[HN Gopher] Plan to incinerate soil from Ohio train derailment i...
___________________________________________________________________
Plan to incinerate soil from Ohio train derailment is 'horrifying',
says expert
Author : webmaven
Score : 148 points
Date : 2023-03-04 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| slackdog wrote:
| On one hand, incineration is the only reasonable method of
| destroying these kind of compounds. Properly run incineration
| plants burn the waste so hot that everything is atomized which is
| exactly what you want. Break the molecular bonds to break down
| those toxic compounds.
|
| On the other hand, I understand the negative reactions. Burning
| trash has never _seemed_ pleasant, and in this case particularly
| I can see how it might sound to a person in that community; the
| government _again_ trying to 'solve' the problem by lighting it
| on fire. Is that their solution to everything? Bridge is in
| disrepair? Incinerate the bridge. Bear on the loose? Incinerate
| the bear. An orphan got lost in the park? Incinerate the orphan.
| Is fire their solution to everything? Well in this case, fire
| _really is_ the solution. But public perception is a reality that
| needs to be considered.
|
| Anyway, this whole affair is being made much worse by politicians
| listening to the experts and being tone deaf to public
| perception. A little bit more performative care would go a long
| way to making the public feel as though their problems aren't
| being brushed under the rug. Biden should have visited that town
| weeks ago.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Break the molecular bonds to break down those toxic
| compounds.
|
| The problem is that there is less than zero trust that the
| government will do anything other than the equivalent of piling
| it in the middle of the city and chucking a match at it. This
| situation is the result of myriad failures ranging from complex
| to "basic safety", a result of greed, and there's zero reason
| to assume the followup response will be any different.
|
| Benefit of the doubt is hard-earned and easily lost.
| gruez wrote:
| >The problem is that there is less than zero trust that the
| government will do anything other than the equivalent of
| piling it in the middle of the city and chucking a match at
| it. This situation is the result of myriad failures ranging
| from complex to "basic safety", a result of greed, and
| there's zero reason to assume the followup response will be
| any different.
|
| Can't you make this argument for any sort of cleanup effort?
| If so, what should we do? Not do any sort of cleanup?
| corbulo wrote:
| "BURN THE SOIL" they say...
|
| We live in a meme world.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > The new plan is "horrifying", said Kyla Bennett, a former
| Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official now with the
| Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
|
| But as a former EPA official, what does she suggest instead? Is
| there some other kind of chemical process to remove dioxins.
| jws wrote:
| Burning random manufactured stuff makes dioxins. It would be
| astonishing if there weren't dioxins in the soil before the
| accident and some more after it.
|
| This being the rural United States, burn barrels for household
| waste were a thing for most of a century and spewed dioxin and a
| lot of other stuff all over the place. You can find lots of
| studies for background levels of dioxin.
|
| It isn't a binary "Is there dioxin?" There certainly is. The
| question is, is it elevated above background? Is it elevated
| about established safe levels? If you run it through that nearby
| incinerator, will the dispersed plume raise land above acceptable
| levels?
|
| The EPA has experience with dioxin sites and incineration. They
| bought a town of 800 people, demolished everything, hauled all
| the surface dirt to a site-built incinerator and over the course
| of a year incinerated everything and built a mound out of it. The
| locals were vocally aggrieved that the incineration was done near
| them. Its now a nice park for bicycle riding on flat land by a
| river.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| https://www.clu-in.org/contaminantfocus/default2.focus/sec/D...
|
| > Incineration at temperatures above 1200degC is considered the
| most effective way of destroying dioxins.
|
| Though "Thermal desorption, which operates at lower temperature
| range to vaporize dioxins, is also commonly used." Which
| wouldn't be good in terms of distribution of the dioxins into
| the air and throughout the environment, unless they concentrate
| and destroy the liberated dioxins
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_desorption ).
|
| So regardless of the history of clean air violations, the
| important thing for dioxins in particular are the heat of this
| incinerator, whether that heat is evenly distributed throughout
| the burn mass, and whether the incineration is fully enclosed
| until it is finished.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You refer to Times Beach, I assume? Note that "over the course
| of a year" commenced eight years after the disaster.
| jws wrote:
| Yes, for those unfamiliar, the city used to contract to have
| waste oil sprayed on the unpaved streets to keep the dust
| down. (Hush Children of Summer, it was the 1960s and 70s, it
| seemed like a good idea at the time.) In 1972 their
| contractor sprayed dioxin contaminated oil, possibly
| unbeknownst to him and the people who paid him to take the
| waste oil, but he wasn't being all that careful. Again its
| the 1970s, the EPA was two years old, the Crying Indian ad
| had just come out, trying to get people to carry a litter bag
| in their 8mpg car instead of chucking their beer cans and
| bottles out the window was the big thing. You wouldn't walk
| barefoot in a park because of all the pull tabs discarded on
| the ground. Dioxin is not known to cause problems in humans
| at this point, though animal studies suggest it could be a
| thing. No one has studied it.
|
| Meanwhile, 10 years pass, the EPA has connected the oil
| hauler to contamination problems in a number of sites. They
| take samples at Times Beach and _the next day_ a 500 year
| flood covers the town. Dioxin is now listed as a human
| carcinogen, and the towns streets contain 50% of the dioxin
| contamination in the entire state. The EPA uses the newly
| passed federal Superfund to buy out all the residents. The
| town is sealed off from humans, but apparently that river can
| flood and carry things downstream.
|
| 10 more years pass... The EPA decides on incineration, build
| an incinerated, purify everything with fire. Problems solved.
| It's now 1997. 25 years from contamination to cleanup.
|
| Bonus Context for Diligent Readers:
|
| Low level dioxin exposure has since been concluded to not be
| a health hazard. No one in Times Beach showed signs of dioxin
| poisoning. The decision maker for destroying the town now
| says with current knowledge he would not have ordered that.
| There was actually no disaster.
| wrycoder wrote:
| In this case, fire will release toxic hydrogen chloride and
| carbon monoxide and trace levels of phosgene, besides the usual
| carbon dioxide.[0]
|
| Large spills of vinyl chloride have been deliberately burned in
| the past, as the byproducts of burning are judged less
| hazardous than vinyl chloride itself.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_chloride#Fire_and_explos...
| hyperpape wrote:
| Since carbon monoxide is released by gas stoves and car
| exhaust, it's really worth specifying the quantity for that
| component. OSHA allows up to 50 ppm for long term
| occupational exposure.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| How can one be sure everything is combusted and not just
| partially, spreading it all over the place
| wrycoder wrote:
| You can't be sure. But nor can you collect it and transport
| it for proper incineration. What's not burned will
| evaporate eventually, with deleterious effects.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| There's only 4,700 people. If this is really an imminent threat
| just evacuate the people, create an exclusion zone, and bypass
| with new rail around the exclusion zone. The evacuated people can
| be compensated obviously.
|
| EPA can figure out the best way to tackle when exclusion is set
| up. Incineration sounds about as intelligent as
| shooting/bombing/nuking the dirt.
| zug_zug wrote:
| What I would like to hear from our government is a clear plan
| backed by dozens of scientists along the lines of:
|
| - soil testing procedures for the next X years where the test-
| results will be published publicly with no redactions,
|
| - downstream water tests to the same effect for whichever news
| sets of chemicals are necessary (water tests usually only test
| for 8-10 chemicals) for the next X years.
|
| - Cancer rate statistics for the next X years (many of these
| cancers take over a decade to show), perhaps people in the area
| should get free screenings
|
| - full post-moterm on procedure that addresses all the concerns
| around skipped safety checks
|
| - A publicly available "Whistle-blowing channel" for any rail
| workers asked to skip safety checks where they can report their
| employer anonymously and earn rewards up to $1,000,000 for
| deliberately violating safety rules (a recording/video of a
| manager doing so would be conclusive proof).
| pessimizer wrote:
| What you're going to get are suggestions that Russians are
| exaggerating the incident in order to incite right-wing
| conspiracies.
| myko wrote:
| Which unfortunately is happening as well, no reason to be
| blind to the facts - all of them
| tejohnso wrote:
| Nice plan. Typically what we get is a whole bunch of
| uncertainty and half measures. Then when an individual starts
| questioning or accusing, they're labelled as a conspiracy
| theorist. They may also be accused of having some strong
| political affiliations that are considered to be reprehensible.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Why should this site be treated special? There are many sites
| that need cleanup due to corporate indifference/skirting the
| law/rules/regulation. Conservatives have moved regulations from
| a government oversight/enforcement model to a corporate
| enforcement/oversight model so what you are asking for isn't
| really doable/authorized with the current regulations.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Which government? There's 2 involved, the Ohio state government
| and the United States federal government.
|
| The impression I've gotten is that they don't want to work
| together.
| throwawayapples wrote:
| Can the whistleblower start the video right after they open the
| valve themselves?
| whitemary wrote:
| If you want the US government to do something, you need to be
| clear about how the politicians and/or their capital-owning
| companions (e.g. the railroads) will profit from your plan.
| photonbeam wrote:
| let the lawmakers get a percentage of the whistleblower
| payouts /s
| bhk wrote:
| > ... the EPA has resisted calls to test for [dioxins], and the
| agency removed from its website the results of its in-depth soil
| analyses, so it's unclear which chemicals are in the soil.
|
| Menwhile, EPA Administrator Michael Regan says "trust the
| science" and drink the water.
| [deleted]
| remote_phone wrote:
| [flagged]
| gamblor956 wrote:
| This accident was reported within minutes of it happening, at
| least on NBC News. For the several days, it dominated coverage
| of CNN and Fox News. Fox News is _currently_ spending several
| _hours_ each day covering this train crash.
|
| The LAT, WaPo, NYT, Chicago Tribune, and Cleveland Plains-
| Dealer have all discussed the crash and the toxicity of the
| chemicals involved and their potential effects on humans and
| the local environment.
|
| What sort of "news suppression" do you think is going on?
| smallerfish wrote:
| > no one is reporting on it detail
|
| https://news.google.com/search?q=ohio%20train%20disaster&hl=...
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > Where are all the environmental activists?
|
| I see this trope on most conservative news outlets and it's
| honestly outrageous.
|
| The answer is simple: the environmental activists have always
| been there, but not a lot of people listened, a lot of people
| actually mocked them, not a lot of news outlets told their
| story and finally, not enough money went into PACs to actually
| make a difference. It is indeed sickening. Maybe in the future,
| we won't be voting for freedom loving regulation hating corrupt
| morons.
|
| https://peoplesworld.org/article/no-more-bomb-trains-environ...
| jmclnx wrote:
| This seems to be par for the course for the "new" Ohio. Because
| there are/were some MAGA people in high office, I would not be
| surprise if the penalties for protesters are sever.
|
| Also being the new Ohio, maybe the State Gov has no issues
| ignoring EPA regs :(
| surge wrote:
| EPA is a captured entity and not doing anything about it.
| They trusted Norfolk Southern's own tests rather than doing
| their own. They're following the corporate line on this and
| not doing anything about it, similar to everyone else
| involved whose in a position of power.
| [deleted]
| starkd wrote:
| Same could be said for the FDA and CDC.
| aintgonnatakeit wrote:
| No, not really.
| surge wrote:
| It's a problem for most government institutions we rely
| on to protect us. There is a revolving door between them
| and the companies they're supposed to keep in
| check/regulate when it comes to those in high positions.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is how the EPA works and they do it that way because
| that is what the law says. EPA does not show up and test
| soil, they order responsible parties to test the soil.
| surge wrote:
| That's a major gap, there's no third party oversight, and
| they have all kinds of incentives to fudge the testing in
| their favor, including how they collect the samples,
| what's done in the labs, etc.
|
| If criminal investigative agencies have been caught
| faking DNA results in criminal cases (SBI lab in NC)
| because there was a conflict of interest between
| prosecuting cases and the defendent, you certainly can't
| trust corporations.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Address your complaints to the Congress. This is not
| something that is fixable with one weird trick.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Conservatives have gutted enforcement agency regulations
| and replaced them with corporate self enforcement/self
| governance. Don't like it? Push for tougher corporate
| regulation and rewriting the statutes to give power back
| to the enforcement agencies (that were originally created
| as a response to events like this happening over and over
| and over).
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The EPA levies millions of dollars in fines against auto
| shops that do as much as list a few unapproved parts on
| eBay. They don't investigate squat.
|
| The idea the EPA needs to follow some vetted and lengthy
| process with responsible experts is completely false.
| They have chosen to downplay this on purpose and the
| actions they are taking are are 100% political.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But businesses would not be able to survive if they were to
| behave. Having the people pay for a wee bit of clean up on
| the corps behalf is an acceptable trade off for the privilege
| of having the corps be profitable to bring us all of the
| things. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few
| eggs /s
|
| Yes, the sarcasm is dripping, but it is not far off from the
| beliefs of some legislative types. Whether they are MAGA or
| not is not relevant. We've seen this long before MAGA was a
| thing.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > no one is reporting on it detail
|
| Aside from this article and thousands of others like it? If
| this is the railroad and government's best effort at
| suppressing news, they're failing miserably.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Where are all the environmental activists?
|
| You didn't hear that Erin Brockovich is on it? The media has
| been reporting about her, specifically, for well over a week.
| And she's not the only one talking about it, and more
| importantly holding town hall events with East Palestine
| residents: https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/special-
| reports/train-dera...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, nobody is reporting on it so here we are talking about it
| on a techy forum. What does nobody mean to you? It has been in
| my news feeds every day since it happened, and has only
| increased as the severity has increased.
| voisin wrote:
| Reporting doesn't mean anyone is being called to account.
| There's more action on banning TikTok than there is on actual
| accountability for the causes of this disaster.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is the disaster over? Are the investigations over? We don't
| even know what the total cost is going to be from this
| disaster, so how can we apply fines to the company that
| will cover those costs? Sure, we can start forcing heads to
| roll if that's what you want, but how many heads? Oh,
| right, investigations are not over yet.
|
| Knee jerk reactions can be just as dangerous
| tapland wrote:
| How would environmental activist or their actions being
| reported in media cause further action than it currently
| is, when it's being reported and demonstrated against every
| day?
| starkd wrote:
| Environmental activists have always worked in partner
| with the media. Raising awareness about issues is how
| things get done. So, media coverage is a good metric to
| use for overall focus. When is the last time you heard of
| an environmental group addressing anything other than
| climate change? Like regular soot pollution or recycling?
| Hardly anything gets recycled.
| rideontime wrote:
| > Where are all the environmental activists?
|
| I'm not an environmental activist myself, but the first group
| that came to my mind, Greenpeace, is already talking about it:
| https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/ohio-train-wreck-could-be-bid...
|
| > no one is reporting on it detail (sic)
|
| Besides the article you're commenting on?
| starkd wrote:
| The main environmental groups do seem to be all consumed with
| climate change issues. You do not any other kind of reporting
| in the press. And environmental activist have always driven
| change through the media, so it is a good metric to see where
| their focus is. Without raising consciousness about issues,
| little gets done. They don't even talk about recycling
| anymore.
| slackdog wrote:
| > _The main environmental groups do seem to be all consumed
| with climate change issues._
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-
| to-90s-e...
| [deleted]
| smallerfish wrote:
| https://www.kcci.com/article/erin-brockovich-returns-to-
| east...
|
| Front page: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
| recuter wrote:
| The Guardian is a British newspaper.
|
| Please ask around acquaintances who live in Ohio, friends of
| friends, how well informed they were/are about these events
| and at what point they got looped in. You can find that out
| first hand, I believe in you.
| mc32 wrote:
| The only outside activist that retains credibility and remains
| pretty steadfast in her mission is Erin Brockovich.
|
| All the others pick and choose their causes based on political
| opportunism. Indeed where are all the environmental
| organizations that would typically be pillorying Corp america
| or an uncaring government? Where are their vocal marches and
| demands for rectification and justice?
|
| It's a lot of crickets...
|
| Grass roots may create enough noise by 1000 horns to force the
| hand of the big media and a foot-dragging, uninterested fed
| government.
| starkd wrote:
| Because environmental orgs have been captured. They are more
| interested in CO2 and pushing people to buy corp's EV's as a
| cure-all for the planet.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > Indeed where are all the environmental organizations that
| would typically be pillorying Corp America or an uncaring
| government?
|
| They went to the same place that the activists who were
| protesting Big Pharma went in the last few years. Clearly on
| some kind of vacation.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Have you ever heard the saying 'be the change you want'? You
| know there aren't like only 30 environmental activist permits
| given out in the world, right? There might not even be a
| permitting process, you can start today.
|
| Or do you mean you want someone else doing hard work with no
| reward on a subject that is currently personal to you? Ah yeah,
| the 1960s are over friend. But if you regularly and
| consistently have donated to environmental orgs in the past
| give them a call, they do listen to people in their movements.
| theknocker wrote:
| [dead]
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| renewiltord wrote:
| Classic flamebait lol. Hahaha love it.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The knee-jerk smearing of journalism has really reached a boil
| with this event. I have seen this "nobody is reporting on it"
| comment, without exception, in every comment section of the
| _dozen_ stories I 've seen on the topic, and I barely even read
| the news.
| starkd wrote:
| Why would you read something that carries very little
| credibility? Can you blame anyone for having such a knee-jerk
| reaction?
| halocupcake wrote:
| Most major news outlets were reporting on the derailment
| shortly after, and yet I see this narrative continually
| being pushed that nobody reported on it. Yes, we should
| blame people for pushing such an easily debunked conspiracy
| theory. The reality is that we live in the social media
| era, and nobody knew or cared about the derailment until
| some people screamed about a black cloud on a viral TikTok
| clip.
|
| People should be held to a bare minimum expectation to
| inform themselves properly before acting as if our
| government and media are horrendously corrupt.
|
| Examples of articles on mainstream sites reporting on the
| derailment soon after the event (some articles showed up on
| the front pages as well):
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/train-derailment-causes-
| mas... https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-ohio-
| evacuations-fir... https://www.foxnews.com/us/ohio-train-
| derailment-causes-mass...
| https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/04/us/east-palestine-ohio-
| tr...
| timeon wrote:
| > Can you blame anyone
|
| Yes I can. For moving the goal-post as well.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| It's a conservative trope. They're hoping to paint us libruls
| opposed to chemical spills as hypocrites. They don't have a
| response do the specific points so they attack the reaction.
| It's lazy but that's conservatives (in the modern political
| sense of the term).
| starkd wrote:
| The media is covering it, but it seems like concern for CO2 has
| crowded out some of the more mundane environmental issues. The
| business lobby have turned most of the environmentalists into
| paid coporate shills who think if only everyone buys an EV, the
| planet will "heal".
| [deleted]
| throwaway05234 wrote:
| >The fact that this railroad company is getting away with
| suppressing news on this disaster is sickening to me.
|
| It's all big money converted into political power. Seeing it as
| / blaming _national_ media won't fix anything. Neither will
| voting for 1/2 of a bipartisan landscape.
|
| So, on which side of the problem are you? Are you effected by
| the story or actually "woke" enough to know of other incidents,
| where "too big to fail" turned "to big to account for"? Like
| the US, shaping latin america.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| It is an evidence cover up, not an environmental fix.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Incineration is how you get rid of dioxins in soil. It's the only
| way!
|
| But mostly I am baffled by the public response to this incident.
| The thing about America is there are zillions of highly polluted
| sites in this country, we make more of them all the time, it
| takes us either decades or forever to clean them up, dioxins are
| a very common contaminant, and there are already hundreds of
| communities waiting in line for EPA actions to clean them up. So
| the idea that EPA actions will promptly remediate this site is
| somewhat ridiculous. If there are high levels of dioxins, and so
| far there is no evidence of that, relocating the people out of
| this town is the only action that can be timely taken.
|
| Example: a site contaminated by high levels of vinyl chloride,
| the same junk that was spilled in Ohio, in the center of Oakland,
| California, has been polluted since 1960, identified since 1995,
| on the "national priorities list" i.e. Superfund, but no
| meaningful remediation has taken place and no responsible party
| has even been nominated yet.
| slackdog wrote:
| > _But mostly I am baffled by the public response to this
| incident._
|
| You saw the smoke column, yes? It looked like a mushroom cloud.
| It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out why people have
| gotten spooked.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Baffled == I am once again disappointed in the typical
| American's habit of ignoring systemic problems until they
| arrive literally in their own backyards.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Do you donate to any cleanup sites?
|
| Do you write your congress critters about them?
|
| Maybe you do and you are very engaged in pollution sites..
| but I would be surprised.
|
| Everyone responds to local events more than remote ones. I
| don't care if the other side of the US has wildfires nearly
| as much as when the wildfires are close enough for me to
| smell them.
|
| People are self interested.
| DayDollar wrote:
| Socialize the problems. Privatize the rewards. Its like
| socialism, but in a handstand.
| slackdog wrote:
| Frustrated then? Baffled means confused.
| revertmean wrote:
| That's fair enough, but it's very weird to start
| criticizing people when they actually _start_ to
| acknowledge the problem. Surely that 's the time to start
| applauding them?
| mindslight wrote:
| The difference with this situation is that the responsible
| parties still exist while we're aware of the problem. They are
| who should be paying for the complete cost of cleanup,
| remediation, and damages to bystanders and property. Letting
| them slip out of the full liability with token or estimated
| damages, resume fraudulently transferring profits to
| shareholders, and putting the site in the back of the publicly
| funded queue is exactly what we don't want to happen.
|
| It's a terrible dynamic to rely on post-facto financial
| enforcement on business people that are mentally incapable of
| understanding what they've done wrong (as opposed to say
| proactive regulation that would have prevented this entirely
| preventable derailment, and separately prevented the deliberate
| chemical release), but it's all we've got right now.
| kodah wrote:
| The logic you used, if I may summarize: "There's lots of
| accidents, some of them have been ignored for decades, why care
| about this one?"
|
| Frankly because it's high time people cared about what's
| happening to their environment and cities. Norfolk Southern is
| banking on the fact that rural areas and places like Oakland
| won't get national attention because they don't carry a lot of
| homogeneous national favor. Most of these derailments happen in
| rural areas that are cash strapped, just like the city of
| Oakland. Places that will be dependent on the company to come
| out and clean up their mess. Places that won't have funds
| unless aided by the EPA to check that the company _actually_
| cleaned up, and thoroughly. Places that don 't have the
| national umph to make the NTSB to force the railroads into
| safer behavior.
|
| What you've failed to see here is that the Venn diagram of
| disasters that happen and get ignored in Oakland are a circle
| with places like Ohio. We all lose if a company can ignore
| devastating parts of Oakland or Ohio.
| naasking wrote:
| > But mostly I am baffled by the public response to this
| incident.
|
| Isn't this like being baffled that George Floyd's murder
| launched all of those protests when police have been killing
| black people for decades?
|
| Instead of being baffled, take heart that such problems are
| finally receiving the attention they deserve!
| Bloating wrote:
| My guess is the EPA is as complicit in the mess as the railroad.
| NS plays ball, takes the short-term heat, and they get to keep
| making profits as soon as the news cycle refocuses.
|
| Of course, this all {some president's} fault!
| recuter wrote:
| If you would like a dollop of confidence for this situation know
| that competent people are taking care of it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m6DJwGPQJVU
| ericpauley wrote:
| Maybe it's just packet loss from a live recording, but this
| video just reeks of deep fake.
| recuter wrote:
| Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
|
| The secretary of transportation really did initially respond
| to this incident, that was getting "a lot of attention" with,
| exact quote: "Look, rail safety is something
| that has evolved a lot over the years, but there's clearly
| more that needs to be done because while this horrible
| situation has gotten a particularly high amount of attention,
| there are roughly 1,000 cases a year of a train derailing,"
|
| Look it up from any source that pleases you, this is an
| unedited clip. I searched for "pete buttigieg ohio train" on
| youtube and that was the top result. I recall seeing it about
| a week ago and somewhat not being able to believe it myself
| at the time. Alas.
|
| I hope calling "deep fake" on things that are a bummer won't
| become a thing.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I hope calling "deep fake" on things that are a bummer
| won't become a thing.
|
| It absolutely will. The technology is already powerful
| enough that Joe Random is able to deep-fake realistic porn,
| ChatGPT can write realistic sounding speeches (I personally
| tried "Barack Obama glorifying cannabis"), and iirc there's
| also an AI that can do speech synthesis for people where
| there is a good enough corpus of text and speech.
|
| Given that this is the state of _publicly_ available
| tooling, you can bet that at least Western secret services
| have had access to way more refined tech for years, not to
| mention the required training data.
| recuter wrote:
| Yeah, but we know all that.
|
| In this case it was easily verifiable from multiple
| mainstream sources -- if instead of making that minor
| effort it becomes fashionable to just say "deep fake"
| about everything that we don't like (say a former and
| future presidential candidate for the democratic party
| looking like a complete political hack) _facetiously_ we
| are doomed as a species I think.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| For _recent_ videos yes, it 's easy-ish to verify their
| authenticity... but for material claimed to be older,
| particularly when combined with a SEO spam campaign?
|
| Additionally, more and more people don't trust mass media
| _in general_ which just makes the problem worse. There is
| nothing left any more that serves as a trustable
| institution for them.
| vuln wrote:
| The only response I see there is hand waving the issue.
| Instead of talking about how this derailment is different
| from the other 999 that happen a year. A large percentage
| of derailments happen in train yards, in a controlled
| situation / enviroment.
|
| Pete just hand waves the issue because the people affected
| didn't vote for the _right_ people.
| recuter wrote:
| [flagged]
| vuln wrote:
| [flagged]
| recuter wrote:
| [flagged]
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > Please don't use Hacker News for political or
| ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| recuter wrote:
| Ah yes, accusing me of the very thing I am complaining
| about. _chefs kiss_
|
| In case it isn't clear; I do not care one iota about the
| personal life or political affiliation of the secretary
| of transportation. Just competency.
|
| Try and muster up some of that curiosity and note that
| upon pointing out that there seems to be none on display
| I get gaslit to infinity that the clip is fake and none
| of this is a big deal anyway. And maybe take pause and
| thank your lucky stars you and your loved ones don't live
| in Ohio.
| dang wrote:
| We've bannned this account for repeatedly breaking the
| site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| buu700 wrote:
| They aren't calling into question the clip's credibility;
| they're saying its potato-quality audio literally sounds
| like a deep fake.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| I think we're just so used to higher-quality audio/video
| from the last decade in particular; I recently pulled
| some videos off of my old LG Env2 from high school [to
| archive the Fall Out Boy/All Time Low concert at The Rave
| (2010-ish)] that are hilariously poor quality - but it
| was the best we had at the time haha.
| ericpauley wrote:
| Exactly this. All I am saying is that the video has the
| feel of being a deep fake. Too late to edit and clarify.
| recuter wrote:
| Your comment has the feeling of a deep fake.
| recuter wrote:
| Is that what he was saying? How do you know btw? I read
| it differently, my mistake.
|
| - This isn't happening
|
| - It isn't a big deal it happens all the time
|
| - He probably didn't say that it isn't a big deal that
| happens all the time, it reeks of a deep fake
|
| - He didn't say it is a deep fake, just that it _reeks_
| like one, but isn 't
| buu700 wrote:
| Well technically only they know for sure what they meant,
| but I had the same reaction to the video that (I assume)
| they did, and they went out of their way to offer a
| plausible explanation for the audio distortions (packet
| loss).
|
| There's also no apparent reason to doubt its
| authenticity, given that Yahoo Finance is a reasonably
| credible source and the content wasn't particularly
| outrageous.
| recuter wrote:
| - This isn't a big deal
|
| - The only outrageous thing about that video are the
| audio distortions which were probably _not_ caused by a
| deep fake, as we helpfully explained to you
|
| Thanks for clearing it up! My bad.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >Hey guys, don't worry, we got ourselves a McKinsey consultant
| on the job! Well...not _on_ the job per se, since he 's got
| more important stuff to do, but like...he's gonna give some
| interviews as he begins his 2024 presidential campaign.
|
| Incredible. The elegance of the fact that we've got a _literal_
| management consultant in charge of this stuff should not be
| lost on anyone.
| funstuff007 wrote:
| His spreadsheets goal seek on increasing the number of
| invites to French Laundry.
| resuresu wrote:
| Our infrastructure is crumbling beneath our feet and we are still
| giving israel and Ukraine billions per year. It's absolutely
| sickening.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| The Ukrainian proxy war has the WarCorps salivating over future
| profits. So far, Ukraine has been pocket change.
|
| How much did we spend on Afghanistan and Iraq?
|
| https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/
|
| Somewhere around 8T. 800 James Webb telescopes!
| roughly wrote:
| It's staggering that as the richest and most powerful nation ever
| to exist, we've put ourselves in a position where we can't safely
| transport chemicals, we won't provide comprehensive information
| about contamination to those affected, we either can't or aren't
| able to put any kind of comprehensive cleanup plan in place, and
| we can't find trustworthy parties to enact that cleanup.
|
| This isn't just a politics problem - the entire investor and
| management class at the railroads has been gambling with lives
| for years and the incinerator company's clearly doing the same
| thing, and we can't even agree as a country that that's bad,
| because we've bought into the free market philosophy so far that
| we don't have a civic language for saying "It's not OK that the
| railroad company management has poisoned an entire town because
| it helped their bottom line" or "the incinerator company that's
| also trying to poison an entire town is not within its rights to
| do so."
|
| The cult of the MBA has gutted this country and we've let it do
| so because we gave up any sense of actual civic or national pride
| or any sense of society or mutual obligation and can't get
| through a conversation about how we'd like society to be without
| someone saying it's going to cost money and is therefore a
| nonstarter or that we've got no right to tell them they can't
| render the land they happen to live on toxic for the next
| thousand years or wipe out a species they don't like.
| akudha wrote:
| I am currently listening to this podcast called City of the
| rails. Couple of episodes talk about the power of these rail
| companies. How they treat their employees, how they have insane
| power over politicians etc.
|
| Did you know these companies have their own police force, with
| practically zero accountability? They do whatever they please.
|
| It is depressing, to put it mildly
| windthrown wrote:
| They even have their own retirement program separate from
| Social Security:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Retirement_Board
| gruez wrote:
| From your link:
|
| >Railroad workers formed an association to agitate for
| government action. The Department of Labor proposed its own
| plan in response, eventually compromising with the workers
| to produce the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934.
|
| That's supposed to show the power of rail companies?
| windthrown wrote:
| Perhaps not very advantageous power for the retirement
| benefits but I think it still shows the immense influence
| of the industry. I'm not aware of other private companies
| which are exempt from paying into Social Security and
| have an entire federal agency dedicated to managing their
| separate system.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Well it seems like they are better off than on social
| security
|
| >At the end of fiscal year 2018, the average annuity paid
| to career rail employees was $3,525 per month, the average
| annuity paid for all retired rail employees was $2,815 per
| month, and the average retirement benefit under Social
| Security was $1,415 per month
| gptgpp wrote:
| Counterpoint:
|
| America is so rich and powerful precisely BECAUSE it maximizes
| efficiency and capital. Gutting all of those jobs and making it
| so that they only have 30 seconds to inspect each car (which is
| pretty much impossible to do due diligence) makes it so that
| they can rake in a ton of cash.
|
| Sure, accidents will go up. Small little towns will find
| themselves doused in carcinogens or burned to the ground (https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaste...).
| Politicians will use it for photo ops. Yet a small group of key
| individuals will amass a ton of capital and, therefore, power.
| They can then use that to create more businesses and ventures
| that will be just as ruthless and driven to succeed at all
| costs.
|
| I don't think it's "gutting" America. On the contrary, I think
| it's the heart of America, and what makes it so powerful and
| hegemonic. You don't make a scientific and cultural powerhouse
| omelette without breaking a few eggs.
|
| I bet you also think that cutting executive salaries would
| somehow make major corporations like McDonalds be able to pay
| all of their workers a living wage. I would encourage you to do
| the math on that -- it literally never works out.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > I bet you also think that cutting executive salaries would
| somehow make major corporations like McDonalds be able to pay
| all of their workers a living wage. I would encourage you to
| do the math on that -- it literally never works out.
|
| Ignoring the "franchising" model which explicitly breaks the
| local/corporate link of profits and costs...
|
| - McD had a 12B in profits in 2022. - McD had ~2M in
| employees at franchises - McD employees make ~$12 an hour.
| Thats 24k a year at full-time. - I couldn't find just the
| executive salaries.
|
| If you took those profits and distributed them to employees,
| thats a 25% increase.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/gros.
| ..
| snowron6 wrote:
| >I bet you also think that cutting executive salaries would
| somehow make major corporations like McDonalds be able to pay
| all of their workers a living wage. I would encourage you to
| do the math on that -- it literally never works out.
|
| Hmmm, in Denmark McDonald's manages to pay their workers ~$22
| an hour[1], with 6 weeks of vacation, and paid sick leave
| without substantially increasing prices[2], and remaining
| profitable.
|
| 1: https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-
| de...
|
| 2: https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index
| lamontcg wrote:
| > You don't make a scientific and cultural powerhouse
| omelette without breaking a few eggs.
|
| "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to
| make"
| orwin wrote:
| That's why the left should push for legalizing long range
| rifles and AP rounds instead of fighting against semi-
| automatics.
|
| I mean, Abe was the only corrupt politician/business leader
| who suffered the true "cost of doing business", hopefully
| he start a trend.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I sympathize with you completely, but I just want to point out
| that there's no simple solution.
|
| At the end of the day, nothing is perfectly safe and everything
| is a tradeoff. In a capitalist society, corporations are always
| going to try to maximize profit because that's how the
| incentives are structured, and it's always going to be the job
| of government to set safety regulations. Safety regulations
| that aren't so onerous that they simply shut down the economy
| (e.g. you can't ever transport chemicals ever) but also aren't
| so lax that people are getting killed in accidents all the time
| (do whatever you want, railroads!).
|
| The job of developing safety regulations to achieve the right
| balance is not only incredibly difficult by itself, but it
| becomes even more difficult in a messy democratic process.
|
| Because if it were done entirely technocratically, you could
| assign a monetary value to each human life and try to model the
| safety tradeoffs and come up with "objective" standards that
| would nevertheless only be so-so because a lot of the
| estimation is necessarily guesstimation, and figuring out what
| to do about black swan disasters is almost an unsolvable
| problem.
|
| _But_ we also live in a democracy where many voters are
| horrified by the idea of putting a dollar value on someone 's
| life for that kind of economic/safety modeling, and some of
| them just want more jobs because their community is
| disintegrating economically so damn the regulations, and some
| of them just want to protect the environment so damn the
| unemployed. (And then add another 20 different viewpoints and
| perspectives, because those aren't the only ones.) So we kind
| of muddle along somewhere in the middle because that's what
| democracy does.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I had a bit of a melt down yesterday while a company all hands
| meeting was taking place. This guy spoke for 15 minutes and
| said not one thing that wasn't just a business buzz word, there
| wasn't a bit of substance, and I realized and cried out to my
| wife "This fuckhead has no idea what's going on or what this
| company even does the only thing he knows is how to be an MBA"
|
| As soon as something swaps hands from the person or people who
| built it because they understood the problem it solved to
| people who only see it as an engine for profit it begins to
| die, and we've set up systems to make the death long and
| agonizing while the MBAs bleed it dry.
| paiute wrote:
| I felt the same as you when I was younger, but next time
| watch the faces of all the non-engineers in the room. It will
| start to make sense.
| felipemnoa wrote:
| For the rest of us that will probably not have a chance to
| be in the same situation, could you please explain?
| 88913527 wrote:
| I think he's saying they're eating it up. I haven't
| bothered paying attention to business-type's face's in
| all hands when a business person presents, but I imagine
| they glow up at corpspeak. Those with more technical
| specialties are more likely to have a neutral reaction,
| or more realistically a pokerface.
| paiute wrote:
| Persuasion basically. They can take any situation and
| make most of the room feel good and confident in the
| business. Good politicians do this too. It doesn't work
| on everyone, but it works well enough.
| wiml wrote:
| That is the core tenet of the MBA -- that managing one kind
| of enterprise is just the same as managing any other; there
| is no need for domain knowledge, and it's probably actually
| counterproductive.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| > we've bought into the free market philosophy so far that we
| don't have a civic language for saying "It's not OK that the
| railroad company management has poisoned an entire town because
| it helped their bottom line" or "the incinerator company that's
| also trying to poison an entire town is not within its rights
| to do so."
|
| If a private entity can unilaterally impose itself upon
| another, that's the opposite of a free market, or at least of a
| free market that has any respect for property rights.
|
| Instead, what you're seeing is a corporatist system, in which
| the regulatory machinery has been co-opted by private interests
| - which is exactly what we'd expect to happen in a democracy.
| See "regulatory capture".
|
| If this were truly a free market, then when those Ohio
| residents had their property rights imposed upon, they'd be
| able to recover the full costs of those impositions through the
| legal system. The fact that the residents aren't able to do so
| doesn't reveal a problem with markets. It shows that the
| government isn't protecting the people's property rights,
| either due to failures in the legal system, or through a
| regulatory scheme that's been perverted to protect the
| corporations rather than the rest of us.
|
| In short, point the finger at your leaders.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| > If this were truly a free market, then when those Ohio
| residents had their property rights imposed upon, they'd be
| able to recover the full costs of those impositions through
| the legal system.
|
| "You're free to poison me, but you'll have to pay for it"
| doesn't sound like a particularly well functioning system
| either. I think I would rather try to work out a political
| and regulatory system that resists capture.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Replace "can't safely transport chemicals" with "don't bother
| to safely transport chemicals" and then you have an accurate
| statement.
| roughly wrote:
| At some point the capacity atrophies from disuse. Right now,
| if the EPA wanted to find an incinerator that didn't have a
| clear history of poor-quality operations, could they? If the
| owner of those chemicals wanted to ship their chemicals in
| the safest manner possible, could they? How could they verify
| that the chemicals would be treated with care and concern?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Is the US richer and more prosperous than the Vatican? I'm
| intrigued now how to figure these rankings out, no joke.
| ethanbond wrote:
| One (imperfect) metric is GDP per capita.
|
| US is around $70k.
|
| Vatican City around $21k, pretty much all of which is tourism
| and not even "production" per se.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| thanks
| hibernator149 wrote:
| Reminds me of the railroad tunnel accident in Atlas Srugged by
| Ayn Rand. That happened for exactly the same reason. Only that
| the greedy railroad boss Dagny Taggart took the accident
| seriously and tried to fix it. We live in a world where having
| people like Taggart, Rearden, or Galt at the top would be an
| improvement. Just think about that... (How is it that Ayn Rand
| is always so right? </sarcasm>)
| samirillian wrote:
| Yeah we're so fucked. We live on our phones and have either
| checked out or turn it into us-them mentality. Neither
| political administration did what they should have. We can't
| fix it, so we finger-point or throw up our hands in despair.
| And most people who haven't given up are simply too dense to
| understand how they're getting played by their little echo
| chamber, or what a strategy to fix it would even look like.
| Let's just wait till the boomers die, and then demographics
| shift, then corporate capture will fix itself, right??
| DanHulton wrote:
| I would say this actually IS a politics problem, just not the
| simple "right vs left" issue that everyone assumes "politics"
| means these days.
|
| "What to do about late-stage capitalism?" is actually an
| explicitly political question.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > "What to do about late-stage capitalism?" is actually an
| explicitly political question.
|
| Its also an explicitly political (in the "ideologically
| partisan" not merely "concerning government") _framing_ of
| the question, that makes ideologically-based assumptions
| about reality, the current situation, and the answer to the
| question. (If the answer was something within the scope of
| "capitalism", the thing being addressed would not be "late-
| stage capitalism".)
|
| Heck, even the presumption that the thing described is
| something that calls for something to be done about it is
| ideological.
| Bloating wrote:
| "Left vs right" is just "Bread & Circuses"... well, maybe not
| bread
| roughly wrote:
| Yes, I agree with that, and that's a bit of what I'm trying
| to point out - discussions of "politics" in situations like
| this tend to devolve to regulatory capture and the relative
| merits of Team Blue or Team Red, but the core problem is that
| there's basically one political philosophy in this country
| and it's got nothing whatsoever to say about one's actual
| moral responsibility to society, except maybe to argue the
| premise of the question.
| scruple wrote:
| Well, the problem there is, IMO, no one with any power in
| politics on the left or the right has any sort of vision for
| what comes next.
| myko wrote:
| Power is collective, no one can unilaterally fix issues
| like this but many have campaigned and attempted to enact
| positive environmental policy (and that unfortunately
| _does_ tend to be right vs left)
| recycledfood wrote:
| The twelve occurrences of "we" in your comment imply agency and
| consent where little to none existed.
|
| "We", which is to say a majority of residents and citizens of
| the US, constituting the working class, had these things
| imposed on us by others who have systematically and
| successfully manufactured the appearance of consent over a
| period of decades, the ongoing results being consistently
| undermining the working class and incepting a kind of learned
| helplessness that justice can never be found.
|
| The "cult of the MBA" is apt, although a more appropriate
| appellation might be the "cult of Mammon".
| roughly wrote:
| As Warren Buffet put it, "There's class warfare, all right,
| but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and
| we're winning."
|
| I agree with all of what you've said, although I think folks
| have been more willing contributors to the process than you
| suggest.
| ineptech wrote:
| This makes it sound like the wealthy colluded against the
| masses, which I don't think is accurate. It's a
| coordination trap: each individual is doing what's in their
| individual best interest, but the result is collectively
| bad for everyone. The solution is to change the incentives,
| e.g. laws that make it more profitable to clean up
| pollution than to pollute, but it seems unattainable
| because a feedback loop has concentrated power in the hands
| of the people who are most insulated from the problems,
| which is sort of the opposite of the intended outcome of
| democracy.
| Guthur wrote:
| They colluded to enrich themselves without end. Seeking
| monopoly rents and pushing infrastructure, social and
| environmental costs on to others to increase the margin.
|
| We allow the rewarding of truly psychotic behaviours,
| there is a reason why most executives seem to exhibit
| these traits.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| There's events like Davos and the Bilderberg meetings
| where the rich and powerful literally do get together and
| define their agenda.
|
| But for the most part, yeah they don't need to be
| centrally coordinated and probably aren't, because they
| are very good at identifying their interests and have the
| resources to work towards it.
|
| I would hold a more charitable view towards this all,
| however, if it wasn't for the fact that the media, their
| sponsors, and the politicians are intentionally using
| wedge issues to disrupt and divide the masses.
| gruez wrote:
| > There's events like Davos and the Bilderberg meetings
| where the rich and powerful literally do get together and
| define their agenda.
|
| Here's the website for the latest davos meeting:
| https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-
| annual-m...
|
| What type of "wealthy colluded against the masses" is
| happening there?
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| Look at the board of trustees from your very link. They
| are all highly placed execs in multinationals and
| political world leaders getting together to discuss
| Stakeholder Capitalism - ie; how to make capitalism
| palatable enough so that revolution does not take place.
|
| They dress it up to make it sound like they're only
| interested in being ethical, but it's really about how to
| ensure that their position in society is maintained.
|
| I'm not saying they will be sitting in dingy, cigar smoke
| filled rooms discussing how to crush the working class,
| but I am saying this is far more coordination than you
| will get from a mixture of people from the general
| population.
| [deleted]
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Yet somehow, "we" as the people not consenting still put up
| with it because we're too busy to make ends meet, of if we
| do, picking the next toy to distract us from reality with.
|
| And when it comes to freedom of speech or gun laws, it's
| suddenly all about "muh freedom" and that we need all this in
| case the government turns rogue to defend ourselves. Which is
| absolutely true but at the same time, how much more messed up
| do things need to get to actually get us on the streets in
| masses and protest this madness? Probably as long as there is
| some third would country doing worse than us left somewhere
| on this planet, we can paint over this cognitive dissonance
| with some good old "at least we're not $county"
| jostylr wrote:
| This is not free market, but a captured regulated market.
| Companies bet that the government will cover over their
| mistakes. In an actual free market where the company and the
| people making the decisions would be held accountable for the
| damages done to 3rd parties, this would not happen. The need to
| insure would motivate people to find cost effective ways to
| make it safe. Consequential failure is a big motivator.
|
| I work for a place that is regulated by the city and insurance.
| I find the city to be unhelpful, unresponsive, and largely
| useless in helping us. They just want the fees paid. The
| insurance companies, however, will send out inspectors that
| work with us to right anything that might be unsafe, explain
| their concerns, and generally are looking to have a good
| profitable relationship with us.
|
| There was one company that did not do good inspections. We
| stopped working with them and now work with a different
| company. I have no such option for working with the government
| as we are quite locally based.
|
| Also, the city owned sewage treatment facilities are major
| polluters. Government control often leads to pollution (see
| various authoritarian governments, our military, various
| municipalities,...)
|
| As for the sense of mutual obligation, it has withered, but my
| bet is that it is the theoretical outsourcing of it to
| government which has undermined it. Without that failing
| crutch, we would have to work together and look out for each
| other, bringing to the table immense social pressure for those
| outside social norms. That has its own downside, but it is much
| more flexible and resistant to corruption than the monopolistic
| government power structure.
|
| One danger is, of course, rich outsiders who can take over
| large tracts of land with money. But in our current system,
| they buy up politicians who use eminent domain to take the
| choice away from the owners and the people at large. In a
| private ownership system, they would have to convince everyone
| to sell which is way harder to do.
| roughly wrote:
| Something I've noticed over time about libertarian ideology
| is that it lacks a comprehensive theory of power - it asserts
| that governments have power, and that power is coercive, and
| coercion is wrong, but has a massive blind spot to the fact
| that Cigna also has power and uses that power to coerce, and
| would do so whether or not there was a government. It's
| shockingly utopian in that way.
| Bloating wrote:
| Does Cigna have gun-welding police force?
| roughly wrote:
| It turns out there's different types of coercion that
| don't involve guns and yet still have the effect of
| forcing someone to act in ways they otherwise would
| prefer not to. This is what I'm talking about when I say
| the philosophy lacks a comprehensive theory of power.
| gameman144 wrote:
| > This is not free market, but a captured regulated market
|
| Agreed that market capture is a problem, but regulation is
| _absolutely_ necessary for a free market to function well;
| these two things are not antonyms.
|
| Regulation is needed to set up the rules of the game:
| everyone conforms to these rules, and if anyone breaks the
| rules, here are the consequences. Above this, companies can
| and should determine their own _higher_ standards (e.g. you
| looking for honest insurance inspectors).
|
| When something goes wrong, one of a few things is possible.
| Maybe the regulation was too lax, and risky even when
| followed. Maybe a company wasn't following the existing
| rules. Maybe the rules allow for small amounts of risk, and
| this is one of those accepted incidents.
|
| In this case, it seems clear that the impact was _not_ small,
| and can 't/shouldn't have been an acceptable outcome. As
| such, one of two things should happen:
|
| * Rules should change to mitigate the chances of other
| similar events. * The rules were sufficient but ignored, in
| which case some severe penalties need to be applied.
|
| You're right that government can't do everything perfectly,
| and private businesses are definitely the main drivers of a
| good free market. The government _absolutely must_ provide
| clear rules to those businesses on what the society will
| accept, and severely punish non-compliance with those rules.
| CodexArcana wrote:
| This is an incredibly utopian view of the free market that
| has never existed in any implementation of the laissez faire
| free market philosophy. Competition yields winners, and those
| winners buy out the losers, leading to monopolization and
| wealth consolidation.
|
| You've identified the problem, the railroads are a captured
| market, but it's because most regulatory bodies are operated
| by former agents of those industries or those taking large
| amounts of money from those industries. These industries DO
| get bailed out, because they have captured the regulatory
| mechanism. Their wealth consolidation allows them that power,
| especially in the post Citizens United world we live in.
|
| The things you view as failings of the government are
| corporate successes in the never ending squeeze of year after
| year growth.
|
| The power structures inside these corporations are squarely
| authoritarian in their design. You have no real agency within
| your workplace. The most freedom I've ever experienced in my
| work history has been working for government agencies,
| specifically public education, doing IT work. This idea that,
| in the absence of government intervention, we (citizens)
| would have the agency to do the right thing in these moments
| completely ignores the massive amount of leverage the
| corporation has over its workers. Since these corporations
| are top down, hierarchical, and authoritarian in their
| organization, the only will the workers have is that of those
| at the top. In this case, the executives and shareholders who
| historically have shown to not be interested in taking a loss
| for the sake of safety.
|
| You mention that, under the utopian vision of the free
| market, we would go to another vendor. So who would we decide
| to transport with? The rail systems are regionalized and to
| get from one part of the country to the other you have to
| make trilateral or quadrilateral deals with these companies.
| In other words you are forced to use all of them on some leg
| of the journey. This regionalization means that there is an
| oligopoly on the rail system. How are you going to create a
| "competing" rail system in any of these regions when these
| companies own all the rails?
| Bloating wrote:
| What comes first, the regulation or the regulatory capture?
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| haberman wrote:
| > In this case, the executives and shareholders who
| historically have shown to not be interested in taking a
| loss for the sake of safety.
|
| If an executive is making a choice between profit and
| safety, then the regulatory regime has failed.
|
| The only way capitalism can work is if risk and reward go
| together. If a company can profit from taking a risk, but
| does not suffer the true cost of a failure, then they will
| be incentivized to take irresponsible risks. The best
| example of this is 2008, where financiers gambled
| themselves into oblivion, but got bailed out when it went
| bad.
| 8note wrote:
| > The best example of this is 2008, where financiers
| gambled themselves into oblivion, but got bailed out when
| it went bad.
|
| This is an interesting example, but I think you need to
| go further in saying that the post 2008 financial system
| was even more irresponsible than it was before
| cbHXBY1D wrote:
| The maximum fine a rail company can face is $225k, even
| when loss of life occurs. Unfortunately, the regulatory
| regime you describe has been captured for roughly the
| past 80 years.
|
| The reality is that the legal system makes it so
| difficult and expensive for claimants to recoup the harms
| they suffer. Causality is hard to prove and the claimants
| are up against corporations which have teams of lawyers
| and a court system which has made tort cases have a high
| burden of proof. This can make it difficult for claimants
| to win, even if they have a strong case. Plus, tort law
| is a complex area of law, and it can be difficult for
| claimants to understand their rights and to navigate the
| legal system.
| timeon wrote:
| > In an actual free market where the company and the people
| making the decisions would be held accountable
|
| Same as in communism. So probably not.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Your comment is just vague talking points. I see literally no
| one justifying poisoning the environment and the town by saying
| this is an acceptable cost of the free market.
|
| Blaming MBAs for this instead of the JDs that are writing and
| enforcing the laws is also silly.
|
| Finally, almost everyone from the federal down to the local is
| running unsustainable deficits, so there is clearly a lack of
| forethought in spending. I would argue we have the opposite
| problem you are suggesting. Everyone's happy to spend money
| thoughtlessly because it's someone else's money.
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