U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#51

Post by andrewflnr » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

randerson wrote: post #13

pixl97 wrote: post #4

Save lives?: X Increase safety?: X Make more money?: YES The USCSB makes life safer for everyone in this country, especially people that work around potentially dangerous chemicals and pressurized equipment.

It's always a matter of time before a facility explodes for preventable reasons and costs the company billions in property damage and lawsuits. This decision to stop learning from mistakes and spreading awareness will hurt profits in the long run, not make more money. It'll also be harder to find people willing to work around chemicals if they can't trust the safety measures.

Funny as it sounds, the real problem (or at least one of them) is that no one cares about long run profits anymore.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#52

Post by rectang » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

haiku2077 wrote: post #45

rectang wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels that way, but this legislation is ideologically consistent with reducing regulations which constrain companies and force them to take the externalities of their actions into account.

The CSB is not a regulatory agency. It doesn't enforce anything against companies. It investigates major disasters and publishes recommendations. It's like the NTSB but for industries that use hazardous chemicals.

I still think it's ideologically consistent with insulating companies from externalities. Without official investigations, companies can assert their own interpretations of events. Boeing did this with the NTSB recently:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/boeing-punished-by-ntsb-fo...

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#53

Post by smadge » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:45 AM UTC

nerdsniper wrote: post #44

drjolly wrote: post #16

I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. Companies can prioritize profits over people again. Yeah, dump in the rivers, dump in the woods, just drive around in circles dumping in an empty lot. You don’t need masks- give everyone cancer and blow some shit up, maybe get some acid burns. Super-fund sites? When was the last one we had anyway- we need more of ‘em- lot…

I wrote elsewhere: > Please note that the CSB is not an enforcement agency - they don’t assign fault or levee fines or bring any charges or write any regulation.

What knowledge are you trying to impart with this fact?

Do CSB recommendations inform policy? Do CSB recommendations get implemented? Do CSB recommendations when implemented increase safety?

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#54

Post by tehwebguy » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:45 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #33

drjolly wrote: post #16

I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. Companies can prioritize profits over people again. Yeah, dump in the rivers, dump in the woods, just drive around in circles dumping in an empty lot. You don’t need masks- give everyone cancer and blow some shit up, maybe get some acid burns. Super-fund sites? When was the last one we had anyway- we need more of ‘em- lot…

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Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#55

Post by vharuck » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:46 AM UTC

qmatch wrote: post #24

api wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population thing is pretty elementary. If population is flat to declining, then growth is demand constrained. There are some areas where you could uncap growth by cutting regulation, but they're not this. The #1 one I'm aware of is housing construction in high cost metros.

I see your point, but not totally buying it. The US innovates for a global population, one that’s still growing. The best way to infer causality is through experimentation. If regulation does go away, we’ll measure and learn if it actually worked.

>We’ll measure and learn if it actually worked.

I don't believe that will happen, and I base that belief on all my decades of watching American politics. Bureaucrats may do this (I personally work with ones who do), but politicians generally do not. And the current administration definitely does not care about actual numbers.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#56

Post by okanat » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:46 AM UTC

kumarvvr wrote: post #17

It is highly surprising that the narrative in the US has morphed the expenses on public institutions of enormous importance, into wastage , something that has to be cut or eliminated. Why is it that no one is pointing out the contribution of these institutions to the US and the world? The US, has a society, has grown so materialistic, that they fail to see anything beyond money. Somethings cannot be measured by money…

Nothing surprising there. The US-led social media finally achived its biggest success. It made weaponized ignorance viable at an enormous scale.

Not just in the US but all over the world. The fight now is anybody with some critical thought ability vs willfully and violently ignorant. The former is getting fewer in the numbers and the latter is out for blood. We need to be very efficient to disarm and passivize the violent ignorants otherwise they will slowly kill us and the humanity.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#57

Post by delfinom » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:47 AM UTC

da_chicken wrote: post #14

api wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't actually save any money or make anyone much more money. It's just a result of mindlessly fetishizing the past and misattributing past periods of rapid industrial growth to lack of regulation. The real cause was rapid population growth at the time, war, and extremely rapid adoption of bedrock industrial age technologies like electricity. Today we have a fully deployed modern inf…

Yeah it turns out when Europe is a giant crater and the rest of world hasn't figured out electricity quite yet that your massive industrial capacity can be a bit of a boon. Especially when you loan out a bunch of money to Europe so they can buy all your stuff! Wow! Having over 50% of the world's industrial capacity when the world just spent 7 years on fire and everyone needs new everything means it's a bit of a selle…

Yep, all these baby booomers lucked the fuck out being born in an era where the entire world needed the US after WW2. But over time the rest of the world slowly recovered and suddenly US goods became overpriced.

I blame much of the current US economy on the shenanigans of baby boomers and their parents. Who after having a booming economy for 3 decades, needed to quickly financial engineer themselves out of their infinite growth pension hole.

So what did they do? They started offshoring to compensate for the big mismatch in domestic debt financing and actual domestic wealth creation.

While they were doing they, they put the pedal to the metal on wealth inequality as those already with excessive wealth could leverage themselves to the tits to buy up the competition.

The problem is, alot of this is the net result at the macro scale and there were many independent decisions that led to everything.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#58

Post by vjvjvjvjghv » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:47 AM UTC

haiku2077 wrote: post #45

rectang wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels that way, but this legislation is ideologically consistent with reducing regulations which constrain companies and force them to take the externalities of their actions into account.

The CSB is not a regulatory agency. It doesn't enforce anything against companies. It investigates major disasters and publishes recommendations. It's like the NTSB but for industries that use hazardous chemicals.

Just the knowledge about chemical risks is a threat to profits.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#59

Post by gosub100 » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:47 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #30

pixl97 wrote: post #4

Save lives?: X Increase safety?: X Make more money?: YES The USCSB makes life safer for everyone in this country, especially people that work around potentially dangerous chemicals and pressurized equipment.

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Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#60

Post by rectang » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:47 AM UTC

nerdsniper wrote: post #44

drjolly wrote: post #16

I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. Companies can prioritize profits over people again. Yeah, dump in the rivers, dump in the woods, just drive around in circles dumping in an empty lot. You don’t need masks- give everyone cancer and blow some shit up, maybe get some acid burns. Super-fund sites? When was the last one we had anyway- we need more of ‘em- lot…

I wrote elsewhere: > Please note that the CSB is not an enforcement agency - they don’t assign fault or levee fines or bring any charges or write any regulation.

CSB investigations still represent an objective source of truth which competes with the PR that companies put out absolving themselves of blame in the event of any mishap. Removing the CSB frees up companies to "self-regulate" and blast out bogus framings.