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Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

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Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#41

Post by foxyv »

vuln wrote: post #28
jackphilson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this just generalizes to the recurring problem of individualism vs collectivism. Government regulation is the answer, but it's not being applied efficiently here

> Government regulation is the answer, but it's not being applied efficiently here Do you have any examples of Government Regulations that are applied efficiently and do not cause harm to any individuals?

> and do not cause harm to any individuals

You're moving the bar a little there. There will always be harm to individuals due to the law of unintended consequences. However, government regulation is really good at preventing a "Tragedy of the Commons."

For instance, regulations on CFC emissions hurt a lot of individuals. However, they prevented a much greater tragedy.

Removing lead from car exhaust marginally hurt an entire generation, while improving the lives of the next by orders of magnitude.

Other examples: Building codes, Car Safety, Fair Labor Standards Act, Food and Drug Regulations.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#42

Post by gotoeleven »

ummonk wrote: post #29
anonporridge wrote: post #17

This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…

Another example is how many people advocated for (and how many countries essentially adopted) letting covid spread throughout the population (either like wildfire or via "flatten the curve") to get natural herd immunity because letting a poorly understood (but known to be quite deadly) virus spread through the population was doable but giving out vaccines that hadn't been through phase 2 trials wasn't.

[flagged]

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#43

Post by everythingfine »

I'd like to point out that this problem can technically be solved by a well-meaning arsonist who's willing to break the law. Simply send a public message to fire departments naming the date and location that a forest fire will start, let the fire departments prepare like they would for a controlled burn, and then set off the blaze. There's some difficulty involved with establishing sufficient credibility for this to work, but it's a weird case where illegal action can accomplish things that operating within the legal system cannot.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#44

Post by thanatos519 »

anoncow wrote: post #34
motohagiography wrote: post #18

This 'controlled burn' issue is a general principle in risk management as well, where you respond to minor issues so as to not let them pile up into a tinderbox inferno. Risk aversion isn't prudent, ethical, or professional either. It's a source of false conflict whose purpose is to centralize the objector so that they can direct and manage a proposed change. This is from someone who has been working in security for…

I think the equivalent analogy here is to prevent a big issue from occurring, management creates small issues that it can control. Or do I have it wrong? If you handle small issues, it’s similar to handling small fires and not letting the small fires eat away at a certain portion of the forest.

Right. The small issues are minor outages causing customer inconvenience and/or lost revenue. The big issues are major pwnage and loss of everything because you were afraid of causing small issues while fixing things.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#45

Post by throwaway22032 »

ummonk wrote: post #29
anonporridge wrote: post #17

This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…

Another example is how many people advocated for (and how many countries essentially adopted) letting covid spread throughout the population (either like wildfire or via "flatten the curve") to get natural herd immunity because letting a poorly understood (but known to be quite deadly) virus spread through the population was doable but giving out vaccines that hadn't been through phase 2 trials wasn't.

I mean, if anything, it was the other way around.

We could point to death statistics and say "hey, that's provable harm".

But quantifying the loss of quality of life from spending a year indoors, screwing the labour market and supply chain, messing up kids' socialization etc was harder, so we mostly just kind of ignored it.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#46

Post by anonporridge »

hcurtiss wrote: post #39
jackphilson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this just generalizes to the recurring problem of individualism vs collectivism. Government regulation is the answer, but it's not being applied efficiently here

I don't think that's it. I think it's more a consequence of democracy versus autocracy. An autocracy could make these trade-offs without political consequence. Of course, autocracies come with other profound challenges. Most I think agree that a benevolent dictator produces the best outcomes. The problem is that human benevolence is fickle, and subject to interpretation -- invariably leading to violence.

I think this does hit something.

There's a reason by China is having no problem rolling out high speed rail across the entire country on the order of a decade while California can't even roll out a single line in the same time.

China can just bulldoze entire villages while the little people have no recourse to resist. That power is incredibly useful for getting things done, but the big problem of succession makes that level of power incredibly dangerous, fickle, and fragile.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#47

Post by ncallaway »

anonporridge wrote: post #17

This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…

I think this is a good diagnosis of some of our issues, but it’s a really hard problem.

When we go the other way, and allow actions that harm people, we have an unfortunate tendency to allow those harms to fall… extremely disproportionately on those with the least burden to bear the harms and the least power to be compensated for those harms.

I think, as the other poster noted it really comes down to the individualistic nature in which we try and address some of these collective action problems. We need to acknowledge that the solutions will cause less overall harm than not implementing them, but also recognize that the harms from the solutions may fall unevenly, and find ways to socialize the damage those solutions cause, rather than leave that damage on the powerless.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#48

Post by cbsmith »

anonporridge wrote: post #17

This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…

Basically, the legal equivalent to the trolley problem. Worth noting that there are solutions in our legal code for this. Good Samaritan laws would be a good example.

However, even in a world without such countermeasures, if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing, it stands to reason that simply paying the price for the negative externalities would still be logical and it would have the advantage that those negatively impacted by those externalities would not feel like they are disproportionately bearing the burden of the action.

> But if you get treatment and the doctors make a mistake and their actions cause some unintended harm, then there's someone to blame and sue, even if your statistical outcome was drastically improved by their intervention.

Doctors still have a lot of cover, even if they make a mistake, for exactly that reason. The real challenge for doctors is the difficulty preventing the litigation itself. Even if they win in court, the consequences of being subject to so many lawsuits are dramatic.

> The same problem is going to exist trying to mitigate climate change. Positive actions to reverse the problem will create negative externalities that hurt some people, but doing nothing will be drastically worse.

I think the bigger problem is that mitigating climate change will necessarily change the winners and losers, and the current winners have more power than the current losers.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#49

Post by markusde »

everythingfine wrote: post #43

I'd like to point out that this problem can technically be solved by a well-meaning arsonist who's willing to break the law. Simply send a public message to fire departments naming the date and location that a forest fire will start, let the fire departments prepare like they would for a controlled burn, and then set off the blaze. There's some difficulty involved with establishing sufficient credibility for this to…

An extremely brief google search tells me that controlled burns require firebreaks, knowledge of the wind patterns (something called a downwind backfire?) and presumably continued monitoring/support from firefighters to actually be a controlled burn over the area that needs it.

I think what you're describing is a total fantasy.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#50

Post by c54 »

vuln wrote: post #28
jackphilson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this just generalizes to the recurring problem of individualism vs collectivism. Government regulation is the answer, but it's not being applied efficiently here

> Government regulation is the answer, but it's not being applied efficiently here Do you have any examples of Government Regulations that are applied efficiently and do not cause harm to any individuals?

Social security (has flaws but basically solved the widespread pre social security problem of poverty amongst the elderly)

Food safety, leaded gas and paint, restricted chemicals lists (for safety reason, less of a fan of drug bans).

Bank deposit reserve requirements. Obamacare. Antitrust legislation.

Seat belts (extremely controversial at the time, people protested the loss of their freedoms etc etc).

Alaska’s Permanent Fund. Norway’s government pension fund.

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