From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Dec 14 2000 - 09:27:39 MST
phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Raphael Sullivan) writes:
> On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 16:44:43 EST
> Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
>
> > Damien, My major problem with this attitude on the part of the Swedes is that
> > I don't know hardly anything that is completely safe. Do you suppose that as
> > they start to notice the harmful aspects of common household and industrial
> > substances they will begin outlawing those substances retroactively? Will
>
> Note they're not banning _everything_. They're saying substances which are
> persistent and bioaccumulative are banned unless they can be shown to not be
> toxic. Does that really seem like a bad idea?
As I pointed out, the problem is that the rules will likely be used
much more broadly than in the reasonable way you mention
above. Retroactive banning is not that far off, I seem to recall a few
products being subjected to that (the most famous case involved a very
effective anti-mosquito salve, that was banned just before a record
mosquito year - producing a thriving black market and a lot of likely
worse substitutes), and extending it against new things if not legally
then at least rhetorically is also popular.
The problem isn't that we require people to demonstrate that their
products are safe before they are released widely, the problem is that
risk aversiveness combined with technocratic governments can be a
serious and dangerous brake. I think we can avoid getting future PCB
and mercury disasters without having to rely on heavyhanded
interventions and fearful pessimism.
The trick is to make it uneconomical to produce anything that may have
very bad long term effects, for example by having to pay a
compensation. The producer would be motivated to make the risk smaller
than the potential profit. Then we might need to think about some fine
tuning so that we get a good safety margin and can deal with
short-term companies ("In today's fluid goo market, this company won't
be around in five years - it will have become something else by
then. So I don't have to worry about mutations in my nanites over that
timespan.")
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