Beavers just need 1m of water to hide their entrance to their home. If the water level is not high enough, they build a dam by clawing down the trees nearby.
For my last birthday I got a fantastic German beaver book by some Bavarian family visiting their local beaver family for several years.
As a totally unrelated but somehow relate recommendation: there is a fantastic builder-game named Timberborn[1], where you can grow your own beaver-empire and even build dams. It's not the most realistic game, the proportion of everything is very off for example, but it's very matching the content of this article and I just wanted to mention it.
"Czech conservation authorities praised the beavers for their unexpected yet effective environmental work. Bohumil Fišer, head of the Brdy Protected Landscape Area, stated that the beavers "built the dams without any project documentation and for free", and achieved the desired ecological outcomes "practically overnight"."
Farmers have been at war with them. Local governments usually side with the beavers, because their longterm benefits are higher, but in right-wing crisis times the farmers will win.
Reminds me of the snap judgment podcast about the Belgian Beaver bandit who illegally reintroduced beavers to Belgium to bypass the same kind of bureaucratic roadblocks. It was a really touching podcast.
The project was stalled not because they didn't have funding, but because they didn't have permits.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that permission-based economies don't work. Go after people who harm, don't impose paperwork to preemptively prevent harm.
I learned a while back that Hammurabi's Code contained a proto-building code, in that a builder whose building collapsed and harmed its occupant could be punished in a similar way.
However the occupant was still harmed.
Individuals must have a complete context for the environment in which they operate in order to build "correctly." Permit reviews, building codes etc. codify that context so that builders don't need to carry the entire system context, even if they could, which often they can't. And as a result, buildings don't randomly fall over or catch fire with nearly the same frequency as they used to
Do you similarly think that switching "impaired driving" legislation from a regulatory to a pure punishment based (you only pay on accidents) approach would be an improvement? Because I think not, for following reaons:
- You create invariably numerous cases where culprits can't pay (post harm) because they are bankrupt at that point or possibly already dead themselves. This is unsatisfactory.
- You reward reckless behavior as long as nothing happens. I think that "recklessness", specifically, should be punished regardless of actual outcome (same for industry/corporations).
And when companies with limited liability are involved. Case in point the research reactor in Germany. The company that was responsible to dismantle it just declared insolvency.
Harms don't need to be undone, they just need to be penalized.
For example: statistical deaths can be compensated for by fines using the statistical value of a human life (about $12 M). Nuclear power regulation could be based on this principle.
Let's turn that around: how do you feel about extending the laws about murder to statistical deaths?
Because that would be completely impractical. It would cause the economy to cease functioning. Statistical deaths and individual murders are fundamentally different things.
There's a fuzzy boundary between the two (as effects are concentrated on smaller and smaller numbers of people) but that doesn't mean there's no difference.
Even with individual murders, there are gradations depending on intention and mental state. Manslaughter and first degree murder are different crimes, even if the number of dead bodies is the same.
I'm sure there are at least several people in the US who would gladly pay $12 million to directly cause someone's death without further repercussions. There are several people who could easily afford that several times a year without noticeably having to give up any wealth or expenses.
But more charitably: they did say "statistical death" so I presume the implication is "unintentional and non-targeted". Deliberately setting up deathtraps or ensuring a specific person will die but not others would probably be exempt. Of course that could be extremely difficult to prove if gross negligence became so easily affordable.
There are also millions who would volunteer to be killed for $12M to pass on to their heirs.
You "statistical death" is of course 100% correct. These kind of tradeoffs are done all the time when designing safety features, and using a monetary value per human life is the right way to do it.
Some people can't deal with that kind of rationality though.
One of the things I have evolved on as a liberal/leftist.
There are just too many situations today where somebody is paying the fine with a smile on their face, if not settling for some trivial amount with no acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
Willful harms and even reckless harms by corporations need to be penalized aggressively and punitively. When a corporation worth $30 billion gains $1.3 billion in material benefit over 10 years by doing some activity that victimizes or risks people, it's fucking stupid to try and penalize them $10M with no jail time for anybody. "Cost of doing business" should never be a viable option, because the law needs a subjective bent, some small tyranny of justice, some adversarial person that corporations are structurally encouraged to be terrified of pissing off. If that means forcibly diluting their stock, or seizing the company, or terminating their charter, or throwing their executives down a hole for five years, that's evidently a necessary component of regulation. Deterrence is the name of the game, not just "seeking compliance".
We created corporations, and demand their executives, to behave in a psychopathic, amoral, "rational" profit-seeking manner by the legal fiduciary duty. Passively failing to significantly penalize predatory acts is actively encouraging their continuation. It's creating tools meant to do a thing (Hammers) and using them wrong (Juggling) and then acting stunned when they land on your foot, and spending the rest of the day glaring at and shaming the hammers, demanding verbal assurances that they'll never land on your foot again.
Occasionally, we hear about China rewarding corporate executives who commit malfeasance of a sufficiently malignant scale with capital punishment. The buck stops here. It sometimes makes the grass look greener on the other side, even with all the things I object to within that system.
That's great, so we just need to make some scapegoat companies go bankrupt from fines occasionally and can do whatever we want? (It's already somewhat of an issue in construction industries, build shoddy homes and dissolve the company before the majority of buyers realizes how bad it is, repeat)
The problem isn't necessarily the need for permission, it is excessive bureaucracy.
As another commenter explained, the need for permission is there to prevent harm before it can occur, rather than punishing it after it occurs, because the harm can be of the sort which cannot be undone.
If I want to build and sell houses, I should be able to do it, but it shouldn't take going to 10 government offices, filling out 50 forms and waiting a year for someone to give me a permit. And then, once I have built it, it shouldn't take another year for someone to check I did it correctly.
> The problem isn't necessarily the need for permission, it is excessive bureaucracy.
Certain checks just need time. A lack of qualified experts who are able to evaluation the situation for a permission is in such a case more likely than excessive bureaucracy.
> If I want to build and sell houses, I should be able to do it, but it shouldn't take going to 10 government offices, filling out 50 forms and waiting a year for someone to give me a permit. And then, once I have built it, it shouldn't take another year for someone to check I did it correctly.
That's how you end up with deathtraps who are poisoning their resident and folding down in themselves on the next earthquake or some strong wind.
A lack of qualified experts is normally just mismanagement of resources/incentives.
Not sure how it requires 50 forms and 10 different physical offices to avoid deathtraps, that's kind of the situation in Poland (my home country) and the UK (where I live) has equivalent build quality with a lot less bureaucracy.
Doesn't much of the US economy already work like this? "Don't make it illegal to do things that will cause harm but make people liable for when they do cause harm"?
Of course due to the power imbalance of individuals against corporations and ordinary folks against billionaires it's usually very difficult to get reimbursed for the harm some will inevitably face and even when it succeeds it requires very expensive lawyers while the other side tries to stall for time - if the harm doesn't outright kill you or make you unable to seek reimbursement.
But yes, from a purely entrpreneurial point of view I can understand this desire. But at the end of the day the economy (and that includes the very concept of corporations, private ownership, public works, etc) exists to serve the people, not the other way around. People can exist without an economy. An economy can not exist without people (unless you consider simulations equivalent to the real thing). So in a way, increasing the potential for harm in the economy runs directly counter to the justification of the economy.
Plenty of things are illegal for no reason other than they might cause harm. Speed limit laws on roads, fire hazard regulations in buildings, negligent discharge of a firearm, etc
They tend to civil, rather than criminal, offenses, at least up until a certain level of severity or until they actually cause harm.
The tricky bit with the corporations you mention is that responsibility becomes diffuse, unless there is concrete evidence of a direct order to violate the law. What you're basically asking for is to make people into scapegoats because it feels good, not because there's actual justice involved.
Beavers just need 1m of water to hide their entrance to their home. If the water level is not high enough, they build a dam by clawing down the trees nearby.
For my last birthday I got a fantastic German beaver book by some Bavarian family visiting their local beaver family for several years.
As a totally unrelated but somehow relate recommendation: there is a fantastic builder-game named Timberborn[1], where you can grow your own beaver-empire and even build dams. It's not the most realistic game, the proportion of everything is very off for example, but it's very matching the content of this article and I just wanted to mention it.
[1] https://www.gog.com/en/game/timberborn
Thanks for sharing. Beavers are my favorite animals and the trailer is actually quite nice.
You should check out this documentary, if you haven't already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beavers_%28film%29
It's fairly old, but I watched it in college, and it was great.
From the article :
"Czech conservation authorities praised the beavers for their unexpected yet effective environmental work. Bohumil Fišer, head of the Brdy Protected Landscape Area, stated that the beavers "built the dams without any project documentation and for free", and achieved the desired ecological outcomes "practically overnight"."
No project documentation? Expect that it's going to be a headache to maintain if you can't get the original creators to stay on...
The article ends on a note which can be read in either a hopeful or ominous key.
"Authorities anticipate no significant conflicts with the beaver colony for at least the next decade."
2036: Czech authorities sue for peace after months of devastating conflict against the beaver colony.
We have always been at war with Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber).
Farmers have been at war with them. Local governments usually side with the beavers, because their longterm benefits are higher, but in right-wing crisis times the farmers will win.
If you want peace, prepare for war.
That's humans for ya
Reminds me of the snap judgment podcast about the Belgian Beaver bandit who illegally reintroduced beavers to Belgium to bypass the same kind of bureaucratic roadblocks. It was a really touching podcast.
https://play.prx.org/listen?ge=prx_320_cc65818c-232c-49cb-a8...
I'm Czech and haven't heard about this. We should hire more beavers for construction projects.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42938802
The project was stalled not because they didn't have funding, but because they didn't have permits.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that permission-based economies don't work. Go after people who harm, don't impose paperwork to preemptively prevent harm.
I learned a while back that Hammurabi's Code contained a proto-building code, in that a builder whose building collapsed and harmed its occupant could be punished in a similar way.
However the occupant was still harmed.
Individuals must have a complete context for the environment in which they operate in order to build "correctly." Permit reviews, building codes etc. codify that context so that builders don't need to carry the entire system context, even if they could, which often they can't. And as a result, buildings don't randomly fall over or catch fire with nearly the same frequency as they used to
Do you similarly think that switching "impaired driving" legislation from a regulatory to a pure punishment based (you only pay on accidents) approach would be an improvement? Because I think not, for following reaons:
- You create invariably numerous cases where culprits can't pay (post harm) because they are bankrupt at that point or possibly already dead themselves. This is unsatisfactory.
- You reward reckless behavior as long as nothing happens. I think that "recklessness", specifically, should be punished regardless of actual outcome (same for industry/corporations).
This doesn't seem like a very sensible policy. There are a great many harms that once done, cannot be undone.
There is also great harm in valuable things never being built.
Since that harm is invisible, it is very hard to factor in, and is almost always ignored.
Especially when it comes to nature. "Oops, there's nothing left to save now anyway, might as well build that project we wanted!"
And when companies with limited liability are involved. Case in point the research reactor in Germany. The company that was responsible to dismantle it just declared insolvency.
Harms don't need to be undone, they just need to be penalized.
For example: statistical deaths can be compensated for by fines using the statistical value of a human life (about $12 M). Nuclear power regulation could be based on this principle.
How do you feel about extending this to direct murder?
Let's turn that around: how do you feel about extending the laws about murder to statistical deaths?
Because that would be completely impractical. It would cause the economy to cease functioning. Statistical deaths and individual murders are fundamentally different things.
There's a fuzzy boundary between the two (as effects are concentrated on smaller and smaller numbers of people) but that doesn't mean there's no difference.
Even with individual murders, there are gradations depending on intention and mental state. Manslaughter and first degree murder are different crimes, even if the number of dead bodies is the same.
I'm sure there are at least several people in the US who would gladly pay $12 million to directly cause someone's death without further repercussions. There are several people who could easily afford that several times a year without noticeably having to give up any wealth or expenses.
But more charitably: they did say "statistical death" so I presume the implication is "unintentional and non-targeted". Deliberately setting up deathtraps or ensuring a specific person will die but not others would probably be exempt. Of course that could be extremely difficult to prove if gross negligence became so easily affordable.
There are also millions who would volunteer to be killed for $12M to pass on to their heirs.
You "statistical death" is of course 100% correct. These kind of tradeoffs are done all the time when designing safety features, and using a monetary value per human life is the right way to do it.
Some people can't deal with that kind of rationality though.
Giving the next of kin of murder victims $12M would certainly be a game changer.
The victim would still be dead. And there are not that many murders who even have $12M. This whole thread is so ridiculous...
One of the things I have evolved on as a liberal/leftist.
There are just too many situations today where somebody is paying the fine with a smile on their face, if not settling for some trivial amount with no acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
Willful harms and even reckless harms by corporations need to be penalized aggressively and punitively. When a corporation worth $30 billion gains $1.3 billion in material benefit over 10 years by doing some activity that victimizes or risks people, it's fucking stupid to try and penalize them $10M with no jail time for anybody. "Cost of doing business" should never be a viable option, because the law needs a subjective bent, some small tyranny of justice, some adversarial person that corporations are structurally encouraged to be terrified of pissing off. If that means forcibly diluting their stock, or seizing the company, or terminating their charter, or throwing their executives down a hole for five years, that's evidently a necessary component of regulation. Deterrence is the name of the game, not just "seeking compliance".
We created corporations, and demand their executives, to behave in a psychopathic, amoral, "rational" profit-seeking manner by the legal fiduciary duty. Passively failing to significantly penalize predatory acts is actively encouraging their continuation. It's creating tools meant to do a thing (Hammers) and using them wrong (Juggling) and then acting stunned when they land on your foot, and spending the rest of the day glaring at and shaming the hammers, demanding verbal assurances that they'll never land on your foot again.
Occasionally, we hear about China rewarding corporate executives who commit malfeasance of a sufficiently malignant scale with capital punishment. The buck stops here. It sometimes makes the grass look greener on the other side, even with all the things I object to within that system.
Ok cool, this bodes well for my "disposing of household waste by dropping a nuclear bomb on it in Central Park" startup
Better add some AI to that pitch.
That's great, so we just need to make some scapegoat companies go bankrupt from fines occasionally and can do whatever we want? (It's already somewhat of an issue in construction industries, build shoddy homes and dissolve the company before the majority of buyers realizes how bad it is, repeat)
I don't know man, I don't wanna die in a shoddy building or an airplane crash, even if it means my partner gets $12M.
To me, my own life is invaluable. I would assume most people feel similarly.
Not sure if people [0] would do anything if they would not know rules (regulations) but could be drastically penalized if something happens.
[0] Except for reckless gamblers.
The problem isn't necessarily the need for permission, it is excessive bureaucracy.
As another commenter explained, the need for permission is there to prevent harm before it can occur, rather than punishing it after it occurs, because the harm can be of the sort which cannot be undone.
If I want to build and sell houses, I should be able to do it, but it shouldn't take going to 10 government offices, filling out 50 forms and waiting a year for someone to give me a permit. And then, once I have built it, it shouldn't take another year for someone to check I did it correctly.
> The problem isn't necessarily the need for permission, it is excessive bureaucracy.
Certain checks just need time. A lack of qualified experts who are able to evaluation the situation for a permission is in such a case more likely than excessive bureaucracy.
> If I want to build and sell houses, I should be able to do it, but it shouldn't take going to 10 government offices, filling out 50 forms and waiting a year for someone to give me a permit. And then, once I have built it, it shouldn't take another year for someone to check I did it correctly.
That's how you end up with deathtraps who are poisoning their resident and folding down in themselves on the next earthquake or some strong wind.
A lack of qualified experts is normally just mismanagement of resources/incentives.
Not sure how it requires 50 forms and 10 different physical offices to avoid deathtraps, that's kind of the situation in Poland (my home country) and the UK (where I live) has equivalent build quality with a lot less bureaucracy.
Doesn't much of the US economy already work like this? "Don't make it illegal to do things that will cause harm but make people liable for when they do cause harm"?
Of course due to the power imbalance of individuals against corporations and ordinary folks against billionaires it's usually very difficult to get reimbursed for the harm some will inevitably face and even when it succeeds it requires very expensive lawyers while the other side tries to stall for time - if the harm doesn't outright kill you or make you unable to seek reimbursement.
But yes, from a purely entrpreneurial point of view I can understand this desire. But at the end of the day the economy (and that includes the very concept of corporations, private ownership, public works, etc) exists to serve the people, not the other way around. People can exist without an economy. An economy can not exist without people (unless you consider simulations equivalent to the real thing). So in a way, increasing the potential for harm in the economy runs directly counter to the justification of the economy.
Plenty of things are illegal for no reason other than they might cause harm. Speed limit laws on roads, fire hazard regulations in buildings, negligent discharge of a firearm, etc
They tend to civil, rather than criminal, offenses, at least up until a certain level of severity or until they actually cause harm.
The tricky bit with the corporations you mention is that responsibility becomes diffuse, unless there is concrete evidence of a direct order to violate the law. What you're basically asking for is to make people into scapegoats because it feels good, not because there's actual justice involved.