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The story is a lost industry cemetery. Many have disappeared for lack of customers.
From time to time, a few are executed, as their goods and services are deemed to pose unacceptable risks to society. Sometimes, however, they continue to kill – as in the case of the tobacco and coal industries.
Joshua Pearce, a computer engineer at Michigan Tech, says the economic benefits of an industry should never outweigh the risks they pose to our lives. And when they do, we must seriously consider condemning the industry to an economic "death".
Pearce recently conducted a study comparing the employment rates of the coal and tobacco industries with the mortality risk imposed on society.
These case studies are the basis of his argument that political support for the number of jobs will simply not be mitigated by the cost to industry of an industry for human health.
As for beauty, the benefit of a product or service is in the eye of the beholder. What some consider useful, others consider unnecessarily dangerous, whether for the environment or for our lives.
Children's chemistry kits were once considered educational, until the perceived risks to the consumer forced them to disappear. Similarly, we no longer use radium to make the paint shine nor chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) to cool the refrigerators.
Few of us stop to think about job losses in educational toy factories or radium painting workshops. In these cases, health and safety preceded the employment figures.
The question is: where should a government draw a line and say enough, is it enough? Pearce suggests that the answer could lie in a simple balance between jobs and lives.
"The vast majority of jobs and industries involve no human sacrifice," says Pearce.
"If we know that life takes precedence over employment because one has to be alive to work, then for a company or sector to exist, it must employ more people than it does." do not kill in one year. "
Whether you agree with the weight of these measures or not, Pearce's logic is easy to follow.
If we accept that everyone has the right to live long and healthy and if we assume that we have the right to earn money if it brings a benefit to society, we will have opportunities to make a difference. difficult choice – employment figures or mortality rates.
Pearce sets out his case for using these measures, then calculates the corresponding figures for two poorly known industries with regard to their effects on human lives.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, coal mining employs just under 51,800 people across the country, a figure that is steadily decreasing as profitability gradually decreases with competition and environmental regulations.
In itself, coal mining is much safer today than in the past, where thousands of victims could be listed. Only 15 people lost their lives at work in 2017 and 8 only the year before.
As a fossil fuel, the dark side of the coal is revealed. According to estimates based on data from the US Department of Health and Social Services, the number of premature deaths due to poor air quality resulting from coal combustion is around 52,000 per year.
This means that for every job provided by coal, he claims a life. More or less.
The tobacco industry is even worse.
The North American Industry Classification System gives us a figure of 124,342 jobs throughout the processing chain, from point-of-sale tobacco growing to cigarettes to chewing tobacco and cigars .
Adding up all the deaths resulting each year from direct smoking and passive smoking, there is a shocking figure of more than half a million victims. That's four deaths for each job.
For Pearce, statistics simply do not make sense.
"This document aims to set the minimum bar for the existence of the industry," says Pearce.
Naming tens of thousands of jobs would not be among the mandates of all politicians, no matter how many potential lives it would save.
However, funding programs that help people employed in industries where the death penalty is applied to new branches of activity would be a huge first step towards creating a healthier and more just society.
"If the fence uses these specific coal workers, we can easily recycle them and put them to work in the solar and it turns out that they would earn even a little more on average," Pearce said.
As logical as it may seem, governments do not have the best track record of balancing the economy and the well-being of future populations. There is much more to do than simple cost-benefit analysis in very rich sectors like coal and tobacco.
But having such dark numbers like this is always a serious reminder that some wages are more expensive for society than they can afford.
This research was published in Social Sciences.
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