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Comment by supercanuck | Hacker News Reader

How would the free market prevent the Fertilizer plant from exploding and killing all those people?

The industry under discussion (communications) generally does not risk lives, i.e., no catastrophe when you screw up.

Some types of industry do risk lives. Don't confuse safety regulations with other business regulations. They serve completely different purposes.

We should regulate the hell out of fertilizer depots, power generators, medical software, flight. For good reason.

Communications can, in fact, kill people. High-intensity electromagnetic emissions. Those cell towers in the middle of the city have to be very thougthfully planned and installed.

If "high-intensity electromagnetic emissions" from cell towers kill people, I doubt making them safe is just a matter of placement.

If you want to place some in the middle of a city, they will be close to a lot of people, and if their emissions kill people, it's probably not a good idea to place them near lots of people. But they have been placed pretty much everywhere. It appears that either you're overstating the dangers, or we're both about to die any second now.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedian_protester.png

How did the regulated market prevent it from blowing up?

How did a law against murder prevent murders from happening?

If you've been paying any attention at all to the West, TX, story, you'd be aware that the regulators were largely defundend and eviscerated by anti-regulation interests.

Gov. Perry got a little steamed when his "Business is Booming" campaign was highlighted:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/perry-disgusted-by-ca...

Edit: better story link to cartoon.

Fertilizer plants are expensive? As are wrongful death lawsuits?

Not saying this is enough but no one is exploding these things for profit.

Tort reform in Texas HIGHLY limits the payout on a wrongful death lawsuit. It'd barely be a dent in a days business for the plant.

Explosions are very bad for business not only is your valuable plant destroyed but you can't make fertilizer until you build a new one. Existing and potential employees would demand higher wages and/or increased safety measures after an accident. Neither the free free nor a regulatory body can reliably prevent all accidents. Probably has more to do with how the interested parties value life and property.

That's a great theory, but real life has shown time and time again that businesses don't always act in their own long-term interests and individuals aren't rational actors. And people aren't satisfied when the "cost of business" to reach the end-goal of having poor businesses weeded out is people's lives.

Except they work on the idea "oh that will never happen", ala BP oil rig explosions.

They refused to build a blast wall and congress defunded inspections so the last one was in the 90s so there was never any enforcement.

Theoretically civil lawsuits, or the threat of such.

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