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from the never-met-a-problem-we-couldn't-solve-by-outsourcing dept.
Results in epidemiology often are equivocal, and money can cloud science (see: tobacco companies vs. cancer researchers). Clear-cut cases are rare. Yet just such a case showed up one day in 1984 in the office of Harris Pastides, a recently appointed associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
A graduate student named James Stewart, who was working his way through school as a health and safety officer at Digital Equipment Corp., told Pastides there had been a number of miscarriages at the company's semiconductor plant in nearby Hudson, Mass. Women, especially of childbearing age, filled an estimated 68 percent of the U.S. tech industry's production jobs, and Stewart knew something few outsiders did: Making computer chips involved hundreds of chemicals. The women on the production line worked in so-called cleanrooms and wore protective suits, but that was for the chips' protection, not theirs. The women were exposed to, and in some cases directly touched, chemicals that included reproductive toxins, mutagens, and carcinogens. Reproductive dangers are among the most serious concerns in occupational health, because workers' unborn children can suffer birth defects or childhood diseases, and also because reproductive issues can be sentinels for disorders, especially cancer, that don't show up in the workers themselves until long after exposure.
Digital Equipment agreed to pay for a study, and Pastides, an expert in disease clusters, designed and conducted it. Data collection was finished in late 1986, and the results were shocking: Women at the plant had miscarriages at twice the expected rate. In November, the company disclosed the findings to employees and the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade group, and then went public. Pastides and his colleagues were heralded as heroes by some and vilified by others, especially in the industry.
As the effects of the chemicals used in chip manufacturing became known, production was shifted to South Korea where the problems continued.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @05:24AM (4 children)
What makes you think sociopaths won't subvert a system of contracts?
What makes you think they'll bother with following a contract the second it's inconvenient to them?
Contracts become nothing but another form of coercion against a party who cannot bring as much violence force (blood spilled, death) to bear as the party offering the contract.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @07:25AM (1 child)
Rather, I embrace those possibilities, and seek to design a system informed by it; that means I sure as hell do not support granting one particular organization a monopoly on "law" or contract enforcement or "regulation", etc.
Clearly, that would be insane... yet it's exactly what you and your ilk have decided is good and proper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @03:58PM
You still forget about basic violence.
Humans have really no compunctions against maiming and killing each other. They have zero respect for contracts, and there is no contract in the world that can keep that in check that doesn't quickly devolve into a single warlord violently imposing his will as a monopoly.
I don't think you're incorrect in calling that arrangement insane. Humans are generally insane.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 18 2017, @11:21AM (1 child)
Why does a system of contracts merit disregard on this basis while existing systems with the same problems do not?
Sounds like from the grandparent's assertions that he intends to bring plenty of violent force against contract breakers. It's worth noting here that contract breaking is fairly objective behavior to determine while "sociopathic" behavior is not.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @04:08PM
Very good points.
All existing systems can be subverted by sociopaths. My main argument in the meta-thread is that there likely is no system that sociopaths cannot subvert, if necessary by application of violence in direct violation of a contract.
His model for applying violence in the pursuit of contract enforcement is based on the free market. It's not a bad idea on its face. The trouble is that it will quickly (d)evolve into a situation where there are multiple warlords representing factions of people who have all collectively decided to break their contracts.
You're correct that "sociopath" is not an objective measure. What I had hoped to mean by using that word was a pattern of behavior that results in a thing we can objectively measure: contract breaking, as you noted. It's also a pattern of behavior that includes seeking and rallying allies against the party to the contract the sociopath wishes to break.
Imo, the best solution is to seek a warlord with a monopoly on contract enforcement who believes in practical libertarianism, i.e. he engages in little more than contract enforcement, and his general contract with the masses is focused only on prohibiting any other party from applying violence.