3 ms·

It's a shift from the philosophy "that which is not expressly forbidden is permitted" to "that which is not expressly permitted is forbidden". It seems it's go

by wisty 15y ago

It's a shift from the philosophy "that which is not expressly forbidden is permitted" to "that which is not expressly permitted is forbidden". It seems it's good to have health inspectors, and shut down the dodgy operators. It's also good to force restaurants to follow good practices. But the regulations always seem to grow, and don't always prevent disasters. The problem is, disasters are "black swan" events. Builders take reasonable steps to avoid hitting their fingers with hammers, because it's a high incidence / small impact kind of thing. But low incidence / high impact things (like cutting off your hand with a buzzsaw) need a bit of regulation. The problem is, regulation doesn't work. Someone will put up a sign spelling out how to use the buzzsaw, which people will follow for about 30 seconds before putting their hands in danger again. You need education (safety signs), but you also need enforcement. And one of the best methods of enforcement is encouraging whistle-blowers. Whenever a real disaster happens, there's usually a clear paper trail of people making complaints about the potential hazard. People know the risk, but aren't able to escalate it to someone who can force mitigation. Obviously this is a sort of inverted survivor bias (no-one cares about paper trails when there's no body), but the point remains - people usually knew the disaster was waiting to happen, and weren't able to figure out what to do about it. The most important regulation (I believe) is that safety complaints need to be made, and dealt with. No system is perfect, but overregulation encourages a system that looks perfect on paper while problems go unnoticed.

Zak 15y ago
But low incidence / high impact things (like cutting off your hand with a buzzsaw) need a bit of regulation. We used to, for the most part accept that such things would happen, and not try too hard to prevent them when the impact was mostly limited to the person making the poor decision leading to the accident. I'm not sure that's such a bad thing; regulations shift the responsibility and costs away from the person actually doing the potentially dangerous thing on to the organization as a whole. The whole process slows down as a result. I'm not against regulations or some equivalent (such as best practices plus liability) in situations where someone being stupid puts many people or the public at large at risk, but don't tell me I need certification to use a buzzsaw. I learned to use one when I was 12.

by wisty 15y ago

Zak 15y ago

But low incidence / high impact things (like cutting off your hand with a buzzsaw) need a bit of regulation. We used to, for the most part accept that such things would happen, and not try too hard to prevent them when the impact was mostly limited to the person making the poor decision leading to the accident. I'm not sure that's such a bad thing; regulations shift the responsibility and costs away from the person actually doing the potentially dangerous thing on to the organization as a whole. The whole process slows down as a result. I'm not against regulations or some equivalent (such as best practices plus liability) in situations where someone being stupid puts many people or the public at large at risk, but don't tell me I need certification to use a buzzsaw. I learned to use one when I was 12.