sinclar's 'The Jungle', 'company towns', and heavy metal poisoning from mine run-off.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Counter-point: Deep Water Horizon, Exxon Valdez, the chemical fires on various rivers, Upton Sinclar's 'The Jungle', 'company towns', and heavy metal poisoning from mine run-off.

"Weapons of Mass Destruction" would be Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical. Intensely hazardous pollution is a mild difference of intent from chemical warfare, and the degree of hazard is itself an opportunity cost that's yet to compare unfavorably to infrastructure collapse. The Company Towns and exploitation of immigrants dept-trapping people is a hair shy of slavery, but still not a drive of mass fatalities.

My point of "infrastructure and WMDs are all that's needed" is strictest necessity for society to function. People living short, brutish, miserable lives is bad, but not "the state collapses for lack of people to run it" like infrastructure failure and WMD deployment can cause. Back in the Gilded Age, plenty had sucky lives from the pollution and screwed-up work compensation structures, but they were not under constant thread of outright death like McNukes cause.

 

[Captain X]

Your both kinda right, honestly. Government is needed in some of this precisely because businesses cannot be trusted to do it on their own, even when there is government oversight. However, the price of this is that we also need to be vigilant against government overreach.

 

[LordsFire]

Counter-point: Deep Water Horizon, Exxon Valdez, the chemical fires on various rivers, Upton Sinclar's 'The Jungle', 'company towns', and heavy metal poisoning from mine run-off.

Deep Horizon was authorized by the government regulators, 'The Jungle' is blatant communist propaganda.

The other ones were very serious issues that needed to be dealt with, at least to the best of my recollection, but there are limits to what you're quoting here.

 

[Bacle]

Deep Horizon was authorized by the government regulators, 'The Jungle' is blatant communist propaganda.

The other ones were very serious issues that needed to be dealt with, at least to the best of my recollection, but there are limits to what you're quoting here.

Deep Water Horrizon failed because of greedy corner cutting on the cement job on the well, a known issue, which is part of why there are regs about well pressure testing for concrete jobs in the oil industry.

And 'The Jungle' wasn't commie propagada, it was an expose on the very real abuses of Gilded Age child labor and (in)sanitary conditions at food processors/meat packing plants in America.

 

[Captain X]

And 'The Jungle' wasn't commie propagada, it was an expose on the very real abuses of Gilded Age child labor and (in)sanitary conditions at food processors/meat packing plants in America.

It was written for a socialist paper, though. I'm not saying it was completely untrue, but you have to realize that it was based on the time its author spent working for meat-packing plants while working for a socialist newspaper.

 

[Bacle]

It was written for a socialist paper, though. I'm not saying it was completely untrue, but you have to realize that it was based on the time its author spent working for meat-packing plants while working for a socialist newspaper.

What paper was it written for and how was is socialist?

Because everything Sinclair pointed out was true, and his work lead to a lot of the basic food safety laws we have now, as well as the laws regarding child labor and working hours.

Just because someone was pro-safe working conditions, does not mean they are a socialist or working for socialists.

 

[Aaron Fox]

Deep Water Horrizon failed because of greedy corner cutting on the cement job on the well, a known issue, which is part of why there are regs about well pressure testing for concrete jobs in the oil industry.

And 'The Jungle' wasn't commie propagada, it was an expose on the very real abuses of Gilded Age child labor and (in)sanitary conditions at food processors/meat packing plants in America.

It was written for a socialist paper, though. I'm not saying it was completely untrue, but you have to realize that it was based on the time its author spent working for meat-packing plants while working for a socialist newspaper.

It was telling that when Theodore Roosevelt investigated the food industry (he assumed the book was exaggerating, but the reality was that it was the tip of the iceberg), his brain went through a full-on blue-screen moment. There was literally no lie detected (and that is after the meat companies tried to clean everything up within three weeks), and depending on which anti-corporate side you talk to, was understating everything.