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Comment by g82918 | Hacker News Reader

Mining in general is a pretty complicated topic, and anecdata like the article are nice to have. One issue separate from the personal side is that nations need minerals. Minerals require mining. Mining breeds misery. The answer probably isn't to stop mining, but to subsidize mining safety and health. If mineral companies could provided better safer environments there would be less harm from mining and everyone could go about their business blind to the costs of mining. We do it for farming, why not dump a ton of money into mining(far more than we do currently)?

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These anecdata are from the 19th century, they don’t have much in the way of relevance to the way mining looks today, especially in a first-world country.

A few stats: https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/statistics-and-research...

in Australia’s enormous mining industry in 2018, there were nine fatalities. The fatality rate was 3.7 per 100,000. This puts it ahead of most industries but substantially behind “Agriculture, forestry and fishing” at 11.2 or “Transport, warehousing and transport “ at 5.9.

For further perspective, the death rate in Australian mining injuries is several times less than the murder rate in Chicago (23.8) or even San Francisco (6.3).

So although mining is still an intrinsically dangerous occupation which puts your soft fleshy body in close proximity with all sorts of heavy, moving, unstable or explosive objects, safety training, equipment and procedures have improved a lot over the centuries.

Deaths aren't really the most important stat though. Miners often suffer significant health complications over the course of their life and those are not only unpleasant but expensive.

So you're looking for something closer to injuries than deaths, but you want them to either be significant or long-lasting injuries, probably? Like, black lung may not be the same as getting crushed by a cave-in but that doesn't make it nothing...

The industry in Australia is currently working through the early stages of the transition to autonomous mining, so that problem is well on the way to being put down for good. Although we more or less solved that problem years ago with a little backsliding recently [0].

That 'mining breeds misery' comment is simply not correct for Australia; most miners are pretty chipper at all the money they are making relative to everyone else. May as well say 'overly abundant food breeds misery' or 'computer games breed misery'.

[0] https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/bla...

Not subsidise but require!

> If mineral companies could provided better safer environments there would be less harm from mining and everyone could go about their business blind to the costs of mining

Running an unsafe mine is a choice. A choice to drive down standards so you can drive down prices and win market share. The correct mechanism for paying for safety is higher market prices, by removing unsafe operators from the market and fining their profits.

It's also reasonable to make sure the workers are allowed to organize their own safety, usually through a union. These kinds of historic horrific fatalities were part of the drive for unionization in the first place.

Dump more money into mining and more mining will happen (much as what happens with farm subsidies.). This probably wouldn’t achieve the reduction in suffering you’re looking for.

More mining, or mining becomes more expensive, in order to transfer the subsidies to various parties profiting from the mining in the first place.

Unless coupled with laws enforcing increased safety health&standards, or at least having the money earmarked for that, there's no reason for a company to improve on those.

I don't know that that is true. Imagine buying more land is super pricey. So it pays to invest more in existing mines.

We could also subsidize a less wasteful economy. Buying less stuff, using it longer, repairing it and ultimately recycling as much of it as possible is a very effective way of reducing the need for minerals.

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