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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (90647)	10/18/2008 5:14:40 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 541743

In that way they aren't really dealing with ancient history. They're dealing with recent history. I'm sorry that I compromised by point with the "ancient." My point is that regulation's (with an apostrophe this time) fatal flaw is that it is always retrospective. Has OSHA gone too far? Perhaps. So we should deal with that. But let's not just scrap it. I wouldn't suggest that, only that it 1)recognize that flaw and 2)be judicious. The libertarian view is that somehow big corporations will correct unsafe working conditions, and other types of misbehavior such as polluting rivers They won't quit polluting rivers, IMO. That's too diffuse a victim. But unsafe working conditions can be dealt with in the main via publicity and lawsuits. (And, as much as I hate the thought, via unions. Unions would be the most timely, I think.) I think we'd be better off enhancing and streamlining those avenues than writing retrospective regulations that stay on the books forever. (Might make a good reality show... <g>)

To: Cogito who wrote (90647)	10/19/2008 9:26:00 AM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541743

It isn't even a particularly apt example, since it is true that nobody knew the dangers of radium at the time. The owners and scientists at US Radium, familiar with the real hazards of radioactivity, naturally took extensive precautions to protect themselves. They knew that Undark's key ingredient was approximately one million times more active than uranium, so company chemists often used lead screens, masks, and tongs when working with the paint. US Radium had even distributed literature to the medical community describing the "injurious effects" of radium. But inside the factory, where nearly every surface sparkled with radioluminescence, these dangers were unknown. For a lark, some of the women even painted their fingernails and teeth with radium paint on occasion, to surprise their boyfriends when the lights went out damninteresting.com

To: Cogito who wrote (90647)	10/21/2008 2:08:03 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541743

I'm not campaigning for scrapping OSHA, but its benefits have been greatly exaggerated. You can look at the safety improvements since OSHA was created and say "wow this is a big deal", but similar improvements where happening before OSHA. The data doesn't clearly show OSHA as having any effect at all. I'd imagine that it does have a net effect of reducing workplace related injuries, but it isn't the source of most of the reduction. The libertarian view is that somehow big corporations will correct unsafe working conditions, and other types of misbehavior such as polluting rivers, in response to market forces. If you add fear of lawsuits to market forces you get what has been happening. Regulations have an effect (in some areas more than OSHA's effect, for example the EPA, while much more expensive, seems to have a larger, probably much larger effect in its area than OSHA does in its), but you can't reasonably say "there has been regulation, and there has been improvement, therefore all, or an overwhelming portion of the improvement is because of the regulation." Particularly in OSHA's area market forces have been big. As society becomes wealthier companies can afford to have safer and more attractive workplaces and current and potential employees care more about their workplace then they did when almost everyone was desperately poor.