Musings Report 2018-18 5-6-18 How Safe Are We? Our Obsession with Narrowly Defined Safety
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How Safe Are We? Our Obsession with Narrowly Defined Safety
If you've bought a new vehicle recently, you may have noticed some "safety features" that strike many as Nanny State over-reach.
You can't change radio stations, for example, if the vehicle is in reverse. Who knows who or what you'll run over in reverse if you were allowed to change radio stations while in reverse gear?
How many injuries can be traced to people changing radio stations while in reverse?
A friend recently told us that the California Legislature is considering a law that makes it legal for parents to let their children walk to school unattended.
Perhaps this is "fake news," but it's certainly plausible, given that leaving any child unattended is now viewed as not just irresponsible but criminal.
The mainstream "news" is chockful of worried-looking news anchors announcing another e coli outbreak or recall of a consumer product, many of which now sport absurd warnings, including scary-sounding ones such as "this product may contain stuff that could cause cancer." (Rough approximation)
This is scary until you realize it's on practically every consumer product in the state of California, which mandates the warning.
The narrowness of this obsession with safety comes into focus if we ask: how can a society so obsessed with safety have spawned an opioid addiction crisis that kills tens of thousands of people and ruins the lives of millions of Americans?
How safe are we when products that addict millions and kill thousands are readily available via prescription within our healthcare system?
While addictive illegal drugs have long been targeted with extremely harsh criminal penalties, how is it that the legal drug industry and the officially sanctioned and regulated healthcare industry created the vast destruction of the opioid crisis without anyone tasked with "safety" noticing?
How do we explain our obsession with relatively low risk dangers and our collective blindness to manufactured/ marketed scourges that kill tens of thousands of people annually? (Tobacco comes to mind, as does alcohol.)
Several dynamics come to mind: the immense profitability of products such as tobacco and synthetic opioids, and the profitability of fear-inspiring content in terms of attracting eyeballs to media and social media engagement. Fear gets our attention and is an effective marketing tool.
In other words, there are built-in incentives in our system to profit from dangerous products, and influence government regulators to overlook the dangers.
I also wonder if our narrow obsession with low-risk safety (warnings on everything, etc.) reflects a subconscious awareness of rising systemic insecurity/danger, which we counter psychologically by regulating what can be easily regulated in terms of manufactured consumer products. This gives us a sense of control in a world in which our ability to control systemic risks is decaying.
Adding regulations aimed at increasing safety/ reducing risk also gives elected officials an opportunity to say "we're doing something useful to protect you."
It's well established that our innate ability to assess risk is limited; we tend to exaggerate some kinds of risk (being attacked by sharks while swimming, etc.) and under-estimating other kinds of risk (eating junk food, getting addicted to prescription painkillers, etc.)
As a result, a single tragic accident caused by someone changing radio stations while in reverse gear can trigger a new law/ regulation ("we should make it impossible to change radio stations while in reverse, as this will preclude any more of these preventable tragedies"), but we don't recognize the systemic tragedy of the loss of positive social roles/jobs that fuels much of the despair and pain that we treat with addictive prescription painkillers.
And so we have a terrible irony that the opioid-addicted individual whose life has been ruined by an entirely preventable systemic scourge can put his/her car in reverse with less likelihood of injuring others, if it is new enough to have all the mandated safety features.
Risk reduction and improving safety are complex issues, but we clearly have a political-social-economic system that is largely blind to systemic dangers that could be prevented, were we to widen our focus to include them.
Highlights of the Blog This Past Week
What Lies Beyond Capitalism and Socialism?
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
I participated in the first day of Peak Prosperity's annual conference, which this year was held May 4 - 6 in Sebastopol (Sonoma County) California. It was a convivial, intellectually stimulating series of talks with Chris and guests (including me) and informal discussions with other Peak Prosperity members. Thanks to Adam, I had a small-scale book signing, which was fun. the event was open to the general public, and limited to around 120 participants. (It sold out very quickly.)
Market Musings: glancing at a chart of the S&P 500
I just marked up this chart of the S&P 500 with the most obvious technical features:
1. The blow-off top in January
2. The two Bearish rising wedges that both broke to the downside
3. The large wedge/pennant formed by lower highs and a rough support level around 2550.
4. The most recent pattern is a declining channel
5. The Bollinger bands are tightening
6. The 50-day and 200-day moving averages are moving closer, squeezing price.
Decision time approaches. If history is any guide, the SPX will break out of the big wedge/pennant to the upside or downside.
If it breaks to the downside, the chart suggests a decline of 300 points is possible--from 2580 to around 2280.
Few observers seem to think a break to the downside is possible or likely. We'll soon find out if that consensus is right or wrong.
From Left Field
Market Plummets if Global Central Banks Pull Plug – Nomi Prins (podcast with Greg Hunter)
How Wall Street Enabled the Fracking 'Revolution' That's Losing Shale Oil Companies Billions (via Cheryl A. and Laserlefty) -- important read: the fracking "boom" is a financial event as well as an energy event...
The ‘Values,’ ‘Vision,’ and ‘Democracy’ of an Inauthentic Opposition (via laserLefty)
The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code (via Maoxian)
Time for a New U.S. Foreign Policy Narrative (Foreign Affairs)
Rural Kansas is dying. I drove 1,800 miles to find out why (via Maoxian)
"I’d learned that a group of nonprofits led by the Kansas Health Foundation had spent years studying the depopulation of rural Kansas. Their research had yielded one central finding: local food stores selling fresh produce help to stabilize struggling communities."
Nassim Nicholas Taleb Has Never Borrowed a Cent in His Life
For many baby boomers, retirement’s a dirty word
Michael Hudson: “Creating Wealth” Through Debt: The West’s Finance-Capitalist Road (via laserLefty)
Michael Hudson: Bronze Age Redux – What the Ancients Can Teach Us About Debt (via laserLefty)
Are You Really the Product? The history of a dangerous idea. (via Benedict Evans) -- the author argues no, I say we are the product...
Oil Hedge Fund Manager Says $300 Oil ‘Not Impossible’ (via Joel M.)
"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise." Tacitus
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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