Number of jobs in relation to the number of deaths: Calculation of death sentences imposed on businesses

Is there a threshold that an entire industry crosses when it does more harm than good? Researchers at Michigan Technological University undertook to examine the issue with numbers.

A new article, published in the journal Social Sciences, explores two case studies focusing on industries that kill more people than they employ. The study explains why an action threshold can be defined and proposes solutions. With the help of case studies, it calculates the number of deaths attributed to the coal and tobacco industries and finds surprising results.

Joshua Pearce led the study and is a professor of materials science and engineering with the Richard Witte Foundation, as well as a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech. He explains that he's interested for the first time in the idea of ​​"business death sentences" – dissolve or suppress companies as a result of judgments rendered by judicial systems – during a study determining the number of American lives saved from converting electricity to coal into solar energy. Pearce wondered how the number of deaths caused by an industry was becoming too large to be tolerated by society.

"The unwritten rule with the industry is that you have to earn money if you are a benefit to society," Pearce said. He adds that most industries are above all good. However, many studies have documented increasing corporate corruption and the externalized costs of environmental and health impacts that can lead to human mortality. For industries that cause considerable harm, and possibly justify an industry-wide death penalty, the identification of this threshold requires an apolitical, clear and concise measure based on public data.

To define an ideal measure, Pearce used three hypotheses: first, everyone has the right to life; second, everyone has the right to work; Third, human rights should give businesses the right to exist if they benefit humanity.

"If we know that life takes precedence over employment because you have to be alive to work, then for a company or an industry to exist, it must employ more people than it does." kill in one year, "said Pearce. "This document has set the minimum bar for the existence of the industry." Surprisingly, it has also shown that there are currently at least two industries in America that kill more people each year than in the US. they do not use it. "

• The coal industry employs 51,795 people, according to data from the United States Energy Information Administration.
• In the United States, the total number of premature deaths from air pollution from coal and electricity is 52,015, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. United.
• The tobacco industry employs 124,342 people based on data from the North American Industry Clbadification System.
• In the United States, the total number of deaths from direct and indirect smoke is 522,000, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Pearce said, "After publishing the numbers, the results are shocking – every job in a coal mine in the United States literally demands American living every year, and for tobacco-related jobs it's four times worse." The study concludes that both sectors justify death penalties.

Yet, says Pearce, "the vast majority of jobs and industries involve no human sacrifice."

No industry could be dissolved without consequence. However, for both coal and tobacco, the Pearce research group had already looked at ways to move away from the industries. In a 2016 study published in Energy Economics, Pearce and his co-authors listed the training required for coal workers in order to make them switch to solar energy trades.

"Electricity is an essential resource that allows the company to operate, but there are alternative technologies that can easily replace coal to do it – and we would save lives and money," he said. Mr. Pearce. "If the fence employs these specific coal workers, we can easily recycle them and put them to work in the solar and it turns out that they would even earn a little more money on average."

Similarly, in a study published in 2018 in Land Use Policy, Pearce and his team showed that tobacco producers, who make up the largest group of people employed in the industry, have an economic interest in exchanging a culture. of rent causing cancer against more profitable solar farms. .

Changing jobs is not an obstacle as much as some might fear. While other sectors do not have the same kind of transitions, Pearce hopes that by setting a minimum standard for corporate responsibility, other areas can also be badessed.

Explore further:
From Coal to Solar Energy: Recycle the Energy Manpower

More information:
Joshua M. Pearce, Towards Quantifiable Indicators Ensuring Death Penalty Across the Sector, Social Sciences (2019). DOI: 10.3390 / socsci8020062