I acknowledge your concern, but also wish to point out that the emphasis/tone is slightly misdirected [fn]
India certainly has a long way to go on this front. It feels very reminiscent of the US circa the gilded age roughly a century ago (Eg: look up worker safety in manufacturing, or fire safety scandals in NYC from back then). I’m sure Europe had a similar story. A society that is experiencing real and somewhat sustained growth for the first time is going to learn some hard lessons through the process, and then be forced into improvements to prevent the ugly side-effects. But the growth engine must first get going, before what seems like “overheads” can be paid from the surplus — and it likely will take a few decades. But you’d be surprised at the extent to which culture can change in a couple of generations (and how many bedrock cultural behaviors are relatively young).
[fn] This is crucial for learning the right lessons, and inspiring the right response. It is certainly a solvable problem, it’s important to look at history to understand how other societies solved the problem after similar growth pangs.
I’m not so sure. This argument reduces to "sacrifices are required in order to industrialize." You would perhaps feel differently if you were the sacrifice. Or your spouse. Or child.
I might even agree with that argument, if it was true. I’m not above saying that it’s worthwhile for a society to sacrifice slaves in order to grow. Empirically, that was an effective strategy. But I wouldn’t want to live in a society with slaves. And that’s the level at which this argument must be reduced to, because someone who dies with no recourse due to their society’s goals is little more than a slave.
The question is, are you absolutely certain that the suffering you’re referring to is a requirement of industrialization? I’m not qualified to answer that, but it would be interesting to hear whether you feel it’s true.
Firstly, it’s an enormous human tragedy, and I’m not justifying it. I’m trying to understand why the problem seems so widespread.
"sacrifices are required in order to industrialize."
No, I’m making a different point. I’m not saying it ought to be that way (to industrialize) — only why it’s so naturally, and therefore what changes are needed to improve.
Safety margins in construction, and proper regulation/inspection are “overheads” which can only be paid once you have surplus (economic productivity). In some cases, the extra cost is minimal (just preventing corruption/carelessness in an already sufficient process/design), but in other cases it requires being willing to pay extra “for safety”, so it becomes a question of affordability & access eg: traveling in a well built car rather than an auto rickshaw, or discarding food past the "sell by" date.
To use another example from a sibling comment: a dozen children being crammed into an auto rickshaw on school commutes. Suppose the society starts enforcing a law mandating that no more than 3 humans (incl children) can travel in an auto rickshaw at once. The consequence is that the cost of commute has now increased manifold — does that take it beyond the regime of affordability for some fraction of the population — Will the kids now have to walk/cycle to school instead? What tradeoffs would those kids/families prefer?
So investing in safety requires not just that the business under consideration be profitable, but also that all customers have enough economic productivity which manifests in their willingness to spend larger amounts and demand safety and/or raise the floor forbidding unsafe products.
Reasoning in analogy with a minimum wage — if you raise the level too high, you just rule out a whole bunch of low-surplus economic activity. To make the trade off worthwhile, and not forbid essential economic activity, the wage floor can only be raised in tandem with economic productivity.
Consumer goods at least segment markets with price discrimination, so richer people can buy Eg. larger+safer cars. But they might have to drive on the same roads as everyone else (potholes and all), or use the same cable cars (to borrow an example from a sibling comment), or use the same medication — because "infrastructure" that needs to serve a larger population can only match the average (cumulative, in some cases) productivity. It’s an example where inequality hurts — however rich a single consumer might be, they only have access to are what the rest of the market is willing to buy (made viable with economies of scale).
Finally, what I'm trying to point out is that these are not "sacrifices in order to grow" (i.e. investments) to some rosy future -- these are tradeoffs necessary for functioning today. Growth is a separate story -- if and when it does happen, the prosperity helps bootstrap the system into safer operating modes, for which we may be thankful.
Are you sure? I’m equally skeptical of the claim that zero sacrifices are necessary in order to grow. The history of every society would seem to disagree.
The question seems to be what’s an acceptable threshold, why, and who. These aren’t easy questions. They’ve been with us since humans first started forming tribes.
(I said much the same thing as you in an adjacent comment, but it’s worth framing the sentiment in a way that’s not mistaken. Otherwise it’s little more than dogma, whether on one side or the other.)
It's sort of the same thing with "all regulations are written in blood", right? For example, many of the current set of laws, regulations and best practices that prevent people on planes from dying were only enacted after people in the past died from scenarios that were either unknown unknowns or had never been observed in practice before. And that I think applies to many types of regulations besides just aviation.
I think what I am disagreeing with is the idea that India has to learn the lessons the hard way which other places learned 100 years ago. With good administration a lot of those lessons could be learned through research, not deaths. This reduces the need to follow the same path in the same way. But it requires a will people are saying is not there.
Comments
I acknowledge your concern, but also wish to point out that the emphasis/tone is slightly misdirected [fn]
India certainly has a long way to go on this front. It feels very reminiscent of the US circa the gilded age roughly a century ago (Eg: look up worker safety in manufacturing, or fire safety scandals in NYC from back then). I’m sure Europe had a similar story. A society that is experiencing real and somewhat sustained growth for the first time is going to learn some hard lessons through the process, and then be forced into improvements to prevent the ugly side-effects. But the growth engine must first get going, before what seems like “overheads” can be paid from the surplus — and it likely will take a few decades. But you’d be surprised at the extent to which culture can change in a couple of generations (and how many bedrock cultural behaviors are relatively young).
[fn] This is crucial for learning the right lessons, and inspiring the right response. It is certainly a solvable problem, it’s important to look at history to understand how other societies solved the problem after similar growth pangs.
I’m not so sure. This argument reduces to "sacrifices are required in order to industrialize." You would perhaps feel differently if you were the sacrifice. Or your spouse. Or child.
I might even agree with that argument, if it was true. I’m not above saying that it’s worthwhile for a society to sacrifice slaves in order to grow. Empirically, that was an effective strategy. But I wouldn’t want to live in a society with slaves. And that’s the level at which this argument must be reduced to, because someone who dies with no recourse due to their society’s goals is little more than a slave.
The question is, are you absolutely certain that the suffering you’re referring to is a requirement of industrialization? I’m not qualified to answer that, but it would be interesting to hear whether you feel it’s true.
Firstly, it’s an enormous human tragedy, and I’m not justifying it. I’m trying to understand why the problem seems so widespread.
No, I’m making a different point. I’m not saying it ought to be that way (to industrialize) — only why it’s so naturally, and therefore what changes are needed to improve.
Safety margins in construction, and proper regulation/inspection are “overheads” which can only be paid once you have surplus (economic productivity). In some cases, the extra cost is minimal (just preventing corruption/carelessness in an already sufficient process/design), but in other cases it requires being willing to pay extra “for safety”, so it becomes a question of affordability & access eg: traveling in a well built car rather than an auto rickshaw, or discarding food past the "sell by" date.
To use another example from a sibling comment: a dozen children being crammed into an auto rickshaw on school commutes. Suppose the society starts enforcing a law mandating that no more than 3 humans (incl children) can travel in an auto rickshaw at once. The consequence is that the cost of commute has now increased manifold — does that take it beyond the regime of affordability for some fraction of the population — Will the kids now have to walk/cycle to school instead? What tradeoffs would those kids/families prefer?
So investing in safety requires not just that the business under consideration be profitable, but also that all customers have enough economic productivity which manifests in their willingness to spend larger amounts and demand safety and/or raise the floor forbidding unsafe products.
Reasoning in analogy with a minimum wage — if you raise the level too high, you just rule out a whole bunch of low-surplus economic activity. To make the trade off worthwhile, and not forbid essential economic activity, the wage floor can only be raised in tandem with economic productivity.
Consumer goods at least segment markets with price discrimination, so richer people can buy Eg. larger+safer cars. But they might have to drive on the same roads as everyone else (potholes and all), or use the same cable cars (to borrow an example from a sibling comment), or use the same medication — because "infrastructure" that needs to serve a larger population can only match the average (cumulative, in some cases) productivity. It’s an example where inequality hurts — however rich a single consumer might be, they only have access to are what the rest of the market is willing to buy (made viable with economies of scale).
Finally, what I'm trying to point out is that these are not "sacrifices in order to grow" (i.e. investments) to some rosy future -- these are tradeoffs necessary for functioning today. Growth is a separate story -- if and when it does happen, the prosperity helps bootstrap the system into safer operating modes, for which we may be thankful.
We absolutely do not have to sacrifice human lives to grow, and the lessons learned in other countries are readily available to study.
Are you sure? I’m equally skeptical of the claim that zero sacrifices are necessary in order to grow. The history of every society would seem to disagree.
The question seems to be what’s an acceptable threshold, why, and who. These aren’t easy questions. They’ve been with us since humans first started forming tribes.
(I said much the same thing as you in an adjacent comment, but it’s worth framing the sentiment in a way that’s not mistaken. Otherwise it’s little more than dogma, whether on one side or the other.)
It's sort of the same thing with "all regulations are written in blood", right? For example, many of the current set of laws, regulations and best practices that prevent people on planes from dying were only enacted after people in the past died from scenarios that were either unknown unknowns or had never been observed in practice before. And that I think applies to many types of regulations besides just aviation.
I think what I am disagreeing with is the idea that India has to learn the lessons the hard way which other places learned 100 years ago. With good administration a lot of those lessons could be learned through research, not deaths. This reduces the need to follow the same path in the same way. But it requires a will people are saying is not there.