Night Club Fire in Brazil - 200+ Dead

[Spoonist]

Goddamn kids don't recognize a feeder line when you hit them with it, or have foam parties gone out of fashion again?

Foam? Luxury! You were lucky to have foam. We used to have to make do with rubble glued with mud. We used to dream about foam!

Why should it be up to a nation to decide what the fire regs are?

You are arguing that laws should be derived from something else than legislation? In this specific instance the nation had formerly decided that it would be up to the local states to dictate and enforce 'fire regs'. The discussion in Brazil is to now make the legislation a federal issue.

You can't simply hand wave it with democracy with minimal corruption, since in this very case, that approach has failed.

Failed? Please motivate such conjecture. If you are indeed in league with Surlethe then this is not a failure of any kind but an insignificant statistical spike.
Also democracy is not necessary at all, nor is a minimal corruption either. 'Fire regs' can and does exist in many systems of governement. In many cases one could argue that as such they would be more heavily enforced in a more direct way in a totalitarian regime.
However what I argued was that unless you have a better idea for governement in the currently democratic nation of Brazil, then we have to accept the democratic process as a given. Given that we can approach this from the pragmatic side of how things could and probably will be improved in Brazil.

Why is political self-intrest nobeler then economic self intrest?

Strawman and a false dilemma at the same time. I'd say you are improving.

Now neither is needed nor ideal. The use of the word noble ignores that this isn't necessarily about morality or anything like that.

In my long post above you will see points how such legislation can both protect the public while at the same time increase the business segment, and in this specific case drive the democratic process forward by the people pressuring the politicians to do what the majority of the people want.
ie in this case further legislation and the enforcement thereof (and preferably removal of local inefficiency/corruption) will benefit both a political self-interest and an economic self-interest of the service providers/state, while satisfying not only the service users but also the general population.
So either you try to argue those points or your point of view have no ground to stand on.

[LaCroix]

Also, the ever present risk that such a fire could spread...

[Spoonist]

Ah, this is the danger of trying the middle ground approach. I will ninja a madd0ct0r type of absurdum response.

There is the rather obvious point that dead people generally stop contributing to the economy, along with the fact that fire regulations are generally very simple and cost effective.

The purely economic argument is that if so then we should only have fire regulations and enforcement where potantial or actual economy providers frequent while the opposite should be true for those not contributing to the system (or no longer able to).
So we should let the market itself decide what 'fire regs' should be in place. That way things sort themself out. If people are not able or unwilling to pay for 'fire regs' then why should that choice not be up to them?

Also, the ever present risk that such a fire could spread...

We could always send out the firefighters to protect the property of those paying for their services while watching the property of those who didn't burn down. (Brownie points for the name of the current US county/ies).
I mean it all worked out well for Marcus Licinius Crassus. (Brownie points if you catch it without google or somesuch).

[PeZook]

I mean it all worked out well for Marcus Licinius Crassus. (Brownie points if you catch it without google or somesuch).

Until the Parthians (allegedly) poured molten gold down his throat, you mean.

[Surlethe]

So how many deaths are worth the regulatory burden? Where's your benchmark for horrible deaths in flames vs big gubba?

Frankly, I really don't know. If we're not spending anything, buildings are going up in flames every other day, and we're losing 50,000 people every year to fires, we should spend more on regulation and enforcement. If we're spending $100 million on regulation and enforcement, and one building goes up because it didn't follow regulations and slipped through enforcement cracks and kills a couple hundred people, it was just random chance and we probably shouldn't spend more on regulation and enforcement. The balance point is somewhere in between, but I can't really say exactly where - I don't think anybody can gather enough information to pass a statistically airtight judgment on precisely where the balance point is.

My feeling is that in general a Western country will be closer to the latter situation (with the exception of the US and guns). Brazil probably doesn't need any new regulation or spending, since (if Losonti is right) the nightclub was already in violation of existing regulations. Perhaps it should improve enforcement, although I'd guess a consistent long-term improvement in enforcement can only result from cultural change, not policy measures. Anyway, I would be inclined to treat this stoically, as the price society sometimes pays for this type of entertainment, the same way we shrug off car crashes as the price we pay for cheap and fast transportation even though they're far deadlier than nightclub fires.

*****

And spoonist, spoonist, dear spoonist - I don't have time for a point-by-point response right now. Maybe this evening! <3

[Stark]

Don't dodge the question. As much as we enjoy risk fee pie-in-the-sky bullshit.

I imagine you're not involved in any compliance planning or enforcement, but these guys didn't have a current (or valid lol) fire plan, which would have cost a minimum wage worker at the outside a few hours to detect and escalate. Using fucking Brazil as a regulatory benchmark is doubtless amusing to you, but is probably not representative of actual systems that work. Decoupling 'cultural change' from 'evil regulation' is particularly asinine, given the broad successes regulation has had for decades in driving cultural change (most topically, things like banning smoking in hospitality venues, driving safety attitudes, placing perceived responsibility for safety on organisers and owners, etc).

In actual countries (not Brazil or Bali lol) even venues pretty clearly owned by crime organisations are safety compliant. Compliance and 'regulation' are two distinct issues, and while they should interact in planning stages are both required to get results.

[Spoonist]

I mean it all worked out well for Marcus Licinius Crassus. (Brownie points if you catch it without google or somesuch).

Until the Parthians (allegedly) poured molten gold down his throat, you mean.

See? Even his enemies poured him gold. And that small issue with the Parthians should not reflect on the business sense of the man only to his ineptitude as a commander in battle.

[Spoonist]

And spoonist, spoonist, dear spoonist - I don't have time for a point-by-point response right now. Maybe this evening! <3

As always, no worries, you and me usually are a bit unreliable when it comes to when we do or don't have time and I'd rather have the fully thought out reply later than one which skips most points due to time constraints.


And at the end of that long post of mine I went through what was wrong with how you percieve/feel about the Brazilian situation. You might want to get to that part before responding as you did to Stark.

[aerius]

Same reason the US goes apeshit on gun control every time there's a school shooting.

So, basically, pointless tribal posturing?

That, and never let a crisis go to waste. Or as I like to call it, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!tm

More people die every year from falling out of bed or drowning in bathtubs than in school shootings (source), yet there's no hysteria for banning/regulating assault beds and bathtubs. How many innocent children must lose their lives to these deadly assault bathtubs before we ban them?

[Stark]

Actually, safety standards exist for all kinds of infant beds, largely because of the desire to reduce death or injury caused by poor design.

[Surlethe]

Just wanted to pop in and say, sorry --- don't have the time for a back-and-forth.