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• Saturday, November 18, 2006 08:22 AM

  Child Safety

  I attended a wedding of the (then) chairman of the California Republican Party with my girlfriend. She had the unenviable job of spending the entire event with Dana Rohrbacher, since they were both in the wedding party.

  I sat at a table at the reception dinner with one other person from Berkeley (as I was). and 10 raving conservatives. At one point I thought the woman sitting across from me was going to lunge for my throat and strangle me.

  The argument that got her goat? I told her about my experiences in the machine control industry, how I like government regulations regarding safety since it freed us to focus on our expertise. Equipment made by other companies might have injured someone, but that the knowledge gained from an analysis of the situation was used to write a safety requirement that prevented that problem from happening again.

  Her response? Employees should research on the internet to find out which companies use the dangerous machines and be sure not to work there.

  I said I was happy to participate in a regulatory system that strove to prevent a little girl from finding out her dad was killed on the job by a careless company's machinery. The legs on her chair shot back as she stood up...and someone intervened as the speeches started.

  The baby example is absurd beyond belief. Regulation is a means of spreading best practices. There are stupid regulations. There are useless ones. But they do serve the purpose of spreading information and allowing companies to focus on their core competencies.

  —djt
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