5 ms·

So in your system, if I pay an employee to climb an unsafe ladder, OSHA has no right to slap me for that because the employee consented? That sounds awful. Th

So in your system, if I pay an employee to climb an unsafe ladder, OSHA has no right to slap me for that because the employee consented? That sounds awful. There would be many preventable deaths and injuries under a system that neuters OSHA; what you're proposing is deeply immoral.

sneak 7y ago
The employee, and no one else, gets to decide what they want for their body. The fact is, OSHA has no moral basis to override or overrule that human being’s own decisions for their own body. What is deeply immoral is third parties using sticks and firearms to overrule that person’s choices. Their body, their choice.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  I must admit, this is the first time I've seen a libertarian bold enough to dress up something as inane as dismantling OSHA with rhetoric deliberately evocative of modern progressive social movements. As though, by dismantling an agency dedicated to assuring safe working conditions, you're doing something akin to legalizing same-sex marriages. I have mad respect to anybody that bold, but give me a break!
  - sneak 7y ago
    Why do someone’s own choices about their own body remain valid when you agree with them, but not when you disagree with them? I have given you a break: I have given you a logical, rational, sincere position, without snark or subterfuge. I did not argue for dismantling OSHA; these are moral statements independent of any national law. If anything, I argued against using violence to force people to do things (which is what OSHA, among thousands of other governmental organizations of every flavor around the world, do as a matter of course). Using violent coercion to alter a consensual agreement between two adults interacting voluntarily is immoral, and denies the agency of the people agreeing to trade on those terms.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  How, in practice, is this supposed to work? The boss shows you a rickety ladder and says “Climb up there or you’re clocking out for the day!” You, drawing on the extensive mechanical engineering and actuarial experience that got you this $15/hr warehouse job, evaluate the likelihood of it collapsing and the expected bills, pain, and suffering if it does. “Looks shakey—give me another $2.73 first”, you say. The boss rummages around his bag, hands you some change, and away you go. Even if in a world where individual freedom/responsibility trumps everything else, it seems like safety standards would save hassle. In the actual world, where everyone can’t assess all of these risks—-and many of them are hard even for experts to accurately measure—they seem even more worthwhile.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    I'd say the libertarian's response would be that organizations like UL (which already does work for OSHA) would get hired by the company to certify their workplace, which would then serve as enticement for job candidates. This would essentially make job safety another "perk", like flex time and friday pizza - available to some, based on the scarcity of their skills.
    - sneak 7y ago
      As the “libertarian” (not my label) in question in this thread, the response is that use of violence or violent coercion is morally untenable. Spreading of information so that people can make choices: good Using sticks and guns and shackles to force people to do as you demand: bad Safety can be engineered. Do not bake something unsafe (state enforcement via violence) into the system.
      - icebraining 7y ago
        As someone who would call myself left-libertarian, I have some sympathy for your position. The thing is that the whole society - including the very existence of Amazon - is currently predicated on state violence, and therefore focusing specifically on the small part that provides worker protections looks unseemly. Not to mention that an opposition to state enforcement of minimum wages does not justify the claim that Amazon should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  That's why hundreds of millions of smokers, smoked, after all. They carefully weighed up the evidence, using their medical training, avoided the lies from tobacco company advertising, used their "it's just common sense" know-everything superpower, and - in an almost unprecedented moment of human rational decision making - concluded that smoking was better than non-smoking. No, it didn't happen that way. People smoked because it was cool, and it was cool because marketing people explicitly made it look cool. "Torches of freedom"[1] was how Edward Bernays set out to get women smoking cigarettes, for one famous example, generic "cool guy with a cigarette" in Hollywood films wasn't put there by accident, for another. And one of the main reasons smoking was pushed out was that second hand smoking gives other people cancer. People bought arsenic wallpaper and arsenic cloth. They did not decide, rationally and in full knowledge of the best available information, that green wallpaper was a better choice than their infant child staying alive. Or do you think they did choose that? OSHA has no moral basis to override or overrule that human being’s own decisions for their own body. OSHA's basis comes from the fact that there are many human biases, many con tricks, and many unintuitive risks, collectively learned over decades, which one human cannot rationally learn and consider in a short time. Even if that were all it was - a single human choosing whether they gamble with their health - it might be OK, but this is in the situation where a large and well resourced company has a profit-motive to exploit the humans, to coerce them and mislead them and pressure them, to take such risks without due consideration. And worse, like the case of second hand smoke - you might be willing to climb a high structure without a safety harness, but your willingness means other people will be compelled to do so - by their employers and by peer pressure. You'll be faster, and your equipment costs will be lower. But you'll be putting other people at risk too - if you fall on a coworker, if you drop something on a bystander, if you slip on the floor in your gripless boots and knock someone else - your choices affect other people. And society is willing to say "we don't want that. You must wear a harness, so that everyone can wear a harness. You must wear grippy boots, so other people can work safely around you.", without "fearing for your life" being a thing which excludes you from the workforce. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
  - sneak 7y ago
    You’re not free unless you’re free to choose bad decisions as well as good ones. Freedom includes freedom to opt in to risk according to your personal risk tolerance.
- akiselev 7y ago
  OSHA doesn't overrule what someone can do with their bodies at all. It forbids businesses and their employees acting in an official capacity from demanding that other employees do something that puts them in unnecessary danger. If a business entity wants limited liability for shareholders, that's the contract they sign with the state. OSHA couldn't care less if a CEO or Chairman climbed up on that dangerous ladder and got hurt.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  This is true but in the absence of a method to internalize externalities it is worse to subsidize those who can maximally externalize their costs. I don't think that the inadequate legal system that allows people to externalize their costs to me is a sufficient deterrent to violations of the no harm principle. Any system that does not internalize costs explicitly subsidizes those actions that greatest externalize. I'm not good with that. It's not a free market. You don't get to sell my property rights just because the law isn't good enough to recognize that which is inherently mine.

sneak 7y ago

The employee, and no one else, gets to decide what they want for their body. The fact is, OSHA has no moral basis to override or overrule that human being’s own decisions for their own body. What is deeply immoral is third parties using sticks and firearms to overrule that person’s choices. Their body, their choice.

darkpuma 7y ago
I must admit, this is the first time I've seen a libertarian bold enough to dress up something as inane as dismantling OSHA with rhetoric deliberately evocative of modern progressive social movements. As though, by dismantling an agency dedicated to assuring safe working conditions, you're doing something akin to legalizing same-sex marriages. I have mad respect to anybody that bold, but give me a break!
- sneak 7y ago
  Why do someone’s own choices about their own body remain valid when you agree with them, but not when you disagree with them? I have given you a break: I have given you a logical, rational, sincere position, without snark or subterfuge. I did not argue for dismantling OSHA; these are moral statements independent of any national law. If anything, I argued against using violence to force people to do things (which is what OSHA, among thousands of other governmental organizations of every flavor around the world, do as a matter of course). Using violent coercion to alter a consensual agreement between two adults interacting voluntarily is immoral, and denies the agency of the people agreeing to trade on those terms.
mattkrause 7y ago
How, in practice, is this supposed to work? The boss shows you a rickety ladder and says “Climb up there or you’re clocking out for the day!” You, drawing on the extensive mechanical engineering and actuarial experience that got you this $15/hr warehouse job, evaluate the likelihood of it collapsing and the expected bills, pain, and suffering if it does. “Looks shakey—give me another $2.73 first”, you say. The boss rummages around his bag, hands you some change, and away you go. Even if in a world where individual freedom/responsibility trumps everything else, it seems like safety standards would save hassle. In the actual world, where everyone can’t assess all of these risks—-and many of them are hard even for experts to accurately measure—they seem even more worthwhile.
- icebraining 7y ago
  I'd say the libertarian's response would be that organizations like UL (which already does work for OSHA) would get hired by the company to certify their workplace, which would then serve as enticement for job candidates. This would essentially make job safety another "perk", like flex time and friday pizza - available to some, based on the scarcity of their skills.
  - sneak 7y ago
    As the “libertarian” (not my label) in question in this thread, the response is that use of violence or violent coercion is morally untenable. Spreading of information so that people can make choices: good Using sticks and guns and shackles to force people to do as you demand: bad Safety can be engineered. Do not bake something unsafe (state enforcement via violence) into the system.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      As someone who would call myself left-libertarian, I have some sympathy for your position. The thing is that the whole society - including the very existence of Amazon - is currently predicated on state violence, and therefore focusing specifically on the small part that provides worker protections looks unseemly. Not to mention that an opposition to state enforcement of minimum wages does not justify the claim that Amazon should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market.
jodrellblank 7y ago
That's why hundreds of millions of smokers, smoked, after all. They carefully weighed up the evidence, using their medical training, avoided the lies from tobacco company advertising, used their "it's just common sense" know-everything superpower, and - in an almost unprecedented moment of human rational decision making - concluded that smoking was better than non-smoking. No, it didn't happen that way. People smoked because it was cool, and it was cool because marketing people explicitly made it look cool. "Torches of freedom"[1] was how Edward Bernays set out to get women smoking cigarettes, for one famous example, generic "cool guy with a cigarette" in Hollywood films wasn't put there by accident, for another. And one of the main reasons smoking was pushed out was that second hand smoking gives other people cancer. People bought arsenic wallpaper and arsenic cloth. They did not decide, rationally and in full knowledge of the best available information, that green wallpaper was a better choice than their infant child staying alive. Or do you think they did choose that? OSHA has no moral basis to override or overrule that human being’s own decisions for their own body. OSHA's basis comes from the fact that there are many human biases, many con tricks, and many unintuitive risks, collectively learned over decades, which one human cannot rationally learn and consider in a short time. Even if that were all it was - a single human choosing whether they gamble with their health - it might be OK, but this is in the situation where a large and well resourced company has a profit-motive to exploit the humans, to coerce them and mislead them and pressure them, to take such risks without due consideration. And worse, like the case of second hand smoke - you might be willing to climb a high structure without a safety harness, but your willingness means other people will be compelled to do so - by their employers and by peer pressure. You'll be faster, and your equipment costs will be lower. But you'll be putting other people at risk too - if you fall on a coworker, if you drop something on a bystander, if you slip on the floor in your gripless boots and knock someone else - your choices affect other people. And society is willing to say "we don't want that. You must wear a harness, so that everyone can wear a harness. You must wear grippy boots, so other people can work safely around you.", without "fearing for your life" being a thing which excludes you from the workforce. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
- sneak 7y ago
  You’re not free unless you’re free to choose bad decisions as well as good ones. Freedom includes freedom to opt in to risk according to your personal risk tolerance.
akiselev 7y ago
OSHA doesn't overrule what someone can do with their bodies at all. It forbids businesses and their employees acting in an official capacity from demanding that other employees do something that puts them in unnecessary danger. If a business entity wants limited liability for shareholders, that's the contract they sign with the state. OSHA couldn't care less if a CEO or Chairman climbed up on that dangerous ladder and got hurt.
scarejunba 7y ago
This is true but in the absence of a method to internalize externalities it is worse to subsidize those who can maximally externalize their costs. I don't think that the inadequate legal system that allows people to externalize their costs to me is a sufficient deterrent to violations of the no harm principle. Any system that does not internalize costs explicitly subsidizes those actions that greatest externalize. I'm not good with that. It's not a free market. You don't get to sell my property rights just because the law isn't good enough to recognize that which is inherently mine.