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Comment by mattacular | Hacker News Reader

I see all the staunch supporters of deregulation across the board that normally come out of the woodwork on HN are strangely absent.

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I am not one of those supporters, I think. But there is a disconnect here (and I was guilty of it for many years): when regular people think of regulations, they think about sensible rules that protect them, the workers, or the environment.

When lobbyists, industry, and politicians think of regulations, they tend to think mostly about how to protect the established industry from startups. By adding sufficient red tape in places where it's not really required, they can effectively create moats for existing oligopolies.

In this case, the bad regulation that shouldn’t have happened was when Congress stepped in and broke a strike. Perhaps if the union was allowed to freely negotiate with a strike, this wouldn’t have happened?

It shouldn't be dependent on that condition. We shouldn't require unions to keep the general public safe from corporate malfeasance.

Well you know how they always say "the market will regulate itself"? The issue they like to forget is that you or a family member may be part of the first 346 dead from the Boeing Max disaster or you live in Palestine, Ohio before the market regulates itself.

I mean you could argue that part of this was exactly the result of government intervention is one of the strikes that railway workers were working for was better safety rules and more time off and then Congress forced the strike to end.

Government intervention and government regulation are not the same thing.

most people against regulation are not against it because they think fewer rules is inherently better. this is a strawman. the strongest argument against regulation is that bad regulation can make a situation worse. the government preventing a strike is a bad regulation.

The government set new labor requirements on the rail industry. How is that not regulation?

Reminding me of my younger days, during my lolbertarian phase where I thought people would do the right thing and have safety procedures in place because "market forces" would shut them down if people died. To be that naive again...

Libertarian or anarchist? Because libertarians do think the government should regulate externalities.

The immediate aftermath of a catastrophic failure of the regulatory state seems like an odd moment to take smug shots at opponents of the regulatory state.

You seem confused. The problem here was deregulation of safety standards.

This deregulation was thanks to lobbying, and strike breaking; _not_ regulation.

Hope this is clear, and not setting off your 'smug' trigger; because what I feel right now is fury, not smugness.

What deregulation are you referring to? And are you just extrapolating or did it directly cause this? I’m not seeing that in the article I read (which is not a his one because it’s unreadable on mobile for me)

Documents show that when current transportation safety rules were first created, a federal agency sided with industry lobbyists and limited regulations governing the transport of hazardous compounds. The decision effectively exempted many trains hauling dangerous materials — including the one in Ohio — from the “high-hazard” classification and its more stringent safety requirements.

Amid the lobbying blitz against stronger transportation safety regulations, Norfolk Southern paid executives millions and spent billions on stock buybacks — all while the company shed thousands of employees despite warnings that understaffing is intensifying safety risks. Norfolk Southern officials also fought off a shareholder initiative that could have required company executives to “assess, review, and mitigate risks of hazardous material transportation.”

... the Obama administration in 2014 proposed improving safety regulations for trains carrying petroleum and other hazardous materials. However, after industry pressure, the final measure ended up narrowly focused on the transport of crude oil and exempting trains carrying many other combustible materials, including the chemical involved in this weekend’s disaster.

Then came 2017: After rail industry donors delivered more than $6 million to GOP campaigns, the Trump administration — backed by rail lobbyists and Senate Republicans — rescinded part of that rule aimed at making better braking systems widespread on the nation’s rails.

Specifically, regulators killed provisions requiring rail cars carrying hazardous flammable materials to be equipped with electronic braking systems to stop trains more quickly than conventional air brakes. Norfolk Southern had previously touted the new technology — known as Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes — for its “potential to reduce train stopping distances by as much as 60 percent over conventional air brake systems.”

But the company’s lobby group nonetheless pressed for the rule’s repeal, telling regulators that it would “impose tremendous costs without providing offsetting safety benefits.”

That argument won out with Trump officials — and the Biden administration has not moved to reinstate the brake rule or expand the kinds of trains subjected to tougher safety regulations.

“Would ECP brakes have reduced the severity of this accident? Yes,” Steven Ditmeyer, a former senior official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), told The Lever. “The railroads will test new features. But once they are told they have to do it… they don’t want to spend the money.”

Norfolk Southern did not answer questions about its efforts to weaken safety mandates. The company also did not answer questions about what kind of braking system was operating on the train that derailed in Ohio.

- from https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rule...

If a car ran off a cliff you’d say “I see the advocates for using the brakes are strangely absent” and if a car got hit by a train sitting on the tracks you’d say “I see the advocates for using the accelerator are strangely absent.” Nobody is against regulation and nobody is for it. It’s like saying people are pro water or anti water.

I really would like to know what you're talking about in your analogy because it has about nothing to do with the reality we're facing.

Remember the hyper liberal president Joe Biden, you know the one the more right media claims to be completely communist. Yea, that one that stopped the railroad workers from striking due to bad work conditions.

And do you remember the railroad workers that want to strike because every factor around safety is being cut putting them in a dangerous work environment? Single engineers running trains? Inspection times being cut? The ones not allowed to take sick days?

Saying nobody is against regulation is a lie. The owners of these companies seeking as much profit as possible are a testament to that.

Did this happen due to decreased regulation? Or in spite it is of current regulations?

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