> Basically no one came forward on their own: Civil servants appeared to lack the ability to be recognized. [...] Even their nominations feel modest. Never I did this, but we did this. Never look at me, but look at this work!
Now I wonder if I should've looked at a career in government. Something to keep in mind the next time I find that I've somehow become the surviving "maintenance" developer on a project.
Lots of material here, but the two main points I see about stopping mine collapses boil down to:
1. Make mining companies actually install a safe amount of roof-bolts, rather using the new technique in a half-assed way that saves them some money while staying just as deadly as the old way.
2. Stop mining companies from substituting their own unsafe models to justify mining-away columns that are are important for keeping everything up.
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> In 2016 — the first year in recorded history that zero underground coal miners were killed by falling roofs — Chris landed in a public spat. He’d seen an article by an economic historian about the history of roof bolts in the journal of Technology and Culture.
> The historian wanted to argue that roof bolts had taken 20 years to reduce fatality rates because it had taken 20 years for the coal mining industry to learn to use them. All by itself, the market had solved this worker safety problem! The government’s role, in his telling, was as a kind of gentle helpmate of industry. “It was kind of amazing,” said Chris. “What actually happened was the regulators were finally empowered to regulate. Regulators needed to be able to enforce. He elevated the role of technology. He minimized the role of regulators.”
The biggest overarching point (that I found most interesting) was the shift in problem space from an "engineering problem" to a "statistics problem" since there were far too many unknowns to solve effectively with engineering principles alone.
Now I wonder if I should've looked at a career in government. Something to keep in mind the next time I find that I've somehow become the surviving "maintenance" developer on a project.
Lots of material here, but the two main points I see about stopping mine collapses boil down to:
1. Make mining companies actually install a safe amount of roof-bolts, rather using the new technique in a half-assed way that saves them some money while staying just as deadly as the old way.
2. Stop mining companies from substituting their own unsafe models to justify mining-away columns that are are important for keeping everything up.
_____
> In 2016 — the first year in recorded history that zero underground coal miners were killed by falling roofs — Chris landed in a public spat. He’d seen an article by an economic historian about the history of roof bolts in the journal of Technology and Culture.
> The historian wanted to argue that roof bolts had taken 20 years to reduce fatality rates because it had taken 20 years for the coal mining industry to learn to use them. All by itself, the market had solved this worker safety problem! The government’s role, in his telling, was as a kind of gentle helpmate of industry. “It was kind of amazing,” said Chris. “What actually happened was the regulators were finally empowered to regulate. Regulators needed to be able to enforce. He elevated the role of technology. He minimized the role of regulators.”