The Point is 4,500 Miles That Way

There's missing the point and then there's missing the point. At Big Government, they miss the point. A lot. With gusto.

Today, Bret Jacobson hits us with an absolutely ridiculous article about ergonomics (bad!), OSHA (really bad!!) and government regulation (COMMIEFaciIsmlamoLiberalTerroristS!!!1!!eleventy) complete with a completely absurd political cartoon (why does a camel represent record keeping? Is that something only muslims do?).

Have these people never read The Jungle?

I would like to point out that secretaries get carpel tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries. There's no qualifier there, we get them. If you are a secretary, you will most likely be injured and perhaps disabled because of your work. You can spend 4, 6 or 8 straight hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year typing in poor ergonomic situations and avoid injury.

We have 8 secretaries in my office. Of them, 2 have had surgery for carpel tunnel that got to the point where they couldn't button their own shirts, 1 has surgery scheduled for this summer and the rest of us have problems to some degree. I've already started dropping things that I would swear I am holding quite firmly.

Why do we all have carpel tunnel? Bad ergonomics. The above picture is the ideal position for typing. Nobody here has that setup. In order to put my feet flat on the floor, my chair has to be so low, my arms are level with my breasts. The top of my monitor is level with my nose. Everybody's setup is like this, in one way or another. None of it is good for our joints or muscles. We all have sore necks, sore backs, and wrist problems.

Of course I know that all this can be fixed, but my boss isn't going to spend the money to do so unless he has to. (And my increasing disability is not a "has to" for him.) We're not talking about a lot of money, mind you. The fixes wouldn't bankrupt him by any stretch. We've looked into it here. He spends more on copy paper in six months than the one time fix for our collective ergonomic situation. I, unfortunately, cannot replace my desk, even assuming he would allow it, which I doubt.

My point is, government regulation is not a bad thing. It forces companies to do things for the safety of their employees and customers that the company would otherwise have no incentive to do. The Republican ideal seems to be that corporations have a right to make money at the expense of injury to employees and customers.

If you want an example, take a look at Toyota. It's becoming clear that they knew about the problem with their cars for years, but fixing the problem would have cost them money and wtf do they care if you can't stop your car or drive the speed you intend to? How about the unregulated dietary supplements that contained 200 times the amount of selenium advertised on the bottle, sickening over 200 people?

As for the libertarian ideal that the market will fix it all and people won't buy products from companies like that- bullshit. Toyota was the word in quality cars- right up until the story broke that their cars hadn't been quality for years.

Libertarian Ideals

homophobia, homosexual, christian, christianity, bigotry, discrimination, libertarian, government, regulation, gay
Our friend emissary has learned something about himself: he's okay with government regulations against businesses discriminating against blacks, not so much when the regulations protect gays.

I ran across a very interesting forum discussion that caused me to question some things I had always assumed. It all came down to a simple question: Should government be able to regulate who whom! WHOM! a private business must (or must not) serve? In researching further on terms brought up by the discussion, I found that one person was arguing what's known as "the libertarian concept of freedom of association".

The libertarian concept of freedom of association is often rebuked from a moral/ethical context. Under laws in such a system, business owners could refuse service to anyone for whatever reason. Opponents argue that such practices are regressive and would lead to greater prejudice within society. Right-libertarians sympathetic to freedom of association, such as Richard Epstein, respond that in a case of refusing service (which thus is a case of the freedom of contract) unjustified discrimination incurs a cost and therefore a competitive disadvantage. (wikipedia: freedom of association) i provided the link, i'm not sure why emissary couldn't.

Here's my problem with libertarian ideas: they look great on paper, but fail to take real human behavior into account. Our current economic crisis is the result of unregulated capitalism. Libertarians will argue that regulations on businesses are bad, that businesses will, if left to their own devices, be run in a manner that produces the most profit and the least loss, and that businesses that are run badly will fail. There is no need for government to interfere. That, of course, fails to take into account that certain greedy assholes will cheerfully run a business into the ground in order to achieve personal short-term gain, and that there are enough greedy assholes out there to do serious damage to the world's economy. (see: reality)

Let's look at the explanation of freedom of association above. " unjustified discrimination incurs a cost and therefore a competitive disadvantage." Sounds true, doesn't it? Refuse to serve between 5 and 10% of the population, and you will be at a competitive disadvantage to the other businesses who do serve that market. However, this is not the reality we live in.

If every business in the area refuses to serve homosexuals on religious grounds, then the business that does serve homosexuals is likely to lose a significant portion of its business, the people who agree with emissary. Unless the number of homosexuals in the community is larger than the number of homophobes in the community, serving homosexuals puts businesses at a disadvantage. Therefore, homosexuals will not be served.

Government regulation solves this problem. Every business has to serve every segment of the population- homosexuals, blacks, women, atheists, muslims, etc.- and therefore no segment remains unserved. Because of the regulation, businesses can hide behind "well, we don't really have a choice" if someone like emissary complains.

I do like the end of the post, where emissary almost has an epiphany about his own bigotry. Almost.

Growing up, I learned about prejudices against people because of their differences (especially race and religion). So I had never before questioned that government should have laws like this in place.But the homosexual marriage issue has caused me to pause and really think about it.