Comment by samatman
7 months ago
> Let's make it not regulation - which seems to get people up in arms. [...] Instead manufacturers are 100% responsible
I've long been of the opinion that mandatory underwriting is superior to regulation for most things. At least: housing, medicine, and consumer products. Maybe not airplanes, but then again, maybe.
If a manufacturer of table saws was required to be underwritten for claims of injury, they'd find it in their best interest to make those saws as safe as practical.
This itself requires regulation: no skating out of it by having customers sign bullshit waivers, and of course some department would have to audit businesses to see to it that they're complying. But the sum of that is much less costly to taxpayers, and also avoids all the cost-disease which results from a regulatory regime whose interest is in producing paperwork, and which has no incentive to change, streamline, or remove a regulation, once it's in place.
My internal cyncism says we may as well end up with a regime similar to healthcare insurance in the US which puts a lot of the costs on consumers ahead of time, and is otherwise hidden – a scheme where, in theory, people often get compensated for horrific accidents, but where (a) the better the compensation you want, the higher the upfront cost (of the saw), and (b) the more horrific the (saw-related) accident and the higher the potential cost to the insurer (manufacturer), the more hoops the consumer will have to jump through to prove that their injuries were due to unavoidable injury/whatever the standard is for non-frivolous claims. There's "ideal" insurance, and there's insurance in pattern, practice, and procedure, and the US is the worst example of that.
There's every incentive for a jobsite to use the cheapest saws, and cross their fingers; there's every incentive for a manufacturer to make it as painful as possible to ask for compensation. Either way, if you're working for an el cheapo contractor on an entry-level wage, you're probably screwed.
It's a fair comment, but I want to note that insurance in business and insurance for individuals operate on a rather different basis. Insurance companies are better behaved when they know they have to be, and businesses as a class are able and willing to pursue their interests in court.
The great success story for underwriting is consumer electrical devices, where Underwriters Labs was responsible for many decades in which such devices didn't burn people's houses down. That's been undermined by lax global trade policies, I no longer even trust that a UL logo on something means UL was involved, it might easily have been added in China.
It's worth reading up on the organization if one hasn't already. It makes a good case that we need less regulation and mandatory, ubiquitous underwriting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)
It's understandable that many people hear "we need less regulation" as "corporations should have more carte blanche to screw everyone over", but I sincerely believe this would both reduce friction and cost for business, and maintain or even improve the standards for safety and the environment which regulation is intended to provide.
(Just wanted to say I'll take a look at that! I appreciate your graciousness, and I'll be more like that in the future.)
Plus a few sacrificial digits to get the lawsuits through that prove to the manufacturers that their liability is real, serious and large.