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Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

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Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#281

Post by imtringued »

staz wrote: post #235
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today the leading cause of death is heart disease. In that era it was infectious disease. You could have a cushy job doing numbers work in a city and still die of tuberculosis from being in close quarters. People were fine with it because everything was terrible. In the century between the 1850s and 1950s we went from not even having radio communications or the germ theory of disease to building nuclear submarines an…

People were definitely not fine with it but whenever they tried to do something about it the owner class sent the army and massacred them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

That is also what happened to the luddites. Adopt technology or the police will arrest you with loaded guns and you go to prison or get hanged. This part is left out to make the Luddites look foolish and technological progress the hero of the story.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#282

Post by imtringued »

thadk wrote: post #8

According to this podcast, Cass Sunstein, co-author of Nudge, used his economist-oriented federal government department to delay and block legislated regulation related to protection for silicosis during the Obama administration. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id...

I don't know why but "economists" are pretty bad at their job.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#283

Post by ffgjgf1 »

Tagbert wrote: post #83
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn’t everyone pick plastic straws instead of paper ones coated with PFAS if given the choice?

Or why pick any straws unless you have a medical condition that prevents you from just drinking. We typically order water to drink in restaurants and when it gets to the table, the servers almost always toss some straws on the table. If we say we don’t want them or if we mention when ordering that we don’t want straws, we get looks like we must be some weirdos. Why automatically push straws for everyone?

I find coke and other very sweet drinks yucky when drinking them without a straw.

Also having a lot of ice complicates things especially if it starts floating near the top.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#284

Post by michaelt »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #271
Natsu wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, most of what happens is that workers don't want to wear the gear because it's hot/uncomfortable and they're working really long hours and get tired and sloppy by the end of it. I actually worked in such a factory, so this is based on direct experience, and what I saw was people cut corners mostly because they were tired after long shifts, though lack of comfort was also a factor due to the heat. The…

> OSHA-recordable Go on…

It's common, when counting "days without an accident" and handing out awards and bonuses, to only reset the count for accidents of a certain severity.

After all, if you get a minor injury and you know getting treatment will cost your colleagues a $200 bonus, you might keep quiet about it and tough it out to the end of your shift.

To achieve a good culture of safety, you need to make the rewards for safety strong enough to resist the rewards for cutting corners - but you also need to make sure a guy can get a band-aid from the first aid kit or tell his boss about a trip hazard with no disincentives.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#285

Post by lm28469 »

duped wrote: post #92
lm28469 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like giving people an incentive to illegally come to your country ? If there are no difference between coming legally or illegally the choice is easy. Like I could just book a one way flight to LA and become a US citizen because reasons ?

Like how most of our ancestors got here, you mean?

Your ancestors genocided the whole continent, if anything that argument is against what you advocate. We're not in the 1700s, people can travel more easily, information travels instantly, what worked 300 years ago doesn't necessarily works now.

I'm all for helping people but you cannot import the world's misery and expect it to be smooth, first because it doesn't solve anything, second because it just doesn't work from a simple demographic point of view.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#287

Post by ffgjgf1 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #152
charles_f wrote: post #55

Tangentially related, there's this copper mining museum in BC (1) in what used to be one of these corporate towns where you lived and died. They do a quick demo of the equipments they used back in the day, in a pre cut hole. Even with your hands on your hears it's painful, teeth chattering - and they don't even really hit the rock. People working in there weren't wearing any sort of hearing protection and became deaf…

Today the leading cause of death is heart disease. In that era it was infectious disease. You could have a cushy job doing numbers work in a city and still die of tuberculosis from being in close quarters. People were fine with it because everything was terrible. In the century between the 1850s and 1950s we went from not even having radio communications or the germ theory of disease to building nuclear submarines an…

> Then governments passed laws requiring it because politicians are adept at taking credit for good things that were about to happen regardless

With this attitude we’d still be driving with leaded gas, living in lead painting rooms with asbestos roofs and spraying ozone layer destroying aerosols amongst a bunch of other things. The mechanism you described only really works with short term safety issues. If it takes years or decades for health problems to develop neither workers nor their employers tend to be particularly bothered about solving them.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#288

Post by ffgjgf1 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #264
syntheweave wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market can de-competitiveize itself through non-compete agreements, intellectual property laws, and other barriers to entry. The competitiveness occurs around the "ruleset", which shifts around according to the regulatory environment. The government tends to default to supporting strikebreaking(and still generally does in any era, including this one) because industrialists, financiers and politicians share lines…

> The market can de-competitiveize itself through non-compete agreements, intellectual property laws, and other barriers to entry. The competitiveness occurs around the "ruleset", which shifts around according to the regulatory environment. What you're getting at is that market competition can be destroyed through regulatory capture. But now you're making the case for regulatory form and anti-trust rather than some k…

Free market competition rarely develops without regulation and/or government/public oversight.

With no external control businesses tend to form cartels and/or adopt practices and regulations that are more hostile towards both consumers and workers than what governments can come up to.

On average anyway. Of course there markets and goods which are somewhat immune to this and exceptionally incompetent governments which can do significantly more harm than good.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#289

Post by ffgjgf1 »

imtringued wrote: post #281
staz wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were definitely not fine with it but whenever they tried to do something about it the owner class sent the army and massacred them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

That is also what happened to the luddites. Adopt technology or the police will arrest you with loaded guns and you go to prison or get hanged. This part is left out to make the Luddites look foolish and technological progress the hero of the story.

> Adopt technology or the police will arrest you with loaded guns and you go to prison or get hanged

That really not true. Nobody forced them to adopt anything (in a literal way). It’s just that automated factories could produce more faster while paying their workers much less since they didn’t require skilled craftsmen.

Also artisans generally used a guild/cartel model which artificially constricted supply which inflated their incomes.

> out to make the Luddites look foolish and technological progress the hero of the story.

I thought it was pretty obvious to everyone that they were breaking machines because they eliminated demand for high skilled/high pay labour?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#290

Post by ffgjgf1 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #250
thatguy0900 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying the miners wouldn't accept it either, but any organized attempt to change it was broken up by a private army.

That seems like it wouldn't work if you had a government capable of anything so basic as enforcing the preexisting laws against acts of violence.

Well.. to be fair both sides used violence and governments generally (with very few exceptions) sided with the business owners.
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