Beaver-engineered dam in the Czech Republic
24 comments
·October 20, 2025imjonse
world2vec
2036: Czech authorities sue for peace after months of devastating conflict against the beaver colony.
empiko
If you want peace, prepare for war.
discomrobertul8
We have always been at war with Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber).
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timcobb
That's humans for ya
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tasuki
I'm Czech and haven't heard about this. We should hire more beavers for construction projects.
pfdietz
The project was stalled not because they didn't have funding, but because they didn't have permits.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that permission-based economies don't work. Go after people who harm, don't impose paperwork to preemptively prevent harm.
0_____0
I learned a while back that Hammurabi's Code contained a proto-building code, in that a builder whose building collapsed and harmed its occupant could be punished in a similar way.
However the occupant was still harmed.
Individuals must have a complete context for the environment in which they operate in order to build "correctly." Permit reviews, building codes etc. codify that context so that builders don't need to carry the entire system context, even if they could, which often they can't. And as a result, buildings don't randomly fall over or catch fire with nearly the same frequency as they used to
discomrobertul8
This doesn't seem like a very sensible policy. There are a great many harms that once done, cannot be undone.
vintermann
Especially when it comes to nature. "Oops, there's nothing left to save now anyway, might as well build that project we wanted!"
_ink_
And when companies with limited liability are involved. Case in point the research reactor in Germany. The company that was responsible to dismantle it just declared insolvency.
pfdietz
Harms don't need to be undone, they just need to be penalized.
For example: statistical deaths can be compensated for by fines using the statistical value of a human life (about $12 M). Nuclear power regulation could be based on this principle.
detaro
That's great, so we just need to make some scapegoat companies go bankrupt from fines occasionally and can do whatever we want? (It's already somewhat of an issue in construction industries, build shoddy homes and dissolve the company before the majority of buyers realizes how bad it is, repeat)
saagarjha
How do you feel about extending this to direct murder?
discomrobertul8
Ok cool, this bodes well for my "disposing of household waste by dropping a nuclear bomb on it in Central Park" startup
mapt
One of the things I have evolved on as a liberal/leftist.
There are just too many situations today where somebody is paying the fine with a smile on their face, if not settling for some trivial amount with no acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
Willful harms and even reckless harms by corporations need to be penalized aggressively and punitively. When a corporation worth $30 billion gains $1.3 billion in material benefit over 10 years by doing some activity that victimizes or risks people, it's fucking stupid to try and penalize them $10M with no jail time for anybody. "Cost of doing business" should never be a viable option, because the law needs a subjective bent, some small tyranny of justice, some adversarial person that corporations are structurally encouraged to be terrified of pissing off. If that means forcibly diluting their stock, or seizing the company, or terminating their charter, or throwing their executives down a hole for five years, that's evidently a necessary component of regulation. Deterrence is the name of the game, not just "seeking compliance".
We created corporations, and demand their executives, to behave in a psychopathic, amoral, "rational" profit-seeking manner by the legal fiduciary duty. Passively failing to significantly penalize predatory acts is actively encouraging their continuation. It's creating tools meant to do a thing (Hammers) and using them wrong (Juggling) and then acting stunned when they land on your foot, and spending the rest of the day glaring at and shaming the hammers, demanding verbal assurances that they'll never land on your foot again.
Occasionally, we hear about China rewarding corporate executives who commit malfeasance of a sufficiently malignant scale with capital punishment. The buck stops here. It sometimes makes the grass look greener on the other side, even with all the things I object to within that system.
timeon
Not sure if people [0] would do anything if they would not know rules (regulations) but could be drastically penalized if something happens.
[0] Except for reckless gamblers.
Arch-TK
The problem isn't necessarily the need for permission, it is excessive bureaucracy.
As another commenter explained, the need for permission is there to prevent harm before it can occur, rather than punishing it after it occurs, because the harm can be of the sort which cannot be undone.
If I want to build and sell houses, I should be able to do it, but it shouldn't take going to 10 government offices, filling out 50 forms and waiting a year for someone to give me a permit. And then, once I have built it, it shouldn't take another year for someone to check I did it correctly.
hnbad
Doesn't much of the US economy already work like this? "Don't make it illegal to do things that will cause harm but make people liable for when they do cause harm"?
Of course due to the power imbalance of individuals against corporations and ordinary folks against billionaires it's usually very difficult to get reimbursed for the harm some will inevitably face and even when it succeeds it requires very expensive lawyers while the other side tries to stall for time - if the harm doesn't outright kill you or make you unable to seek reimbursement.
But yes, from a purely entrpreneurial point of view I can understand this desire. But at the end of the day the economy (and that includes the very concept of corporations, private ownership, public works, etc) exists to serve the people, not the other way around. People can exist without an economy. An economy can not exist without people (unless you consider simulations equivalent to the real thing). So in a way, increasing the potential for harm in the economy runs directly counter to the justification of the economy.
zdragnar
Plenty of things are illegal for no reason other than they might cause harm. Speed limit laws on roads, fire hazard regulations in buildings, negligent discharge of a firearm, etc
They tend to civil, rather than criminal, offenses, at least up until a certain level of severity or until they actually cause harm.
The tricky bit with the corporations you mention is that responsibility becomes diffuse, unless there is concrete evidence of a direct order to violate the law. What you're basically asking for is to make people into scapegoats because it feels good, not because there's actual justice involved.
The article ends on a note which can be read in either a hopeful or ominous key.
"Authorities anticipate no significant conflicts with the beaver colony for at least the next decade."