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How factories were made safe

rootsofprogress.org

71–80 of 114 posts

Re: How factories were made safe

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, we have the ability to house every homeless person. There are more second vacation homes than homeless people. Why not just move them in? I'm not even talking about the ones available for rent - just the ones sitting there empty.

As far as I understand, we do have the physical capability of housing that many people, but a significant number of the homeless are drug addicted, have mental illness, or both, and attempts to provide housing in mass like that leads to many of the houses becoming filthy and/or damaged. And who would want to give up a house for that? Homelessness can't just be solved with a housing band-aid, but needs to be addressed…

Having safe, stable shelter would seem to be a prerequisite to helping people deal with drug addiction and mental illness.

Baxter, A. J., Tweed, E. J., Katikireddi, S. V., & Thomson, H. (2019). Effects of Housing First approaches on health and well-being of adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. J Epidemiol Community Health, 73(5), 379-387.

Re: How factories were made safe

#72
post #67

> The lack of systems thinking We managed to make factories safe but kill 1.3 M people/year in traffic instead [1] I wonder: will we ever manage to apply systems thinking in traffic as well? [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

The key for workman's comp was no-fault--you pay for your own accidents. That had to be enshrined in law to work.

Several US states HAD No-Fault insurance laws--ie your own insurance company pays for your own accidents.

The insurance companies lobbied like crazy to get those removed. They're all gone now.

If you got those No-Fault insurance laws back, the required systems thinking would ensue.

Re: How factories were made safe

#73
post #23
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have specific examples of "massive" progress and improvements to efficiency since, say, the late '60s? I tend to agree with Neal Stephenson that "the threat now has become not too much innovation, but not enough". [1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM&t=333s

We went from thousands of transistors in chip in 1970 to billions of transistors in chip in 2020.

Exactly. Transistors were invented in 1947, Engelbart presented on downscaling ICs to an audience including Moore in 1960, and he observed his law in 1965.

It's mostly held, transistors have incrementally increased as predicted over 50 years ago. This is consistent with Stephenson's observation that there's been no meaningful innovation since the late '60s.

Re: How factories were made safe

#74
post #64

> Thus, accidents were typically attributed to worker “carelessness.” This attitude survives, not only in the workplace (where safety laws are often fought as "needless red tape") but outside it too (your poverty is due to carelessness, and is nobody else's responsibility).

Same with software bugs it's always "careless" programming.

My first mentor immediately took me to task when I called something I had done "a stupid bug." He stopped me and said "All bugs are stupid[1]." The point being that the overwhelming majority of the time, once you are looking at a bug, it looks like carelessness and stupidity, and yet very smart, careful programmers introduce such bugs with surprising regularity.

1: The motto is "All bugs are stupid" but he did admit later that there are such things as "smart bugs" though they be rare enough to be a rounding error.

Re: How factories were made safe

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand, we do have the physical capability of housing that many people, but a significant number of the homeless are drug addicted, have mental illness, or both, and attempts to provide housing in mass like that leads to many of the houses becoming filthy and/or damaged. And who would want to give up a house for that? Homelessness can't just be solved with a housing band-aid, but needs to be addressed…

Having safe, stable shelter would seem to be a prerequisite to helping people deal with drug addiction and mental illness. Baxter, A. J., Tweed, E. J., Katikireddi, S. V., & Thomson, H. (2019). Effects of Housing First approaches on health and well-being of adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. J Epidemiol Community Health, 73(5), 379-…

That is one factor, but it isn't everything, there are still other factors so don't overstate it

Re: How factories were made safe

#76
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, CCPA started doing this in California. In the event of a data breach, the company can be sued for actual damages, or statutory damages of $100-750 per affected consumer. As a point of comparison: If CCPA had been in effect during the Equifax incident, the statutory damages only for California residents would have been $1.5 billion minimum. As far as I can tell for Wikipedia, the settlement they agreed to with 4…

If a multistage class action lawsuit is settled for billions and people harmed receive only free credit monitoring gift cards, is our sense of justice served?

I don't care so much about justice as nobody does it again. If the lawyers make a ton once and there isn't a next time I'm happy. Well better would be it doesn't happen again

Re: How factories were made safe

#77
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having safe, stable shelter would seem to be a prerequisite to helping people deal with drug addiction and mental illness. Baxter, A. J., Tweed, E. J., Katikireddi, S. V., & Thomson, H. (2019). Effects of Housing First approaches on health and well-being of adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. J Epidemiol Community Health, 73(5), 379-…

That is one factor, but it isn't everything, there are still other factors so don't overstate it

downvoted because they clearly said 'pre-requisite' which is in no way an overstatement.

Re: How factories were made safe

#78
post #47

The audacity of that tangent at the end. "Natural and inevitable"? People fought and died for your 40 hour work week. You know May Day? The Labor Day for the rest of the world? Commemorates the Haymarket Massacre, which was fighting for the 8 hour work day.

It is an essentially inevitable result of technological development. If the 40 hour workweek people had protested 30 years earlier, nothing would have happened, and if they hadn’t protested at all it probably would have been achieved with less effort a few years down the line. You need occasional shocks to remove entrenched procedural traditions like work schedules, but the magnitude of the shock required decreases a…

"It is an essentially inevitable result of technological development"

So its been over a century, why are we still stuck at 40 hours?

Re: How factories were made safe

#79
post #67

> The lack of systems thinking We managed to make factories safe but kill 1.3 M people/year in traffic instead [1] I wonder: will we ever manage to apply systems thinking in traffic as well? [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

One start would be to disable smartphones from operating when linked to a car system, massively increase enforcement of smartphone use while driving, and increase penalties. None of that would be popular, but it would be effective.

Let police agencies access cell phone location history and fine anyone moving above the speed limit on a road.

Force cell phones to stop working when velocity is above 5 mph.

Re: How factories were made safe

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see the same misconceptions in the other direction as well. It's like some people think a work stoppage from cleaning up a dead worker or hazardous material spill don't result in lost productivity that workplaces would rather not incur.

...So they lobby for 'pro-business' laws to limit the downside of such events.

Add in the wild and arbitrary decision that punitive damages shouldn't exceed ~9x the compensatory damages and the corporate behavior control mechanisms have been largely denuded (and many US states have lowered that even more).
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