Occupational Safety and Paternalism: Machan Revisited

Spurgin, Earl W.

doi:10.1007/s10551-005-3326-y

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…With the exception of marginal mavericks, the anti-paternalist argument against workplace safety regulations and workers' compensation is since long a historical phenomenon. (See Spurgin (2006) for a refutation of anti-paternalist argumentation for unsafe workplaces. )…”

Section: Workplace Safetymentioning

confidence: 99%

Liberty, Paternalism, and Road Safety

Hansson

2022

The Vision Zero Handbook

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Traffic safety measures such as seat belts, helmets, and speed limits have often been opposed by people claiming that these measures infringe on their liberty. Safety measures are often described as paternalistic, i.e., as protecting people against their own will. This chapter provides a historical account of such criticism of safety measures, beginning with nineteenth-century opposition to sanitation measures, which were claimed to threaten the freedom to drink dirty water. The historical analysis has a surprising conclusion: Opposition to safety measures does not seem to have much to do with paternalism. Some measures that would typically be described as paternalistic, such as seat belts in commercial aviation and hard hats on construction sites, have met with no significant opposition. In contrast, some of the most vehemently opposed measures, such as speed limits and the prohibition of drunk driving, cannot with any vestige of credibility be described as paternalistic. This is followed by an analysis showing that due to our tendency to follow examples set by others (herd effects), purely self-affecting behavior is much less common than what has usually been assumed. Most of the opposition to safety measures in road traffic seem to result from some individuals’ desires to engage in activities that endanger other people’s lives. The social need to restrain the satisfaction of such desires is obvious.

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Section: Workplace Safetymentioning

confidence: 99%

Liberty, Paternalism, and Road Safety

Hansson

2022

The Vision Zero Handbook

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“…However, the conclusion that better-than-permissible acts are necessarily morally permissible conflicts with the belief, held by many, that certain acts (in particular, certain ways of interacting with others), are morally forbidden, even if they serve to make others better off than they would be were such acts not to be undertaken (that is, were one to choose non-interaction rather than interaction), and even if their not being undertaken is morally permissible. For instance, there are many who believe that certain acts that take place in the business sphere, such as "price gouging" (Snyder 2009a, b), doing business in states that do not sufficiently protect the rights of their citizens (Holliday 2005;Hsieh 2009), providing unsafe working conditions for employees (Boatright 2009;Spurgin 2006), offering "child" pornography (King 2008), charging high prices for pharmaceutical drugs (De George 2005; Werhane and Gorman 2005), operating or outsourcing to "sweatshops" Bowie 2003, 2007;Snyder 2008Snyder , 2010, paying workers extremely low wages (Figart 2001;Luce 2002;Noell 2006;Pollin and Luce 1998;Waltman 2004), or hiring (or refusing to hire) based on morally irrelevant factors such as race (Shiffrin 2010), can be morally forbidden, even if such acts would benefit those who are, say, price gouged, or employed in a sweatshop, more than would, say, not selling at all, or not outsourcing production to a sweatshop in a developing country.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Nonworseness Claim and the Moral Permissibility of Better-Than-Permissible Acts

Bailey

2010

Philosophia

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Grounded in what Alan Wertheimer terms the "nonworseness claim," it is thought by some philosophers that what will be referred to herein as "better-thanpermissible acts"-acts that, if undertaken, would make another or others better off than they would be were an alternative but morally permissible act to be undertaken-are necessarily morally permissible. What, other than a bout of irrationality, it may be thought, would lead one to hold that an act (such as outsourcing production to a "sweatshop" in a developing country) that produces more benefits for others than an act that is itself morally permissible (such as not doing business in the developing country at all) with respect to those same others, is not morally permissible? In this article, I argue that each of the two groups of philosophers that are most likely to accept the nonworseness claim-consequentialists and non-consequentialists-have reason to reject it, and thereby also have reason to reject the belief that better-thanpermissible acts are necessarily morally permissible.

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Risk Analysis under Structural Uncertainty

Hansson

2017

Knowledge in Risk Assessment and Management

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Occupational Safety and Paternalism: Machan Revisited

Cited by 7 publications

References 31 publications

Liberty, Paternalism, and Road Safety

Liberty, Paternalism, and Road Safety

The Nonworseness Claim and the Moral Permissibility of Better-Than-Permissible Acts

Risk Analysis under Structural Uncertainty

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