Opinions like yours are wildly popular on the white collar internet because they "feel good" to people who are far removed from actual danger and productivity. But if you go to a part of the internet where many are self employed such naïve and un-nuanced opinions will be laughed at and ridiculed because they completely ignore the benefit side of the equation.

We all only get so much time on this earth and on some level quality and quantity are fungible, if inefficiently and imprecisely with some element of chance.

How much is a life worth? What's a finger worth? What's a crippling accident worth? And so on and so on. Once you define these terms numbers can be crunched and it can be determined whether you are right or wrong in any given case, and I assure you, there will be cases where your attitude computes so poorly it is farcical.

Is the retired carpenter with 10 fingers really better off than the one with 7? Sure the guy with 7 wished he'd not made that foolish mistake but the lifetime productivity gains of habitually moving fast likely show in his quality of life.

More complex benefit calculations simply make the problem more complex, but they do not change the fundamental nature of the tradeoff.

Depending on what an injury is worth, the compensation structure, etc, etc, it may very well be the right decision to disable all the safeties on everything and work fast for 10yr before losing a finger and moving on to something else because the faster man can command the higher labor rate, etc, etc.

Likewise, often times it's more valuable to write crap software in a week that solves a transient need for a year rather than spending 7mo spec'ing out and developing the arc of the goddamn covenant. Yeah it might shit all over your production database but if you're smart about the details it won't be much more likely to do that than "good" software and you can be on to the next value producing task.

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ChrisMarshallNY a day ago | parent [-]

Unfortunately, this is pretty much exactly the view of many pros. Time is money, and they will shave off things that may cost time (sometimes, that's Quality).

I mentioned that they removed the safety guards, but I never said it was good. Myself, I would not do that. I enjoy having some of the safety features that modern languages offer. I can work very quickly, indeed. I probably work faster (and safer) than I ever did, because of this.

A big danger of seasoned pros, is that they get casual with extremely dangerous things, and remove the safety stops, in order to accelerate their workflow.

One day, they are too casual, and you end up with a smoking pair of shoes on the floor.

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potato3732842 a day ago | parent [-]

But at the end of the day it's all just a N-way tradeoff between body parts/health outcomes, time and money, and god knows whatever other factors you seek to define.

Nobody blinks an eye when you say you're making a financial gamble and if it pays off you'll be able to retire young enough to enjoy it.

But everyone loses their minds if you're putting up your health instead of dollars, as if those aren't fungible.

Take for example (and this is a literal example from my friend group, not hypothetical) a man in the metal fabrication business. On day one he can either buy the "cheap and unsafe" old flywheel press brake or he can take out a loan for the modern hydraulic equivalent that is much safer, but also 3-5x slower depending on what you're using it for. That's a lot of money in his pocket over time. He never lost a finger in 30yr and ultimately sold out. Now, his lungs aren't great. But if he'd been slaving away at a hydraulic press all those years he'd never have had to either take a much smaller cash out or wait so long that he couldn't enjoy the retirement.

Now, obviously there's not a direct tradeoff between disabling guards or "unsafe choices" and productivity, and there's not a direct tradeoff between "safe choices" and health outcomes. And you can always make good or bade tradeoffs. What's a good tradeoff for the self employed 40yo isn't necessarily smart for the wage laborer at 20, or the business owner who is responsible for the wage laborers.

And at the end of the day it's all safety choices to some extend, but those safety choices are also time and money choices. Do you chock your forklift every time or do you trust the parking brake? It's really easy to sit there and say chock it every time but the nickels and dimes add up, but on the flip side of that coin the health and safety risk exposure adds up too[1].

These tradeoffs are all inter-related and the people saying to "do all the safety all the time" are just as stupid as the people saying you can run a cutting torch naked.

[1] if anyone wants to make a low effort quip about the step stool and utility knife being the most dangerous tools in the shop now's your chance.

	▲	moron4hire 20 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is not what the word "fungible" means. Not at all. Dollars are fungible. You can replace any $1 bill with any other and it doesn't matter. Calling trading X for Y where calculations of comparable value have to occur is exactly the opposite of fungible.
	▲	relaxing a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You’re over complicating things because you have no idea what you’re talking about. At every worksite, the equation is: how much will the company lose in lost productivity and workman’s comp if someone is injured. And the equation goes in favor of safety every time.