Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

news.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 469 posts

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#141

Post by filoleg »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #85
echelon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess you could tax their victims instead though... they don't have a lobby so theyre probably easier to take advantage of. Nobody is the victim of choosing to eat a cake.

When you live in poverty and have no prospects for the future. Some mass produced cake from the supermarket might be the only thing keeping you together. As soon as the work of the laptop class is automated by next generation agentic LLM's, you will probably understand.

> As soon as the work of the laptop class is automated by next generation agentic LLM's, you will probably understand

Coming any second now, right behind robotaxis, with the only difference being that robotaxis will probably actually happen within the lifetimes of the current “laptop class”.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#142

Post by city41 »

charles_f wrote: post #103
jerzmacow wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it is what it is" plus having a hungry family to feed?

Oh yeah absolutely, but being a shareholder in there? I mean it's always easy to judge people whose context you don't know, but I think you can draw a line and this is past it

We can still draw those lines today, but mostly ignore them. Such as the nets around Foxconn factories, slave labor used to create chocolate, lithium mining, etc. Not nearly as dramatic as what those copper mine workers went through, but still quite bad.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#143

Post by arcticbull »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #109
swagempire wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is pretty heavy on immigration I hear-- its how they partially make up for a declining birthrate.

It's not only Canada that uses immigration - legal or turning a blind eye to illegal - to make up for falling birthrate. Look at Germany. Look at France. Look at what's happen to Japan because such an option isn't as viable. It's simply not politically feasable to say, "Without immigrants, our economy is f'ed."

American too, birth rate is 1.6, well below a replacement rate of 2.1

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#144

Post by mhb »

bastawhiz wrote: post #136
mhb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have the government involved - OSHA. Why would having it more involved be better if its current involvement is not solving the problem? It's pretty to think that the government has some sort of self-interest and if it can save money in the long run by spending money in the short run, it will do that. But that's not how things work, is it? A more plausible conclusion from observing the results of an entity'…

> if it is incompetent with the thing you gave it to do, don't give it more stuff to do. When my code doesn't work, I don't sunset the code, I fix it. Why would the best course of action be to stop trying instead of fixing the root of the problem?

When your Maytag dishwasher breaks after a month, do you think the best thing to do is to buy a Maytag washing machine?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#145

Post by zdragnar »

bastawhiz wrote: post #136
mhb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have the government involved - OSHA. Why would having it more involved be better if its current involvement is not solving the problem? It's pretty to think that the government has some sort of self-interest and if it can save money in the long run by spending money in the short run, it will do that. But that's not how things work, is it? A more plausible conclusion from observing the results of an entity'…

> if it is incompetent with the thing you gave it to do, don't give it more stuff to do. When my code doesn't work, I don't sunset the code, I fix it. Why would the best course of action be to stop trying instead of fixing the root of the problem?

If your code doesn't work, it could be anything from a minor typo to a bad abstraction based on bad assumptions that requires a full refactor to get correctness and / or minimum acceptable performance.

About 90% of that scale requires sunsetting at least some of your code and doing something differently.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#146

Post by flangola7 »

bagels wrote: post #121
icegreentea2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was interested, but also didn't want to scrub through a podcast. Summary: Cass Sunstein was the administer of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The OIRA is given the remit to review drafted rules (ie regulations) that various federal agencies want to enact. The OIRA is supposed to perform an external cost-benefit analysis of the proposed regulations. OIRA is suppose to turn around ruling…

Thank you for collecting this. A couple years to draft & study some proposed regulation doesn't seem that heinous to me. It would make sense to not hastily publish a regulation that will last decades without really considering it and its effects well. They can be a source of lawsuits, and I would assume, you want it to be effective which can take some study.

No, the delay was artificial. Consider the effects? How about the possibility delaying i needlessly ncreases the number of humans dying?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#147

Post by lotsofpulp »

cj wrote: post #58
bushbaba wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America offers Medicare so we still bear the cost. Just only if they live long enough to receive the retirement benefits. Yeah one heck of a perverse incentive.

Medicare for the elderly, but we also have Medicaid for people in poverty ( Someone taken out of the workforce may qualify for that if they don’t already qualify for disability insurance or similar payments (although I’m not 100% clear if those are funded via private disability insurance or public programs)

Medicaid is not at all comparable to Medicare.

First, Medicare pays a lot more to healthcare providers than Medicaid. Medicare pays more for more medications than Medicaid, and has fewer prior authorization requirements for those medicines. Fewer providers will accept Medicaid, and people using Medicaid will receive less or worse healthcare than those in Medicare.

Second, Medicaid is administered by each state, and there is a lot of variability on how easy the state makes it so people can actually get healthcare. Lots of states straight up refuse money simply to punish people of a certain socioeconomic class because it happens to win votes.

Bottom line, Medicaid is so leaders can claim they are helping poor people get healthcare AND keep taxes low. Medicare is for actually delivering healthcare to people because that contingent makes up a huge proportion of votes.

And yes, even Medicare is not delivering all healthcare, as it has multiple tiers to deliver differing amounts of healthcare to different socioeconomic classes.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#148

Post by dghughes »

mabbo wrote: post #39

What I find interesting when comparing the US the Canada on topics like these is that in Canada, there is self-interest in demanding workers be protected. Like beyond the fact that it's a good thing you do. Because we have a public health care system, funded by taxes, having a large number of young men out of the work force (not paying taxes) and using the health care system effectively means my taxes, everyone's tax…

Then again my Dad who died of a lung disease said the government agency (Coast Guard) he worked for turned a blind eye to what he and his co-workers had to do. Dad would tell me even as the late 1990s his job was to take a powder, wet it, form it into big mats. They were filters for the boiler water. The powder used was or maybe just contained asbestos. He said the workers on the dock were covered in it he said the place looked like it had snowed.

Dad knew but he was stuck in the past of "It had to be done" mentality. And really as a high school drop out he really may not have understood the danger. For years he and my grandfather had a painting business with the paint at that time containing lead.

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#149

Post by frozenport »

mabbo wrote: post #39

What I find interesting when comparing the US the Canada on topics like these is that in Canada, there is self-interest in demanding workers be protected. Like beyond the fact that it's a good thing you do. Because we have a public health care system, funded by taxes, having a large number of young men out of the work force (not paying taxes) and using the health care system effectively means my taxes, everyone's tax…

Does Canada have a different policy on engineered stone?

Re: Workers who cut countertops are dying of silicosis

#150

Post by Robotbeat »

city41 wrote: post #142
charles_f wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah absolutely, but being a shareholder in there? I mean it's always easy to judge people whose context you don't know, but I think you can draw a line and this is past it

We can still draw those lines today, but mostly ignore them. Such as the nets around Foxconn factories, slave labor used to create chocolate, lithium mining, etc. Not nearly as dramatic as what those copper mine workers went through, but still quite bad.

We mine vastly more copper, coal, etc than lithium.
Post reply on HN