A tourist caught driving with a kayak tied cross-ways across his car roof told shocked police that he was just trying to preserve his vehicle.
via ‘What were you thinking?’: Police shocked at tourist driver – National News | TVNZ.
‘What were you thinking?’: Police shocked at tourist driver – National News | TVNZ
16 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, health and safety, transport economics Tags: health and safety
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Did which of the Great Enrichment and OSHA make the workplace safer?
01 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, health and safety, labour economics Tags: health and safety, labour economics, The Great Enrichment
Original source of graph: Viscusi, W. Kip, John M. Vernon, and Joseph E. Harrington, Jr. Economics of Regulation and Antitrust. 2nd ed. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992, page 714.
HT: Art Diamond
What occupations are the most dangerous?
29 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in health and safety, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: health and safety, labour economics
This is how babies used to fly on airplanes
25 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, technological progress Tags: health and safety, safety regulation, Transport safety
Wellington City Council builds inner city children’s sandpit next to red-stickered buildings marked for collapse in next earthquake
07 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, health and safety, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: economics of natural disasters, expressive voting, health and safety, Taxpayers Union, Wellington City Council
Heritage trumps safety
03 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, urban economics Tags: Christchurch earthquake, green rent seeking, health and safety, Heritage regulation
Quote of the day:
. . . Deaths in earthquakes are somewhat unavoidable. But deaths caused by regulatory structures that force that little value is placed on human life, or that prevent a building owner from tearing down a building very likely to kill a pile of people in a quake, are worse than tragic – they’restupid. Offsetting Behaviour.
It’s in a post on heritage rules which make some buildings untouchable and how the burden of providing the heritage amenity falls on the owner of the building.
He has a better idea:
I’ve suggested an alternative structure where we run heritage protection as an on-budget Council expenditure. Have each Council decide how much money they’re willing to put into heritage preservation, perhaps have Central provide a matching grant, and open it up to further voluntary contributions from the public. Then, have the heritage boards decide how and…
View original post 176 more words
P.J. O’Rourke on the new-found obsession of the 60s generation with safety
01 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
Learn Liberty | The most dangerous monopoly: When caution kills
22 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics, economics of regulation, technological progress Tags: drug lags, health and safety
Stories without fools – the economics of cancer sticks
18 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in health economics Tags: health and safety, Kip Viscusi, smoking
When I was a kid, we used to call cigarettes cancer sticks. Some people with a straight face claim that people still don’t know smoking is risky. The message has got through. Smoking is been in a long-term decline since the mid-1960s.
Along with my brothers and sisters, I remember pestering my mother to give up smoking. When she did, no one noticed at 11 weeks until she drew our attention to it. Children have short attention spans.
My father gave up smoking because, as a doctor, he could not be recommending to his patients to give up smoking while having a working ashtray at his desk. He used to suck on lollies to get rid of the craving. He first brought home a bag of lollies, but when his kids started asking for a lolly, he had to buy two bags of lollies before he came home.
Most of the evidence in perception risks by smokers show that they actually greatly overstate the risk of smoking rather than don’t know that it is dangerous as it is as Kip Viscusi found:
…smokers are not isolated from the considerable public information about the hazards of cigarettes.
They are very much aware of the risks. Indeed, they overestimate the smoking-related risks of lung cancer, life expectancy loss, and total mortality loss. Perception of these hazards affects the decision to ever smoke, to be a current smoker, and to become a former smoker in the expected manner.
Moreover, there is evidence of consistent risk-taking behaviour, as people who use seatbelts or exercise care in their diets make risk-reducing choices in the smoking domain as well. People who forego health insurance and place their well-being substantially at risk by doing so are especially likely to smoke and not to quit once they have begun.
Cigarette smoking is a large risk that is highly correlated with other risk-taking activities among the current smoking population
In the 1950s,cigarette companies would market particular cigarettes as having lower tar and other factors that made them less likely to cause health problems.
I think smoking is a dirty and disgusting habit, but people do plenty of things that are dirty and disgusting or risky or unhealthy. Perhaps we should ban the sports and holiday activities of the fit and healthy: ban mountain climbing, bushwalking, skiing and tourism to dangerous and unhealthy places in the Third World.
Smokers smoke for the same reason people engage in other risky activities. They really like smoking and are willing to take their chances. Smoking is hard to give up because most people find it hard to give up anything they really like to do. Few people are addicted to things they don’t like to do.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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