[drjolly]

I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. Companies can prioritize profits over people again. Yeah, dump in the rivers, dump in the woods, just drive around in circles dumping in an empty lot. You don’t need masks- give everyone cancer and blow some shit up, maybe get some acid burns. Super-fund sites? When was the last one we had anyway- we need more of ‘em- lots more! Let’s let the kids eat the lead paint and complain of the smells wafting into their cars from the chemical, paper, etc. plants on road trips, just like the olden days!

[heavyset_go]

> I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration.

The effects are functionally the same, but I think the ideology and rhetoric behind then and now have changed.

There really isn't a purportedly "principled" system of logic behind these decisions, in the past these decisions would be dressed in principled rhetoric no matter how heinous they realistically were.

They aren't even bothering to dress it up in rhetoric that says there is something noble behind these decisions.

[tehjoker]

The principle is the rate of profit is falling, competing countries are rising, and they want to unleash the private sector in the hopes of raising GDP growth significantly enough to retain hegemony. This won't work, because they're fucking stupid, and they'll damage the health of the population and the productivity of the land and waters going forward, but there is a logic to it.

[heavyset_go]

I agree, I'm commenting on the outward justifications that are used to placate the public.

In the past, a mountain of ideology and rhetoric would justify these decisions to the common person in an effort manufacture consent. They aren't even bothering to do that.

[atmavatar]

It's more like the current administration and the billionaires behind them are acting like private equity. Now that they have control of the government, they'll dismantle anything they can and set us on a path to destruction to squeeze out every bit of value they can for themselves.

Those most responsible are either betting they won't be around long enough to deal with the smouldering wreckage or planning to ditch before the country hits rock bottom.

[Euphorbium]

Remember when putting lead into atmosphere made entire gnerations stupid by lowering IQs? Maybe that is the goal.

[potato3732842]

In a kind of ironic way, if those people hadn't been so goddamn stupid maybe the government institutions they created and expanded wouldn't all be reputationally bankrupt and subject to dismantling by populist billionares.

[hedora]

The 1950’s were when the US set up many of the post war institutions that are being dismantled now. Maybe you mean the 1850’s? (Though I’d guess the government was probably more forward looking back then too.)

[PicassoCTs]

The ideology of "infinite growth" is driving on bare metall by now, every movement proofing more and more, that it has used it all up, the momentum, the resources, the people who belief in its tale.

The building up backlash is going to be horrific and i hope it will not lead to decomplexification movements ala pol pot or islamism.

[immibis]

Is THIS not the decomplexification movement?

[mistrial9]

looking at this at a different angle, some companies do practice health and safety AND there are egregious acts of pollution.. consider this next part .. many practices in the early 1900s would be outrageous today and even bad actor companies have changed since then, as a given. It is IMHO both the avoidable, known acts today AND the unknown, under-counted actions of today that will be so painfully obvious at some time decades from now. A legal environment where cost cutting in the cost centers of environmental compliance are openly prioritized, includes disasters of knowns and the unknowns.

In closing, I do not think it is like the 1950s in that basic science has identified and amplified many fundamental advances since then, materials science is sci-fi now compared to then, but it is similar in the economic-first and actively thumbing the nose at all things green and eco regarding the market.

[nerdsniper]

I wrote elsewhere:

> Please note that the CSB is not an enforcement agency - they don’t assign fault or levee fines or bring any charges or write any regulation.

[rectang]

CSB investigations still represent an objective source of truth which competes with the PR that companies put out absolving themselves of blame in the event of any mishap. Removing the CSB frees up companies to "self-regulate" and blast out bogus framings.

[potato3732842]

Do OSHA and the EPA not have dual jurisdiction with the CSB on these matters?

[monkeyelite]

> an objective source of truth

An alternative source with different incentives and culture, not an objective one.

[kurikuri]

Nuance is not always a good thing. This type of nuance doesn’t forward the discussion in any way and, in this case, muddies the waters and leads to some odd implications. Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word, but the term objective in this case has meaning that the author is trying to articulate… most likely that there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives.

Additionally, by stating that the CSB provides an ‘alternative source’ of truth, as a correction to an originally described objective one, you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth, rhetorically raising the value of the information the company provides while lowering the value of the CSB information.

Don’t be the person who adds nuance for the sake of nuance.

[rectang]

> Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word

I regret my imprecise use of language which has taken us down this tiresome metaphysical subthread. I should have merely emphasized that the CSB presents an alternative point of view to that of the company. It was not essential to my point that the CSB be unassailable.

[kurikuri]

Ah, I was being a bit sarcastic in my response to monkeyelite, I believe I understood what you wrote and was trying to get at the vacuity of their response to you.

I derailed this conversation to make a meta point, and it wasn’t your fault at all.

[monkeyelite]

> there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives.

Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.

> you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth

Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government.

> Don’t be the person who adds nuance for the sake of nuance.

The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad.

What are the costs and benefits to this organization? It appears some sub threads have identified a possible overlap with other agency’s responsibility. It would be interesting to know the extent that is true.

[kurikuri]

> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.

Sure, I agree with what you’ve stated here.

> Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government.

I reread what I wrote and still don’t see that I framed the conversation in this way. What I did frame was the motivation of the company (which I implied to be profit) versus the motive of the government (that of public interest). These are both biased and the effect of the bias could be anticipated: companies would slant their published information with a focus on the effects of profits, whereas the government’s overt bias would slant its information output towards safety (in the case of the CSB) without much concern for profit.

> The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad.

Sure, we both agree the author is biased towards the government, but you’ve missed the thrust of what I wrote entirely: your nuance added absolutely no value to the discussion, it didn’t make a point or refute anything the author said.

[fireflash38]

You believe in multiple sources to verify truth. Then why are you arguing against one of these sources? Why are you (effectively) saying that we should just trust a single source of truth - the companies who have explicit financial incentives to deceive?

[ordu]

> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.

It is just metaphysics. I like it also, but it is impractical. I find it useful to train my mind to see things from different angles, but it is useless to talk about concrete things.

Can you find examples of a biased reports on CSB's youtube channel? If not, it is a good example of uselessness of metaphysics. If you are declaring all their reports biased, while being unable to show the bias, it is just empty words.

[nsriv]

Re: overlap with other agency's responsibility

So you would prefer that only one agency speak with one voice on a subject? Sounds very counter to the "multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth" principle you espoused. In practice, government agencies often have disagreements in areas of overlap and hash it out before making a public recommendation, or settling on a course of action.

[intermerda]

> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.

Do you believe in priors? Or do you evaluate each perspective at its face value?

> Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government.

That's not the dichotomy here. It's a biased government acting on behalf of biased companies.

> The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad.

The only discourse you personally have contributed is "both sides."

> What are the costs and benefits to this organization? It appears some sub threads have identified a possible overlap with other agency’s responsibility. It would be interesting to know the extent that is true.

Sounds like you are intentionally giving benefit of doubt to well-known bad faith actors. This makes you incredibly naive at best, or biased sealioner at worst.

[ordu]

Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge.

Going this way we'll risk to end up in a world, where there is no truth and no falsehoods. All we'll have is something in between. It would take just one small step to say that any two opinions are equal in their utility.

You know, it is like Kremlin propaganda targets idea of "independent media", pointing out that any media is not truly independent, it depends on someone or something. It gets its funding from somewhere, it is subject of some laws and of abuses of law. It needs to take into an account interests of sponsors and from those who wield power. The core message for Russians is: Kremlin propaganda can be bad, but no worse than anything else. Or it can be reworded as: anything is propaganda. Therefore you can relax and just watch news of state television, because you'll never know the truth no matter how hard you tried.

It seems to me, that you are going in the same rough direction by rejecting objectiveness.

[monkeyelite]

> Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge.

That’s a good observation. Generally when talking about humans in a political context and organizations in general it’s a misnomer.

There are other contexts where it’s not.

[esseph]

We are living in a post-truth world, and more specifically, a post truth country in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/informed-societies/post...

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14214

[ordu]

Oh, it is all about dumb people who cannot navigate the current informational landscape. Or about people who relies on informational processing disabilities of others. It doesn't mean that smart people should reject the notions of truth and false.

[rectang]

That's technically true but underplays the extent to which company self-enforcement PR is malicious nonsense at odds with reality. Companies are amoral piles of money which will do anything to become larger piles of money, and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest.

[monkeyelite]

> and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest.

I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests.

[feoren]

> I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests.

I do. I know a group of people that would happily let you shatter every window in their home if you also agreed to burn down the house of their brown-skinned neighbor next door. The same group of people that would cheerfully let you grope their own daughter's genitals if it meant that trans people suffered far worse. The same group of people who would gleefully give up their rights to due process if it meant that people who talk differently from them can be sent to prison camps en masse. The same group of people who cheer at the idea of letting the poor and sick die alone on the street, even as you do everything you can to keep them poor and sick themselves. This group will take any bargain against their own interests as long as others are suffering worse, and they will brag and cheer about it the whole time. And there are tens of millions of them.

[ordu]

Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism. Moreover it altruism is not just something that people do, because they are culturally programmed to believe, that altruism exists. Examples of altruistic behavior are known for many species, including those, that cannot pass complex concepts from one generation to the next by telling fairy tales to their offspring.

Economics tends to use model where every agent is a total egoistic rationalist, and likely it is one of the reasons why the society tolerate totally egoistic corporations. You claimed in other comment that you believe that everything is biased? Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism?

[vharuck]

People who donate money or time to charity. Volunteer firefighters. There's a massive list, really. Overall, kindness is a very common trait. Why else would we have so many countries with welfare programs, even for classes of citizens the majority will never belong to?

[spauldo]

Voters?

[hn_throwaway_99]

I don't necessarily think that goes against what the parent commenter is saying. The CSB does apparently do investigations and root cause analysis of chemical accidents and spills - in my mind they sound analogous to the NTSB and how they investigate aviation accidents.

So, by that analogy, I think the NTSB is amazing and has done crucial, instrumental work that makes flying safer (as the saying goes, aviation regulations are written in blood). So I think getting rid of the CSB sounds colossally stupid, and I think it's elimination could lead to a willingness by companies to be more careless when it comes to chemical safety.

[jandrewrogers]

To be honest, I’d never heard of them until now. Industry runs on Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), which are privately produced. The thing is, the hazards for chemicals at least are highly standardized. The nature of e.g. ammonium perchlorate doesn’t change much depending on where it comes from. No one needs to write their own MSDS.

Safety operationally is regulated by OSHA, based on the MSDS among other things. It isn’t entirely clear where the CSB fits in. There aren’t many surprises in chemistry and OSHA is aggressive.

The safety protocols are pretty straightforward forward and strict, there isn’t much novelty in chemical disasters. Chemical disasters are virtually always for stupid reasons covered by other regulatory organizations.

[nerdsniper]

MSDS is just a small part of process safety. CSB deals with the very largest industrial accidents. These are at plants where millions of pounds of chemical flow through any pipe every day.

The examples you mention about MSDS sounds relevant to a large building/warehouse, but we’re talking about massive industrial complexes nearly equal to the area encompassing all of Seattle+Bellevue+Redmond+Renton+Tukwila.

At that scale, there are still plenty of surprises. Like, “oh shit, I didn’t realize the new version of the lubricating oil the manufacturer recommends for our massive pumps have a different additive that reacts with an impurity in our process stream which catalyzes an exothermic reaction”.

I highly recommend a very short book named “What Went Wrong” by Trevor Kletz. It’s surprisingly entertaining and walks you through basic things that have caused disasters at countless chemical plants over and over again.

[EvanAnderson]

I learned about the CSB listening to the Causality podcast[0]. The various chemical plant mishaps described there make me think there's ample need for the CSB.

[0] https://engineered.network/causality/

[rectang]

> I think it's elimination could lead to a willingness by companies to be more careless when it comes to chemical safety

And that's the point, is it not? Create a wider space for companies to "innovate" within, at the expense of those harmed by company actions but without the resources to seek redress.

[smadge]

What knowledge are you trying to impart with this fact?

Do CSB recommendations inform policy? Do CSB recommendations get implemented? Do CSB recommendations when implemented increase safety?

[nerdsniper]

I think if the goal is to “de-regulate”, there are other agencies that could be shut down instead. CSB provides all companies with the know-how to choose to prevent giant disasters. Shutting down this agency may be motivated by a desire to reduce regulation but it’s really counterproductive.

Someone who is against regulation might still support the work of CSB because it assists the operations of any de-regulated industries.

[12_throw_away]

> the old school 1950s views

Hmmm, 1950s attitudes, hmm. What if we consider the hypothesis that the animus towards the CSB is for the absolute stupidest reasons possible? Here are the 3 current CSB board members [1-3].

[1] https://www.csb.gov/members/board-member-catherine-sandoval-...

[2] https://www.csb.gov/members/board-member-sylvia-e-johnson-ph...

[3] https://www.csb.gov/members/board-member-steve-owens-/

[rurban]

Just charge them with murder and those practices will stop.

[spacecadet]

LOL Super-fund site? You mean private equity opportunity for a housing development!

[throw0101c]

> I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. Companies can prioritize profits over people again.

This is not from the 1950s, but from the 1970s, most famously (though others piled on after Friedman's (in)famous NYT letter):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

In the mid-twentieth century corporate management's focus was more broad:

> This view was shared not only by scholars but, surprisingly, by many corporate executives. In 1949 General Foods’ president Clarence Francis told Congress that he had a “three-way responsibility to the American consumer, to our associates in this business, and to the 68,000 [stockholders in General Foods]. We . . . would serve (the company’s) interests badly by shifting the fruits of the enterprise too heavily toward any one of those groups.” Two years later, the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey claimed that managers needed “to conduct the affairs of the enterprise in such a way as to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly interested groups—stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large.” So widespread were such views that, in 1959, one writer in the Harvard Business Review complained that it was no longer “fashionable for the corporation to take gleeful pride in making money.” Instead, he complained, it was typical “for the corporation to show that it is a great innovator; more specifically, a great public benefactor; and, very particularly, that it exists ‘to serve the public’.”

> Even the law bent, at least a bit, toward this “social” view of corporate purpose. When the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld corporate charitable donations in its 1956 A.P. Smith Manufacturing Co. decision, it rested its judgment less on any benefit that would accrue to the company than on the belief that corporations had responsibilities beyond those owed to shareholders; corporations needed, the court held, to “acknowledge and discharge social as well as private responsibilities as members of the communities within which they operate.”

* https://www2.law.temple.edu/10q/purpose-corporation-brief-hi...

The fact that people do not know this history, and think that corporation and capitalism was 'always' about only making money, limits the options under discussions for fixing some of the social ills we are experiencing currently. Yes: corporations need to (at least) break even to survive, and ideally have some sort of return, but there are degrees to which they have to push to accomplish this.

* https://beatricecherrier.wordpress.com/2025/06/18/beyond-pro...

Some of the highest levels of economic growth (and its distribution to all) was done during times when shareholder primacy was not the main goal—though there were other factors, which may or may not be replicable, that helped with that growth:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_American_...

[potato3732842]

>In the mid-twentieth century corporate management's focus was more broad:

I think part of the reason for this decline in thinking was that government regulators came into the picture and so they became the "public" that needed pleasing and over time they all got bought or otherwise captured via revolving door and other mechanisms.

>The fact that people do not know this history, and think that corporation and capitalism was 'always' about only making money,

There's no incentive for anyone who stands to advance their ideology by point out the abuse of corporations to inject such nuance.

This is SOP for policy extremists. They'll never show you any potential middle ground, they want you to skip over it toward the solution they're peddling.

[userbinator]

[flagged]

[heavyset_go]

> The US saw how China rose to dominate manufacturing, and would like to go back to being a manufacturing power again.

If that were the case, the US would be dumping trillions into spinning up manufacturing like China did.

The US has the power to do this, they did it during WWII, and like it or not, this current era requires heavy strategic investments that may not produce returns for decades, if at all. It's what China is doing and if the US were trying to compete, they'd do the same. We were getting somewhat close to this with the CHIPS Act, but that's on the chopping block[1], too.

Truth is US capital is happy to sell off manufacturing capability to cash in on cheap labor, and there is no monetary incentive to re-shore manufacturing capacity unless the government provides serious incentives or does it themselves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act#Subseque...

[Applejinx]

I don't believe the actions being taken are really conducive to manufacturing greatness, or indeed technological greatness in any sense. I'd lump elimination of this board with elimination of obscure aviation safety committees normal people would never know about: actions that don't bear scrutiny at face value.

i.e. perhaps the whole point is that breaking these things will do damage and lower the status and functionality of the United States, making it actively worse by a considerable amount and sabotaging key structural parts normal people wouldn't even know were there.

In short, it's possible that it being bad is the point.

[vkou]

Strangely enough, I'm not seeing anyone lining up to take $3/hr jobs sewing t-shirts for sale to China.

[tehwebguy]

[flagged]

[atomicfiredoll]

My understanding from folks outside the U.S. is that they desire U.S. products because they trust the safety more. I'm not sure everyone quite understands that by gutting [regulations], they trash part of their international advantage.

I'm no expert, but even if they somehow managed to get manufacturing back, slashing your competitive advantages and just taking the market position of "China 2: This time it's more expensive" doesn't strike me as a winner for exports.

[garte]

Biden actually tried that and bringing the country forward at the same time. It didn't pass and Republicans decried it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal

Now they're going back 70 years instead of moving forward. Big brains there.

[b00ty4breakfast]

They're gonna be sorely disappointed if they thing de-regulation is the path to bringing back some pre-lapsarian golden age of American manufacturing that didn't actually exist

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

[flagged]

[Loughla]

You're being down voted but you're right.

Bringing manufacturing back is a stated goal of this administration.

Nevermind that you're not going to convince an American to work for Chinese wages in a sweatshop. Ignore that.

But the intended outcome of everything Dump is doing is to de-emphasize advanced education, bring back all basic manufacturing, and restore the "traditional" American values (white, straight, Christian). It's an absolutely stupid idea, but he's been pretty clear about it.