#regulations are written in blood

[angryraptor13]

Fantastic. These morons will be running scream tests on EVERY SAFETY REGULATION WE HAVE.

Expert agencies and elected legislatures

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/21/policy-based-evidence/#decisions-decisions

Since Trump hijacked the Supreme Court, his backers have achieved many of their policy priorities: legalizing bribery, formalizing forced birth, and – with the Loper Bright case, neutering the expert agencies that regulate business:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/scotus-decisions-chevron-immunity-loper

What the Supreme Court began, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are now poised to finish, through the "Department of Government Efficiency," a fake agency whose acronym ("DOGE") continues Musk's long-running cryptocurrency memecoin pump-and-dump. The new department is absurd – imagine a department devoted to "efficiency" with two co-equal leaders who are both famously incapable of getting along with anyone – but that doesn't make it any less dangerous.

Expert agencies are often all that stands between us and extreme misadventure, even death. The modern world is full of modern questions, the kinds of questions that require a high degree of expert knowledge to answer, but also the kinds of questions whose answers you'd better get right.

You're not stupid, nor are you foolish. You could go and learn everything you need to know to evaluate the firmware on your antilock brakes and decide whether to trust them. You could figure out how to assess the Common Core curriculum for pedagogical soundness. You could learn the material science needed to evaluate the soundness of the joists that hold the roof up over your head. You could acquire the biology and chemistry chops to decide whether you want to trust produce that's been treated with Monsanto's Roundup pesticides. You could do the same for cell biology, virology, and epidemiology and decide whether to wear a mask and/or get an MRNA vaccine and/or buy a HEPA filter.

You could do any of these. You might even be able to do two or three of them. But you can't do all of them, and that list is just a small slice of all the highly technical questions that stand between you and misery or an early grave. Practically speaking, you aren't going to develop your own robust meatpacking hygiene standards, nor your own water treatment program, nor your own Boeing 737 MAX inspection protocol.

Markets don't solve this either. If they did, we wouldn't have to worry about chunks of Boeing jets falling on our heads. The reason we have agencies like the FDA (and enabling legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Act) is that markets failed to keep people from being murdered by profit-seeking snake-oil salesmen and radium suppository peddlers.

These vital questions need to be answered by experts, but that's easier said than done. After all, experts disagree about this stuff. Shortcuts for evaluating these disagreements ("distrust any expert whose employer has a stake in a technical question") are crude and often lead you astray. If you dismiss any expert employed by a firm that wants to bring a new product to market, you will lose out on the expertise of people who are so legitimately excited about the potential improvements of an idea that they quit their jobs and go to work for whomever has the best chance of realizing a product based on it. Sure, that doctor who works for a company with a new cancer cure might just be shilling for a big bonus – but maybe they joined the company because they have an informed, truthful belief that the new drug might really cure cancer.

What's more, the scientific method itself speaks against the idea of there being one, permanent answer to any big question. The method is designed as a process of continual refinement, where new evidence is continuously brought forward and evaluated, and where cherished ideas that are invalidated by new evidence are discarded and replaced with new ideas.

So how are we to survive and thrive in a world of questions we ourselves can't answer, that experts disagree about, and whose answers are only ever provisional?

The scientific method has an answer for this, too: refereed, adversarial peer review. The editors of major journals act as umpires in disputes among experts, exercising their editorial discernment to decide which questions are sufficiently in flux as to warrant taking up, then asking parties who disagree with a novel idea to do their damndest to punch holes in it. This process is by no means perfect, but, like democracy, it's the worst form of knowledge creation except for all others which have been tried.

Expert regulators bring this method to governance. They seek comment on technical matters of public concern, propose regulations based on them, invite all parties to comment on these regulations, weigh the evidence, and then pass a rule. This doesn't always get it right, but when it does work, your medicine doesn't poison you, the bridge doesn't collapse as you drive over it, and your airplane doesn't fall out of the sky.

Expert regulators work with legislators to provide an empirical basis for turning political choices into empirically grounded policies. Think of all the times you've heard about how the gerontocracy that dominates the House and the Senate is incapable of making good internet policy because "they're out of touch and don't understand technology." Even if this is true (and sometimes it is, as when Sen Ted Stevens ranted about the internet being "a series of tubes," not "a dump truck"), that doesn't mean that Congress can't make good internet policy.

After all, most Americans can safely drink their tap water, a novelty in human civilization, whose history amounts to short periods of thriving shattered at regular intervals by water-borne plagues. The fact that most of us can safely drink our water, but people who live in Flint (or remote indigenous reservations, or Louisiana's Cancer Alley) can't tells you that these neighbors of ours are being deliberately poisoned, as we know precisely how not to poison them.

How did we (most of us) get to the point where we can drink the water without shitting our guts out? It wasn't because we elected a bunch of water scientists! I don't know the precise number of microbiologists and water experts who've been elected to either house, but it's very small, and their contribution to good sanitation policy is negligible.

We got there by delegating these decisions to expert agencies. Congress formulates a political policy ("make the water safe") and the expert agency turns that policy into a technical program of regulation and enforcement, and your children live to drink another glass of water tomorrow.

Musk and Ramaswamy have set out to destroy this process. In their Wall Street Journal editorial, they explain that expert regulation is "undemocratic" because experts aren't elected:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/musk-and-ramaswamy-the-doge-plan-to-reform-government-supreme-court-guidance-end-executive-power-grab-fa51c020

They've vowed to remove "thousands" of regulations, and to fire swathes of federal employees who are in charge of enforcing whatever remains:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24301975/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-doge-plan

And all this is meant to take place on an accelerated timeline, between now and July 4, 2026 – a timeline that precludes any meaningful assessment of the likely consequences of abolishing the regulations they'll get rid of.

"Chesterton's Fence" – a thought experiment from the novelist GK Chesterton – is instructive here:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

A regulation that works might well produce no visible sign that it's working. If your water purification system works, everything is fine. It's only when you get rid of the sanitation system that you discover why it was there in the first place, a realization that might well arrive as you expire in a slick of watery stool with a rectum so prolapsed the survivors can use it as a handle when they drag your corpse to the mass burial pits.

When Musk and Ramaswamy decry the influence of "unelected bureaucrats" on your life as "undemocratic," they sound reasonable. If unelected bureaucrats were permitted to set policy without democratic instruction or oversight, that would be autocracy.

Indeed, it would resemble life on the Tesla factory floor: that most autocratic of institutions, where you are at the mercy of the unelected and unqualified CEO of Tesla, who holds the purely ceremonial title of "Chief Engineer" and who paid the company's true founders to falsely describe him as its founder.

But that's not how it works! At its best, expert regulations turns political choices in to policy that reflects the will of democratically accountable, elected representatives. Sometimes this fails, and when it does, the answer is to fix the system – not abolish it.

I have a favorite example of this politics/empiricism fusion. It comes from the UK, where, in 2008, the eminent psychopharmacologist David Nutt was appointed as the "drug czar" to the government. Parliament had determined to overhaul its system of drug classification, and they wanted expert advice:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

To provide this advice, Nutt convened a panel of drug experts from different disciplines and asked them to rate each drug in question on how dangerous it was for its user; for its user's family; and for broader society. These rankings were averaged, and then a statistical model was used to determine which drugs were always very dangerous, no matter which group's safety you prioritized, and which drugs were never very dangerous, no matter which group you prioritized.

Empirically, the "always dangerous" drugs should be in the most restricted category. The "never very dangerous" drugs should be at the other end of the scale. Parliament had asked how to rank drugs by their danger, and for these categories, there were clear, factual answers to Parliament's question.

But there were many drugs that didn't always belong in either category: drugs whose danger score changed dramatically based on whether you were more concerned about individual harms, familial harms, or societal harms. This prioritization has no empirical basis: it's a purely political question.

So Nutt and his panel said to Parliament, "Tell us which of these priorities matter the most to you, and we will tell you where these changeable drugs belong in your schedule of restricted substances." In other words, politicians make political determinations, and then experts turn those choices into empirically supported policies.

This is how policy by "unelected bureaucrats" can still be "democratic."

But the Nutt story doesn't end there. Nutt butted heads with politicians, who kept insisting that he retract factual, evidence-supported statements (like "alcohol is more harmful than cannabis"). Nutt refused to do so. It wasn't that he was telling politicians which decisions to make, but he took it as his duty to point out when those decisions did not reflect the policies they were said to be in support of. Eventually, Nutt was fired for his commitment to empirical truth. The UK press dubbed this "The Nutt Sack Affair" and you can read all about it in Nutt's superb book Drugs Without the Hot Air, an indispensable primer on the drug war and its many harms:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/drugs-without-the-hot-air-9780857844989/

Congress can't make these decisions. We don't elect enough water experts, virologists, geologists, oncology researchers, structural engineers, aerospace safety experts, pedagogists, gerontoloists, physicists and other experts for Congress to turn its political choices into policy. Mostly, we elect lawyers. Lawyers can do many things, but if you ask a lawyer to tell you how to make your drinking water safe, you will likely die a horrible death.

That's the point. The idea that we should just trust the market to figure this out, or that all regulation should be expressly written into law, is just a way of saying, "you will likely die a horrible death."

Trump – and his hatchet men Musk and Ramaswamy – are not setting out to create evidence-based policy. They are pursuing policy-based evidence, firing everyone capable of telling them how to turn the values espouse (prosperity and safety for all Americans) into policy.

They dress this up in the language of democracy, but the destruction of the expert agencies that turn the political will of our representatives into our daily lives is anything but democratic. It's a prelude to transforming the nation into a land of epistemological chaos, where you never know what's coming out of your faucet.

[lucasdoesnotcare]

Well, the titan "submarine" is your local fucking reminder that "Regulations are written in blood" Is NOT a just a fucking saying or just a fucking joke.

[arctic-hands]

[Image Description: an excerpt from the Wikipedia article 2023 Titan Submersible Incident, focusing on the following, starting in the middle of one paragraph, "only certified to reach a depth of one thousand five hundred meters, a third of the depth required to reach the Titanic. OceanGate, which was suing him for allegedly disclosing confidential information, and the two parties settled the lawsuit a few months later." Followed by the next paragraph: "The following year, an article published in Smithsonian magazine referred to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush as a "daredevil inventor".[21] In the article, Rush is described as having said the U.S. Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993 "needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation".[21][22]" End I.D.]

Alright bro. Rest In Saltwater, I guess

[angryraptor13]

Regulations are written in blood.

[autisticbisexualsokka]

Remember:

A regulator restrains the powerful to protect the community.

A cop restrains the community to protect the powerful.

[batcavescolony]

"Why do the kids in the show know everything about Greek Myths"

Well idk if I was told my parent was a Greek God and that put a target on my back for Monsters/Titans/Other God's to use to kill me, I'd learn everything I can! To Demigod's myths are lists of ways they could die, so it's in their best interest to learn them.

[marzipanandminutiae]

The newest video from lab muffin beauty science seems like exactly up the alley of someone with your crusade for fact-checking. It was a wild ride of enlightenment, highly recommend.

Oh this is REALLY interesting. Thanks for the recommendation!

I first noticed the benzoyl peroxide scare when someone mentioned it in a post I made about the Radium Girls story inducing "what are they hiding from us now?!" anxiety, and I looked it up. I don't use any products with that ingredient at the moment, but it seemed worth checking into. And despite me not being a scientist, the fact that the benzene levels they cited showed up at VERY high temperatures seemed...off. Like how frequently are the products ever at those temperatures? "Maybe in a hot car?" I thought, but still wondered how often acne cream is left in a car in Australian high summer for that long.

And hey- the history professional with little chemistry knowledge was right! Seems like even ordinary laypeople can see the issue here if they just read the study even a little bit.

But because humans respond more to dramatic headlines- and, not going to lie, because we've been primed to believe in this by companies CONSTANTLY doing it for real throughout history with heavy metal dyes, radium, tobacco products, asbestos, fossil fuels, PFAs, etc. -you get "we're all rubbing cancer on our faces!!!!" reactions.

Really highlights the need for a balance between watching companies like hawks because they've proven that they will kill us if it pads their bottom line, and not falling for junk science.

[amaditalks]

To the specific question, OSHA regulations are the exact opposite of cop behavior as we understand that the purpose of cops is to protect capital and property. 

I’m still thinking about that “is OSHA regulations Cop Behavior” post. Like. You know who thinks regulations are for losers? People who build submersibles out of logitech gamepads and rejected carbon fibre. People who trust starlink as their only surface lifeline.

Do you wanna be like the fine film on the floor of the Atlantic that was once a billionaire? Is that the hill you���re really gonna die on?

We have an expression in my field- “Regulations Are Written In Blood”

People don’t have fucking safety standards as a power trip, we have them because somewhere in the past, NOT having those regulations killed or maimed someone.

A lot of laws out there are bullshit- safety regulations sure as fuck aren’t. I have the literal scars to prove it.

[elieclown]

Good evening current mouthwashing thought is how there’s going to be new space-faring regulations put in place with the blood of the pony express crew.

[orange-orchard-system]

Thinking about how people think retail work is "easy", the idea that "unskilled labor is a myth", and some discussion/discourse I've seen about workers preferring to do sex work over retail. And I think many people just don't realize that retail work has a physical danger to it – and no, not just from other people.

Exactly what people do in their jobs will vary depending on the business, but as for me? I work with sharp metal and plastic at high speeds. Heavy objects could be dropped directly onto my head if I'm not extremely careful, and even then, all it takes is a slip of the hand. Due to our refrigerators and freezers, I am jumping between temperatures several hundred times a day, which leaves my body suffering from the whiplash. I am thankful to have a manager that enforces breaks, but my job takes a toll on me even on the mildest of work days. I could get seriously hurt, and a lot is already being asked of me.

"Retail/fast food/etc. is unskilled labor –" okay but I am not selling expert labor to you, I am selling my well-being. I am being paid to do not just the things you don't or can't do, but to damage and risk my body and overall health in these specific ways so that your day might be a little better.

And honestly, I'd be fine with that, if I got some recognition for it (in both pay and general attitude). I am fine with a little risk and damage so long as it's for proper compensation – I don't view this work as demeaning by nature, and I take pride in my skill at doing it. It's just that I wished others around me cared more about this side of my job.

On a similar note, restaurant/fast food/etc. workers are not just being paid to make and bring out your food. They are being paid to risk oil burns, regular burns, scaldings, being stabbed or sliced, their hands being mangled by equipment, their fingers being crushed by machinery, any number of diseases that food can carry before it's prepared, and death if something goes wrong with the gas. All for your convenience.

It doesn't matter if it's unskilled, or if "anyone can do it". A good salary is one that takes into account what one is sacrificing and risking to complete this job. It takes into account the damage to one's body and the everyday dangers they are in. Salary is, as people know, payment for energy and time, but it is also a reimbursement for the expense of putting oneself in harm's way, and a person's salary should reflect that.

This isn't meant to shame customers. I think it'd be a little silly to shame people for taking on my services when I am well aware of the risks in them (although I acknowledge that gets complicated when people have to take these kinds of jobs regardless of the risks, due to desperately needing money). It's more of a perspective I don't see others talk about often. Even before factoring in shitty bosses, crappy work environments, and the like, these sorts of jobs have dangers and cause damages that should be acknowledged. And people should be properly compensated for taking them on.

[tricornonthecob]

What's insane to me is all the people who benefited from child labor laws are the ones insisting on rolling back the regulations. "Teenager gets pulled into a deboning machine" sounds like something straight out of Upton Sinclair's writings (which, I grant you, The Jungle was a work of fiction, but it was based heavily on what he saw.) So they're either willfilly ignoring the past (most likely,) are slightly sadistic (also possible,) or fucking illiterate, or all three.

Source

Source

[all-thestories-aretrue]

Soooooo I wrote this incredibly self-indulgent thing about Miles. I have many feelings about how he keeps himself so tightly in control. It's gotta go somewhere.

Disclaimer it's quite dark, so mind the trigger warning and keep yourself safe <3

TW: self-harm, not what I would consider graphic descriptions, but it is the central theme and way more than a mention

The lock clicks. He slips his suit jacket off. Loosens then removes his tie. Untucked, buttons undone. It’s all laid out on the bed. Step by step. Shoes set to the side and trousers swapped for silken pajama pants.

The bathroom door closes behind him. The second lock between him and the world. The shower comes on. Towel laid out on the counter.

His drawer, second down on the left. He pulls out the small black bag. Gold zipper. Supple leather. Inside, his collection. Three packs of new razor blades. An open pack of blades; used ones tucked into the back. A single hypodermic needle. A crafting knife. Two unopened band aids.

The rest of the drawer’s contents is ignored, antiseptic and suture kits, butterfly closures and rolls of gauze, in favor of practiced hands sliding the tin of blades from the bag and the blade from the tin.

He sits on the toilet, lid down. Elbow straight. Fist clenched. The first slice with a small inhale. Bright and sharp and stinging. Familiar and comforting. Line after line as red blooms from the wounds. The ecstasy second only to the Kiss. Rivulets follow gravity down. Strategically placed tissues catch the mess.

Stained crimson, they fall into the waste basket. He flexes his wrist, testing the pull of the broken skin, blots the last of the blood away. Blade inspected and stowed; everything returned to it’s place. Pajamas folded on top of the toilet, he steps into the shower.

[yawningvoidofbordem]

dude american politics are so fucked rn, elon musk is literally getting put in charge of a new thing called “DOGE” that aims to deregulate everything and cut a bunch of government program’s funding

[eyeofnewtblog]

Things that happen at work:

So, we have quite a few CDLA drivers at my company that are legal immigrants from various parts of Africa and the Middle East, as well as a significant number of legal immigrants from South America and the Caribbean.

I honestly think it’s just…so freaking impressive that someone who speaks two or more languages looked at their career options and decided “least amount of effort for relatively good pay” and chose driving.

Because honestly, if you can exist in a state where you just react in the safest way possible to other drivers being absolutely moronic, instead of being emotionally invested in the road (ie road rage) that is LEGIT impressive.

Also? Driving professionally is actually hard because of all the regulations that need to be followed? You need to literally be a bunny ears lawyer about regulations, on top of dealing with faulty ELD systems and equipment (gps tracking systems that record drive time so that drivers cannot fake paper logs) PLUS being able to pass a DOT inspection on the fly? You basically have to be able to give your self a State Trooper inspection every time you get in any vehicle that can haul more than a mattress strapped to the roof.

I really, genuinely like the people I work with, but I don’t know how much longer I can tolerate the industry.

[dammitradar]

Having just listened to a podcast episode about the topic of how medieval clergy came up with instructions on what kind of sex was and wasn’t okay, I can say that you’re exactly right!

Priests would write down what people confessed to and based their shalls and shall nots based on what people shared.

The episode is titled “What Was Sex Like In Medieval Times?” from Betwixt the Sheets

Wait holy shit that's 1) incredibly fascinating and 2) deeply funny to me, can you imagine the next edition of the Examination of Conscience comes out and whatever deeply specific embarrassing thing you confessed last month just happens to be on it 😳