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U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

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386 points z991 | 3 comments | 23 Jun 25 23:53 UTC | HN request time: 1.07s | source
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pixl97 ◴[24 Jun 25 00:46 UTC] No.44361760[source]▶
Save lives?: X

Increase safety?: X

Make more money?: YES

The USCSB makes life safer for everyone in this country, especially people that work around potentially dangerous chemicals and pressurized equipment.

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randerson ◴[24 Jun 25 01:12 UTC] No.44361918[source]▶
It's always a matter of time before a facility explodes for preventable reasons and costs the company billions in property damage and lawsuits. This decision to stop learning from mistakes and spreading awareness will hurt profits in the long run, not make more money. It'll also be harder to find people willing to work around chemicals if they can't trust the safety measures.
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andrewflnr ◴[24 Jun 25 01:44 UTC] No.44362095[source]▶
Funny as it sounds, the real problem (or at least one of them) is that no one cares about long run profits anymore.
replies(1): >>44362216 #
fallingknife ◴[24 Jun 25 02:03 UTC] No.44362216[source]▶
Why do profits, and the stock market, continue going up then? I've heard this nonsense about corporate short termism for decades, and the long term just never seems to arrive.
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1. andrewflnr ◴[24 Jun 25 02:19 UTC] No.44362322[source]▶
The stock market tracks short term profits; most stock buyers are also short-termers. Profits that could have been had but were not, due to shortsighted decisions, are hard to measure and don't usually make the news. Similar for companies that slowly hollow out, or get killed by newer companies still in their market-building phases before they start turning the screws.
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2. fallingknife ◴[24 Jun 25 04:29 UTC] No.44362867[source]▶
It's not just hard to measure, it's unfalsifiable nonsense.
replies(1): >>44371641 #
3. andrewflnr ◴[24 Jun 25 22:17 UTC] No.44371641[source]▶
You can just watch it happen. Companies cut quality and ruin their reputation, or shrink from new markets due to fear of cannibalizing themselves, among other ways to sacrifice long term profit. There's a reasonable debate about how predominant it is in the economy, but not about whether it happens.