Or maybe it’s all a bunch of Voodoo anyway
When I was in China a month or so ago, I was headed to lunch. I was in Beijing, and like with many other big cities, the restaurant was on an upper floor of the building. The lobby of the building was under construction, not an uncommon thing in big cities either. There were rickety-looking scaffolding and construction debris everywhere. There was no back entrance, and the building was not closed off in any way. No separate walkway, no tape or ropes blocking it off. Nothing. In fact, anyone coming to and fro just kept to the side.
As I was passing the site, one of the workers dropped a crowbar from 30 feet up or so. It landed maybe three feet to the left of my group. “No Chinese OSHA here,” I thought. No harm, no foul. We all went on our way.
Two weeks later I was in New York City. Like Beijing, there are always buildings under construction. There was a building, similar to the one in Beijing, that also had its lobby under construction. The big difference was that the areas of the building being worked on were completely sealed off to the public by boards. I was hard-pressed to see a worker on the interior, almost having to go out of my way to sneak a peek, and the only debris I saw was what was already in a Dumpster.
My point is not to debate the value of human life or safety, or whether hard hats should be worn on a construction site. What occurred to me is that we, in the United States, have a lot of laws around safety. Hell, we have a lot of laws around every aspect of life, government, technology, etc. In China and many other countries there are noticeably fewer regulations around certain areas.
There are pros and cons of both. Really there are pros and cons with any extremes. Fewer laws and restrictions may mean being able to produce products more efficiently and less expensively. More laws mean human safety, better products, and more consumer rights.
Would we as American be willing to take a little risk for cheaper products? I mean, we do it with smoking in some ways. We know smoking is bad for consumers’ health, but we choose to sell cigarettes. I’m not really sure. Maybe some of the laws we have in place are all a bunch of Voodoo anyway. Maybe it’s time to rethink so we can reinvent.
Bryan DeLuca
http://www2.electronicproducts.com/Yeah_it_may_just_be_that_simple-article-vpbd_Jan2012-html.aspx
Other View Points by Bryan DeLuca
32 Comments
Nice to see this written down, though soft enough one could eat it if one had to. While now an engineer, I also worked in construction, and in both occupations have watched as efficency was replaced by “safety” laws. I agree with your point that some laws are needed (I had a friend trip in one of those construction sites in China that was not lighted, fell into a hole and found he had somehow missed landing on any of the rebar sticking up from the floor.)but the laws need to be wisely picked. I won’t even guess how much more expensive it is to produce something here than in places like China, but watching manufacturing move tells that story. But something I wonder about, as tariffs don’t work, but could we assign a price to non-safe manufacturing and add that cost to the product inported into the US? I am thinking of things like hazardous chemicals spewed into the air in China and end up landing here.
There are always costs. The question is what are the costs, who pays them and when, and what it would have cost in the long run to do the right thing up front. For example smokers have the choice but the people around them don’t. When Americans are unemployed they eventually can’t buy cheaper Chineese products. The polution in China will have costs later.
I agree with your point of view. If safety, saving lives and reducing injury is so important to us as Americans, why do we continue to condone countries who ignore their employees. It seems alright for us if someone in China is exposed to death or injury just because it is cheaper. Tough moral questions, but we seem to keep buying form them.
You’ve obviously never been hurt in an industrial accident, or see a man die because rules were disobeyed or ignored.And,because another country ignores safety, you think we should? Hah, you’d have a different view if that falling crowbar had hit you. Safety first, and always, please.
I think that the issue of safety is driven not so much by an altruistic desire but by the real fear of a lawsuit and major financial punishment. What’s a life worth? How much in the US? How much in China? Safety laws seem to march hand in hand with the perceived value of life. I think that says a lot about the US and a lot more about China.
It is ironic that you start your story from China, yet don’t mention freedom or human rights.
How much regulations cost is not ultimately as important as who pays. In lightly regulated environments, the least powerful pay. The workers get disabled or killed…and their families pay..perhaps for generations, as they suffer lost income, their children lost educational opportunity and even family fractures due to the stresses caused by the injury or death. Sure the company may cover the initial doctor visit (or funeral) but the family continues to pay the cost.
I would argue that light regulation is NOT cheaper…it simply hides the real costs by pushing them off onto the working poor where no cost accountants care to record them.
Our grandparents and great grandparents learned these lessons the hard way during the industrialization of the USA…and created protections for us that, in the comfort and privilege they provided for us, we now so ironically fail to appreciate.
- DC
Believe it or not people do not sit around thinking about how to make a worker’s life more difficult with more safety laws. Just the opposite. I suspect that many of the laws are a result of something and done after the fact. Is there a cost? Of course, so what? It hasn’t been the cost of safety or pollution regulations that brought our house down. Maybe if the financial industry had the safeguards most other industries have we wouldn’t be in our mess.
And, but for 3 feet you could be a dead man. I’m sure your family would agree it would be worth the cost to them to save some company a few dollars. I don’t understand the dumbing down mentality.
Most of the other posts say what I wanted to.
How many of your children are you willing to have develop asthma from air pollution if the EPA is dismantled? Who pays for the health care for your kid or you? There are lots of regulations because there are lots of ways to damage others, either intentionally or not, in the process of manufacturing. And there are plenty of bullies that don’t care. Just one example of why we have regulations.
Regulations are supposed to be an expression of respect for others. Are you willing to do your job for $1 an hour and work OT for free?
I just want to add that the push back against regulation and the excessive regulations are both a product of lobbying by monied interests.
In Vermont it is illegal to run your own telephone, Cat5 and security wiring. You are supposed to hire an electrician. Where do you think that nonsense came from?
Haliburton and BP seems to have escaped any prosecution for the deaths of 11 oil platform workers in the BP Gulf oil spill though there seems to be plenty of evidence of negligence and wrong doing. Same thing for the coal mine explosion several years ago. Regulations? We don’t need no stinkin’ regulations!
Politically we are in an epic battle of the 99% vs the 1%, epitomized by the Koch Brothers.
Money talks, and until money gets out of politics the regulations will only be as good as the Golden Rule. The man with the Gold makes the Rules.
It all has to do with our heritage. The United States was founded on a Judeo-Christian compassionate world view, where people who are made in the image of God are a precious life and must be preserved at all costs – thus safety regulations (sometimes too many in my view). What society invented seat belts, air bags, safety glass, crash safety, and all the other life-preserving technologies?
In the secular humanist communistic view, people are not special in any way and must survive in the ‘jungle’ on their own. I feel that China’s lack of safety regulations and sometimes dangerous technology and situations have a complete disregard for human life, as 3.5 Billion people are expendable – all except the ruling elite.
A few years back I worked for a geophysical (e.g. oil-related seismic survey) company. I was visiting a site in Venezuela. Our crews of local people worked to lay out and pick up lines of cable and sensors through some banana plantations. I saw them ring to the work location in the back of our trucks – covered, with rows of seats and seat belts in use. the workers wore hard hats and steel toes shoes, and coveralls. Probably saftey glasses, too. Going down the same road, were stake bed trucks with men in T-shirts and sandals standing in the back of the stake bed. They were banana plantation workers, literally going to work in the same fields along side our guys except they were picking bananas. I imagine they probably had sharp machetes in their hands – open blades in our industry are now virtually banned as too unsafe. Anyway, that contrast always sticks in my mind, how Western companies are held to high standards, sometimes self-imposed, way over those of the local culture.
Jonathan – That’s what the anti regulation crowd wants – China. All expendable except the ruling elite. Witness healthcare. US is the only country with for profit health care and onerous laws that make access to health care cost a fortune.
While we may have been founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic, that ethic is sometimes blind (slavery) and it has been hijacked by the greed is good crowd. Not the first time robber barons took over. FDR and Teddy R stood up to the big money in their day. It will take a major movement to restore what the middle class had in the 1960′s – JOBS and money and political clout. The Occupy movement is the bubbling up of that revolt.
In MY Humble Opinion!
A civilized society places high value on human welfare and saftey. You would most likely be the first to object if that crowbar had tragically dropped on your own mother, wife or child. I look forward to the day when all countries join us in concern for the well being of both its citizens and visitors.
A civilized society places high value on human welfare and saftey. You would most likely be the first to object if that crowbar had tragically dropped on your own mother, wife or child. I look forward to the day when all countries join us in concern for the well being of both its citizens and visitors.
The relevant expression is from the Latin:
Caveat emptor, literally, Let the Buyer Beware. It is an attitude and philosophy that has been lost in the US and many other parts of the world along with the Napoleonic Code and good riddance. Under the Napoleonic Code, an individual was guilty until proven innocent, Under Caveat emptor, you are on your own once you purchase something and take possession of it. Proposing that lessening standards for production,of responsibility or of responsible conduct to save on costs would require returning to to those days and standards: Caveat emptor and the Napoleonic code.
Good question. Our basic problem is that people cheat. Everyone cheats at something. It might be speeding or something more serious. We do it in business as well as in our personal lives. When it results in something going spectacularly wrong, we get a new law or regulation. We have chosen to be a nation where things are done by rule of law. There are other choices. Imagine if we change our legal system so that when someone cheats and something goes wrong, instead of sending the lawyers, the injured party or their heirs could simply shoot the person responsible. Financial crimes and poisoning the water or air would be included. Note that most pollution is a financial crime in that it moves costs from the balance sheet of the polluter to that of someone else or the taxpayer.
You came within 3 feet of writing a completely DIFFERENT article!
I think Mike Rowe’s “Safety Third” is a step in the right direction. Safety is an important factor, but not the ONLY important factor. Cost, benefit, informed consent, and many other factors all have to weight into the balance. Being born with 10 fingers gives a bit of redundancy. You don’t have to die with all 10 still there.
The first question shouldn’t be “what’s the cost of regulation?” but rather “what’s the point of regulation?”. In China, the end goal is to get a building up as cheaply and quickly as possible. This means bribing inspectors so that foundations can be made with cheaper materials and half as much rebar, asbestos can be used for insulation, cheap uninsulated wiring can be run, and so on. The lack of regulation extends elsewhere. You can see videos of trucks on the Chinese highways driving around with tires missing, and air pollution there is a nightmare.
When an earthquake hits Japan, most of the buildings survive the shaking. When it hits cities in China, the buildings tend to collapse.
As to #16 (Mike Beaver): how do you distinguish between intentional and unintentional, and problems that are a user’s own fault? What if you design an ABS system for a car, and one of the cars is then in an accident on a snowy day killing the child in the back seat. Would you be ok with the father coming to your door in the middle of the night and shooting you? What if the accident was the driver’s fault and not of the ABS? Who determines this? What if the fault wasn’t yours are the designer but the chip fab that build the ADC that you selected?
Lead paint on toys are cheeper (per CNBC) ANnd an empoloyee can always quite. (per a couple Pres Candidates). Most laws like this follow some jerk and then having to make it sooo tight that some jerk’s lawyer can’t wiggle. Work safety, product safety and wast safety are governmental functions of protection than an individual can’t do. When have you seen a Mfg associatiopn set real limits with what piunnishment? “No-harm-no-foul”?? Lets see, always wait for the Gov to set standards so you have a legal protection. But legal protections limit EFFICIENCY”. Anyone see the China Olimpics and find out that the air had to be cleaned up? Remember Poland?
Do we forget how commerce is aided by expected performance set by standards? 802.11N is an industry standard. Lead paint and asbestos bans are government standards. Building codes allows exchange of property. Auto standards allow safe travel. All this is commerce related.
Follow the $$$$$
Efficiency is the holy grail?
Efficiency = $$$$$ = profit.
No, $$$$$$ is the wholly grail.
Inefficiency for the sake of safety needs to be built into the price. Where it cannot make a profit that project becomes a government project. Like Hoover Dam or highways.
Did you see the photos of the Chinese apartment buildings that fell over? Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75ng-6_c-jo
They don’t need no stinkin’ safety standards.
I have traveled & worked in China & SE Asia for years. When we killed a handful of coal miners in Utah and the US of A went into collective hand wringing, China killed over 300 and nobody blinked over there. Cities in China routinely dump pollutants in rivers and kill & sicken 1000′s down stream. I am glad I can now bring work back to the US because the cost of freight has gotten so high. OSHA, the Great Lakes Compact and many ‘onerous’ regulations protect my grand children more than they ‘cost’ me $’s today.
In the USA and most European countries as well as others, it is common to have so many safety laws that nobody can remember them all. And the cost of trying to review, be aware of, and comply with all of them is significant. Seems to me that we tend to make a new safety regulation, after the fact, for almost any accident, even if the cause of the accident is practically a one-time fluke, not likely to ever be repeated. By repealing those regulations that aim to prevent truly rare accidents, and enforce those aimed at situations likely to occur with some frequency, the system would be a bit more rational. After all, there are an infinite number of possible scenarios, and you cannot practically write a safety regulation to cover them all….there will always be some accidents. Now the falling crowbar, falling as it did in a public space, that would be the kind of thing that should always be regulated everywhere.
This is a fundamental question in the debate between free markets and government regulation. The thing is, governments impose regulation without regard for the cost of that regulation to the people and society and without regard for how much people are willing to pay for how much safety. The argument _for_ regulations is that products must be made safe as if “safe” was black and white. The reality is that “safe” is a continuous spectrum and with that is a spectrum of cost. No product can be made perfectly safe. Every increment in improved safety incurs an increment in a more expensive product. You could bring to bear every technology in building the closest to a perfectly safe car, spare no expense in the name of safety and end up with a car that costs a million dollars. Not a particularly practical solution when no one could afford to buy a car.
But this is where the free market comes in. Consumers decide what is a “practical” balance between safety and cost in choosing to buy cars that strike a “practical” balance between safety and cost. If a car is not safe enough, consumers won’t buy it. If a car is “too safe” (too expensive) consumers can’t buy it. Manufactures then have to find that balance between safety and cost that consumers will choose to buy in the competitive free market (other competitors are also trying to find a better balance to win customers from the competition). The end result is that the consumers get the products that are produced having the optimally desired balance between safety and cost. When the result is that consumers get the balance between safety and cost that they want, how is having “no cost spared safety” imposed on them by regulation a better solution? If consumers really wanted that safety at that cost imposed by regulation, then that is what manufacturers would have to produce to win customers from the competition and regulation would then be redundant. Thus regulation either results in products with a safety to price balance different than what consumers really want (why should consumers not have what they want?), or it results in what they do want and is then superfluous because that is what would be produced anyway on the competitive free market.
The business of regulation is political. Our representatives respond to events and pressure from their constituents and contributors. When something bad happens, we get outraged and demand more control. The regulatory agencies tend to be a bit more analytical, as they face only indirect political pressure. In all cases, the push back from the targets of the regulations tend to make adding new regulations difficult. I predict that we will see significant regulation of the gas drilling method known as “fracking” because the industry hasn’t been doing enough to avoid poisoning the local water wells.
The Bible has a lot of good stuff to say about health and safety, because all human life is precious in the sight of God. The Chinese authorities are giving Christians, who believe the Bible, a hard time and at the same time regarding human life as cheap. Western government ministers who visit China should campaign more vigorously for human rights.
Rob wrote: “The thing is, governments impose regulation without regard for the cost of that regulation to the people and society and without regard for how much people are willing to pay for how much safety.”
That is not true. There is plenty of input from both sides. For instance once studies showed that seat belts save lives, reduce injuries and keep overall accident costs down there was plenty of push back from the auto industry who claimed it was too expensive and would put them out of business. That is always the claim from industry where cash is king. However the government, at the behest of consumer watchdogs, like Ralph Nader and his book, “Unsafe at any speed” forced industry to install seat belts and later airbags. There is plenty of regard for cost on both sides of the argument.
On a personal note, my daughter and her 2 cousins survived a head on crash with a guard rail because of seat belts, airbags and crumple zones. Whatever the cost was to me and society was insignificant compared to those kids lives being spared.
Rob, try living in China, or better yet Somalia with no government. A libertarian paradise. When you are outraged because someone commits a heinous act against you or your family what will your first reaction be?
Rob wrote: “But this is where the free market comes in.”
There is no such thing as a free market. it does not exist. Without infrastructure, a “common wealth”, that we as a collective people put in place there would be no market. No roads – no transport of goods. No courts – no contracts. Etc. The road system was built in this country on the basis of the post office, a constitutional function of government, which gave congress the right to build roads.
One of the functions of government in this country is to stand up for the least of us in the people, in the face of predatory practices. In a perfect world there would be no need but this ain’t a perfect world. And that balance shifts with the political wind.
“Free market” sounds good but is an illusion, a delusion, and a turd wrapped in chocolate.
I do not agree with the subtle and poorly written suggestion being made. Readers might want to listen to the podcast (link below). Using Chinese or any other society other than our own to model safety, EPA etc. standards is a sophomoric idea. By the way, Europe’s standards are in many cases draconian when compared to US standards. Hey, let’s throw out the NYC Fire Code too…hey wait a minute! That’s not what he meant, right?
Having been to Asia/China multiple times it is my opinion we are letting them do our dirty work in a humanistic and environmental perspective. This is not to say there is no place for low cost labor. We are abusing it. And by WE, I mean Executive level decision makers, not the consumers who buy the products. Don’t try to say the consumer votes with each purchase, which is a ludicrous proposition.
I’m no tree hugging, bleeding heart liberal, but if history has taught one thing, it is the law needs to provide a moral compass, for the greedy have no capability to behave morally.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
I would like to follow up to a comment I wrote earlier. This is a common occurance in China:
http://imgur.com/aO9we
Would any electrical linemen here like to work in this manner?
One of the better Supreme COurt justices (Marshall, if my memory is correct) said something like. ‘my right to liberty ends at the point of someone else’s nose’. The rightful purpose of laws in an orderly society is to protect individuals from those rogue elements of society who would, through intent or neglect cause harm to others. The problem with laws in this ocuntry today is that we have too many laws that are intended to regulate what individuals and in some cases even companies do in the privacy of their own domain that cause no one any harm or that cause less harm than the punishment for the ‘crime’. One glaring example are the drug laws. The jails are full of people who have been convicted in the ‘drug war’ and yet the drugs are still readily available to anyone with money to pay for them, and they always will be. We put more people in jail for minor marijuana crimes than for all other crimes combined. We spend literally billions to surveil, wiretap, and infiltrate in order to catch these people and then billions more to move them from society to prison when by and large they are no menace to society at all. At the same time a violent criminal underworld of ruthless and desparate people is created to fill the demand for these products, and law enforcement is stretched thin peering into peoples’ private domain for these victimless crimes rather than addressing the real dangers to society posed by violent criminals. Resources (both monetary and human)that would be better spent in treatment and education are squandered turning otherwise productive members of society into outlaws. Another example is the notion that by passing laws and regulations big daddy government can protect everyone from every possible misfortune. This will never be successful and the price we pay for this false sense of security is that innovation is stifled while we are not really any better off than before in terms of personal safety. There is a place for law and regulation and that place is to provide protection against willful and negligent actions, like operaitng a construction site over a busy pedestrian wlakway. But that does not mean that we we can stop looking out for our own welfare. My guess is that the author who just barely missed being brained by that dropped crowbar would be singing a different song if he had been hit by it. And I have to wonder whether he gave any thought the the fact that it is probably not a good idea to walk or stand around under an area where construction is ongoing.
Well it has taken a while to get to commenting on this claptrap and it is nice to see there are still some thinking people left. As is very obvious from the compassion you have never had a real job in your life. Not a personal attack, just an observation. Having been around before there was an OSHA or a safety code, (that was enforceable) I recall in 1970, when OSHA was enacted, we were killing 329 hands per day 365 days a year. That was in the construction trades alone! My numbers maybe a little off as, as time goes by the superior hard drive needs to be cleaned up from time to time. Currently we record around 5 or 6. As I am no longer actively work and no longer keep track. So how much is a human life worth? One other question, did you happen to see all of the folks in China sitting just outside of the construction site? It is reported there are there to take your place when you no longer can do your job. As in injured or dead.
Yeah it may be just that that simple to take the USA who by the way still produces over 70% of the worlds GNP and even the Germans want our quality, with 10% of the world population. Forgot where I was going with that, but just remember next time you walk under the makeshift scaffolding in some 3rd world country, the 6 year old kid is working 16 hours a day. Maybe that is one of the laws that need to be repelled. Yeah it may be just that simple. Get a Life.
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