The Anti-State Blog

The part of government I will address today is government safety regulations and inspections. Where would we be without government regulation? Some say the world would be a lot more dangerous. Perhaps such proponents would argue in favor of government safety regulation of cars or electrical appliances and electrical wiring, saying how much safer those have gotten over the last few decades. And cars and electrical things have gotten safer.

The one problem for this argument is that the government had nothing to do with that. Take cars, for example. Think of a number of important safety features such as airbags, traction control, anti-lock brakes, and daytime running lights. All of these were initially introduced and became popular in the free market. The insurance companies have pushed hard for a number of these features because they work in saving lives and reducing injuries (saving the insurance companies money). While airbags did become mandatory here in the USA, by the time that happened they were already ubiquitous. Furthermore, side-impact airbags have become common even without a government mandate. Government regulation has had no effect on improving car safety. Oh, and the safety ratings you see on cars? Those come from two sources: a group of insurance companies (they need to know which vehicles are safe so they can charge less to insure them) and the government. Guess which performs the more rigorous tests? The insurance companies. Strike two for government.

Now onto electricity. Have you ever looked at the bottom of any electrical appliance and seen a circle with “UL” in it? If so, you have witnessed the joys of free-market regulation. Back in the early days of electricity, many appliances caused fires. The manufacturers of the faulty products wanted to improve their products so as to sell more. The fire insurers wanted to reduce fires. So an entrepreneur founded Underwriters Laboratories to inspect and certify products that met certain safety standards. The UL symbol remains a mark of distinction today. In the case of electricity, just as with automobiles, the government has been slow to do anything and has accomplished little. While OSHA technically oversees UL and its competitors, it serves no useful purpose because UL is motivated enough by greed to do its job well. A company such as UL could be bankrupted with just one high-publicity failure of a UL-certified product. OSHA, however, is has no such intrinsic motivation to do a good job.

Oh, and your city’s electrical code? Those are all taken verbatim from the national electric code written by the national fire prevention association, composed of insurance companies (damn corporations! always looking out for our safety . . .). It was the insurance companies who developed such great ideas as grounded wiring, romex wiring, ground-fault circuit interrupters (GFCI), and arc-fault circuit interrupters (AFCI). Local cities, when they depart from the actual NEC, insert stupid provisions such as Chicago’s requirement that all wiring be in steel conduits–the sole reason for this requirement is to provide extra work for the union electricians who donate money to the city’s politicians. So people spending money on electrical work are forced by the government to waste it on conduit and labor when the extra money could have paid for such great (and new and non-government mandated) safety features such as AFCI.

It is the same with plumbing codes and other building codes. The government does nothing but enforce them (spottily). In the absense of government the most important parts of the codes would be enforced by the insurers and by independent building inspectors (such as the ASHI-certified inspector who inspected my house before I bought it).