U.S. Chemical Safety Board Could be Eliminated

Closing this paid already for 25% of the military parade.

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The 1950’s were when the US set up many of the post war institutions that are being dismantled now. Maybe you mean the 1850’s? (Though I’d guess the government was probably more forward looking back then too.)

The principle is the rate of profit is falling, competing countries are rising, and they want to unleash the private sector in the hopes of raising GDP growth significantly enough to retain hegemony. This won't work, because they're fucking stupid, and they'll damage the health of the population and the productivity of the land and waters going forward, but there is a logic to it.

looking at this at a different angle, some companies do practice health and safety AND there are egregious acts of pollution.. consider this next part .. many practices in the early 1900s would be outrageous today and even bad actor companies have changed since then, as a given. It is IMHO both the avoidable, known acts today AND the unknown, under-counted actions of today that will be so painfully obvious at some time decades from now. A legal environment where cost cutting in the cost centers of environmental compliance are openly prioritized, includes disasters of knowns and the unknowns.

In closing, I do not think it is like the 1950s in that basic science has identified and amplified many fundamental advances since then, materials science is sci-fi now compared to then, but it is similar in the economic-first and actively thumbing the nose at all things green and eco regarding the market.

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

I don't necessarily think that goes against what the parent commenter is saying. The CSB does apparently do investigations and root cause analysis of chemical accidents and spills - in my mind they sound analogous to the NTSB and how they investigate aviation accidents.

So, by that analogy, I think the NTSB is amazing and has done crucial, instrumental work that makes flying safer (as the saying goes, aviation regulations are written in blood). So I think getting rid of the CSB sounds colossally stupid, and I think it's elimination could lead to a willingness by companies to be more careless when it comes to chemical safety.

What knowledge are you trying to impart with this fact?

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

> The US saw how China rose to dominate manufacturing, and would like to go back to being a manufacturing power again.

If that were the case, the US would be dumping trillions into spinning up manufacturing like China did.

The US has the power to do this, they did it during WWII, and like it or not, this current era requires heavy strategic investments that may not produce returns for decades, if at all. It's what China is doing and if the US were trying to compete, they'd do the same. We were getting somewhat close to this with the CHIPS Act, but that's on the chopping block[1], too.

Truth is US capital is happy to sell off manufacturing capability to cash in on cheap labor, and there is no monetary incentive to re-shore manufacturing capacity unless the government provides serious incentives or does it themselves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act#Subseque...

My understanding from folks outside the U.S. is that they desire U.S. products because they trust the safety more. I'm not sure everyone quite understands that by gutting [regulations], they trash part of their international advantage.

I'm no expert, but even if they somehow managed to get manufacturing back, slashing your competitive advantages and just taking the market position of "China 2: This time it's more expensive" doesn't strike me as a winner for exports.

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You're being down voted but you're right.

Bringing manufacturing back is a stated goal of this administration.

Nevermind that you're not going to convince an American to work for Chinese wages in a sweatshop. Ignore that.

But the intended outcome of everything Dump is doing is to de-emphasize advanced education, bring back all basic manufacturing, and restore the "traditional" American values (white, straight, Christian). It's an absolutely stupid idea, but he's been pretty clear about it.

Strangely enough, I'm not seeing anyone lining up to take $3/hr jobs sewing t-shirts for sale to China.

They're gonna be sorely disappointed if they thing de-regulation is the path to bringing back some pre-lapsarian golden age of American manufacturing that didn't actually exist

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California can just keep doing its thing and the rest of the country benefits from their regulations. Prop 65 is to thank for all the Harbor Freight stores no longer reeking of outgassing plastics.

If we keep blowing up the economy this way they’ll only be able to afford to rent the libs.

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

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The amount of pent up hate and vitriol coming out now is incredible. People hated each other so much and more or less kept it somewhat in check for so many decades?

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

> It'll also be harder to find people willing to work around chemicals if they can't trust the safety measures.

Don't worry, they're counting on us all being so desperate we'll take those jobs, anyway.

I forsee a lot of high skilled labor exiting high risk fields over the next few years. Many of the high end blue-collar jobs of north America are very low end in south America due to the relative risks involved e.g. mine workers.

Bankruptcy. The people who profited the most will not see any consequences.

That's the beauty of our system: companies are at fault, not people, and companies can be destroyed and remade at will.

> costs the company billions in property damage and lawsuits.

The reality: the company makes a new company (that's identical to the old company in assets and operations) and says "we had nothing to do with the old company" and they're left off with zero consequences while the old company (that has no assets but holds legal liability) goes bankrupt and pays nothing.

There's also a new and improved method that avoids even this small amount of effort. Alex Jones introduced it. When you're found liable for a billion dollars in damages, just say, "I won't pay it. Fuck you." And there's absolutely nothing they can do.

The legal system means absolutely nothing now.

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

I don't really buy this since China has industrialized rapidly without much population growth at all. They have built infrastructure like high speed rail that we are unable to build in the US, so I also don't buy the "fully deployed modern infrastructure" line.

How are so confident in causality here?

In practice it’s got a very distinct role.

They basically do NTSB aircraft crash investigations for large scale chemical accidents. Critically they don’t assign fines or act proactively like EPA or OSHA, it’s a neutral investigation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Chemical_Safety_Board

> The Senate legislative history states: "The principal role of the new chemical safety board is to investigate accidents to determine the conditions and circumstances which led up to the event and to identify the cause or causes so that similar events might be prevented." Congress gave the CSB a unique statutory mission and provided in law that no other agency or executive branch official may direct the activities of the board.

No - "The CSB investigates industrial chemical accidents—not to assign blame, but to figure out why they happened and how to prevent them. No other federal agency does this kind of root cause analysis focused purely on safety improvement. OSHA and the EPA enforce rules, but they don’t specialize in deep, systems-based investigations like the CSB does."

== I think a huge, huge amount of the government is wasteful but the CSB is doing incredible work==

It feels like there is some type of reverse Gell-Mann Amnesia that goes on with government spending and programs.

Those close to the subject matter typically view government spending in their area of expertise as necessary, even “incredible” as you state. When it comes to spending in an area they are not an expert, it suddenly becomes “wasteful.”

> all over the world

Not in India. Here, there is no concept of Big Govt. The concept is "What is this govt. going to give me for free for me to vote for it"

Its the other end of the complimentary spectrum.

Europe and many developing countries still have national programs in various important sectors like Health, Education and mental health.

A lot of the worlds govts spend a lot through public institutions.

Every organization is dysfunctional, the only question is whether its more functional than the alternative. This applies to private enterprises (metaverse anyone?) as well as the government.

After 50+ years of budget cuts, what makes us think that the solution is more budget cuts?

== And make no mistake: there was enough dirty bathwater to go around==

Any evidence to share?

Okay, I won't make a mistake if you show me the evidence.

Some waste is expected in govt. It happens even in private enterprises. That is down to human nature and other factors.

However, where is the critical thinking and debate on what actually the institution does, what can be improved and what can be changed?

Its all become X uses Y billion USD a year, so we have to make ti Y/2 to save the universe.