A cartoon titled "A Brief History of Self-Regulation..." with four panels. 1 - "Heavy Industry" shows a sign with "Cuyahoga River Cleveland" in front of a river on fire with black smoke in front of a shore with industrial buildings with active smokestacks between homes. 2 - "Chemical Companies" shows a sign with "Love Canal" on a dug up field filled with buried chemical waste next to homes while it is snowing. 3 - "Financial Sector" shows a red downward zigzag line (as if from a stock market graph) crashing into and destroying a home labeled "2008 Crash". 4 - "Airline Industry" shows an airplane falling out of the sky and barreling towards a single home with an active chimney. Adam Zybus 2019 Caglecartoons.com The Buffalo News - ALT by @summerfallwinter@tech.lgbt
I work in aerospace regulation and the latest media coverage has been quite upsetting for me. There is a huge difference between delegation (how the aerospace regulator gives approval power to people in companies) and self-regulation, but I'm not clever enough to summarise them in this format. So instead I'd like to share two facts that can summarize the outcome instead.
An airliner is a chunk of metal full of people 30,000 ft in sky propelled to near the speed of sound by burning kerosene in a tube. With all of that is safer than driving in your car or going for a swim. That's aerospace regulation at work, and it has always included delegation. It's almost the safest industry there is even when you include Boeing's criminal fraud and attempts to abuse the system.
Boeing had to ground their fleet for years and now is being charged with criminal fraud for deceiving the FAA (the aerospace regulatory body in the USA). Self regulated industries rarely face consequences.
I'm not saying it's perfect, and I wish I could explain the process better but I think it's very effective and has a proven track record across the world. Almost all modern countries use the same regulatory framework because it delivers incredible safety at a reasonable (by aerospace standards) cost to the government.
I hope more industries transition to a similar framework. If we had an FAA for finance and environmental protection, I think we could end scam shell companies and illegal pollution in a decade. But it would probably be "big government socialism" so there isn't much hope.
I think the narrative is about how Boeing used to be the gold standard, but with money grabs for years the check is now coming due - hopefully before its too late & there is a crash.
I actually grew up next to the Cuyahoga in the '70s, and it's mind-boggling how disgusting that river was. Used tires and rusted steel chemical barrels everywhere, and the surface covered with a sheen of oil or who knows what the fuck it was. The concept of a beautiful rivers edge was laughable back then, as the river was lined with various plants and factories with big drainage pipes jutting out over the water discharging ... stuff. And this was about 30 miles from the part that actually caught fire (which was in Cleveland). I really don't understand why that river wasn't just on fire all the time.
My parents founded an organization that cleaned the river up (at least the part of it in our town) and turned it into a beautiful park and walking trail. I'm so proud of them for that, but sadly these victories are never permanent.
Nobody said that. You can't just make shit up and act like it's what the person you're arguing with is thinking.
Also people talk about this shit like we bombed today's Japan. Japan was a horrendous empire. They were doing the same shit the Nazis were doing but in asia. Do you condem the Dresden Fire bombing this fervently? Or do you just defend the stuff that's buzz worthy?
Not nuking Japan would have allowed the USSR to invade Japan before they surrendered. Meaning another East/West Berlin/German situation. Can you honestly say that would have had a lower death toll?
Stop hopping on this contextless internet hills for dying on and learn your history.
And yes, I do condemn the Dresden Fire Bombing. Sure the Nazis were bad but wiping out thousands of innocent civilian lives like that was a war crime, nothing else.
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.
There's never been an actual communist government. As much as those countries like to say they're communist, that doesn't make it true. They're authoritarian, and you're buying their propaganda if you think they're actually communist.
They are buying propaganda, but in this thread they are selling it. They're a bad faith actor, disinfo bot, or standard issue moron. The only hard part is knowing which one.
If every "communist" government ever turned out to be authoritarian, you might want to ask yourself if there is some fundamental flaw in communism that makes it so it always turns out that way.
Also, Marx literally called for a "dictatorship of the proletariat". If that isn't authoritarian, then IDK what is.
A bunch of Marxist-Leninist governments turned out to be authoritarian, as well as fermenting cult-like behavior in smaller ML groups. That's a reason to drop that whole branch. Has nothing to do with leftism in the broad view.
They weren't communist, they were state capitalists, if you ask any serious person that knows anything about economic systems they will agree, that's the common consensus. Want another example of a state capitalist country? That's us. The US is a state capitalist country. Why? Well.. when a business fails, and the government props them up. That's state capitalism.
The Romania link is kinda misleading. That isn't a big government problem: that's a profit crushing laypeople problem. Both the communist Romanian government and the capitalist government that followed wanted to profit from many different mines even though it would destroy nearby villages.
Rosia Montana is still very controversial today. A different mine, but the same core reasoning and issues.
Meanwhile England created a man-made famine in Ireland and oversaw 15 of them in India, while the US straight up did the worst genocide the world has ever seen and is driving the climate catastrophy which might end up killing most of the humans on earth. Not defending socialist states, but there's not even a comparison here.
You cant stop a national government from making weapons and conducting war. A national government, however, should regulate corporations in its territory or sphere of influence to prevent attrocities and tragedies the corporations would conduct. You do not yet live in an idealic valley of plenty where there are corporations but not a government, so you must lend your voice; do you want one Tyranny Machine to run or should there be two Tyranny Machines and the second one has no oversight or regulation from the appropriate parties. Remember that when the government turns on its Tyranny Machine at least competing governments can oppose it. If you are not careful the Free Market Beast will allow many Tyranny Machines to run simultaneously.
The problem with using the Love Canal was that it was the local government that really fucked up.
For the time, Hooker Chemical Company disposed of the chemical waste in a somewhat responsible way; a clay lined canal that they later topped with clay to prevent water infiltration. If the town wasn't dead set in developing the land, we likely would have never heard of Love Canal.
The company did the dumping and then sold it off for $1 for a school to be built upon it. They were held liable. They also created other environmental disasters elsewhere. White Lake Michigan, for instance.
Hooker Chemical Company gave no fucks, and should not be given tacit approval or any credit.
Hooker Chemical sold for $1 and a list of conditions because the local government was threatening eminent domain after the company gave several warnings.
And I'm not going to defend Hooker in other locations.
They were forced to sell under threat of eminent domain. That's why they tried to sell it for $1 along with a list of conditions on what it could be used for to highlight the danger. The Government then rejected this offer. Rather than trying to blame some random company just because you think all companies are evil, maybe go and read the history instead.
More importantly it was the 1950s before the Clean Water Act. Where both entities involved existed under the framework of industry self-regulation that is being directly criticized here.
The issue isn't a company or government is responsible: it is that the system of self regulation results in failures with significant collateral damage.
Regulation also binds government, believe it or not.
What is an example of something that is not self-regulated that was worked out well?
EU food industry works pretty well. Incidences of food-borne disease, contaminated food, etc are very rare, and you can generally trust the label says exactly what's in the food with confidence.
The regulations themselves are very complex, change depending on new evidence, and include all sorts of rule changes for events that impact the food industry.
Don't forget basically all science, most of the actual groundbreaking work is done using public funds; private interests only step and once the underlying theory is already proven.
I'M SO FUCKING MAD! We're giving corporations the rights to our research to make PRIVATE power companies so they can charge us whatever the fuck they want....
WE FUNDED THE RESEARCH, MAKE THE FACILITIES GOVERNMENT RUN!
To all the people out there that hate questions so much and downvote people who ask them: What happened to you that made you so angry about people wanting to acquire information?
To all the informative people who answer questions, thank you!
No, you don't know that. You just assume you know that. You've been so brainwashed that you think anyone who doesn't already know everything you know and have every opinion you have is evil and out to get you. It is OK to learn, it is OK to change your mind, and it is OK to ask questions. The most important thing is not always hearing that you are right.
You will be much better off if you listen to my point and don't try to imagine you know everything. There really, truly is nothing wrong with considering other points of view. There is also nothing wrong with people asking questions. You don't need the safety and constant agreement that you think you do.
Effectively yes. The Sackler family proved that. Regulators let them kill thousands of people. It took the criminal justice system tracking the pills back to have consequences and accountability.
