Democracy and Roles

Societal Setting

Consider engineered activities within the borders of the the United States that could result in harm to humans and wildlife to include all plants and other animals within its borders and territorial waters. Firstly, we recognize that harms can easily exceed a country’s borders; there are no special mechanisms to limit the spread of harmful activities carried through interconnected systems such as waterways, the shared atmosphere, or by mechanisms such as commerce; harms that exceed borders may as well be the result of innocent oversight, thoughtlessness, or nefarious intent.

Now consider the societal structure in the United States that can affect how engineered activities are carried out.

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is an illustration of the societal structures within which intersections take place and engineered systems operate. At the highest level is the citizens of the United States; the citizens are the ones who form, support through taxation, and directly work within the government and governmental agencies of the United States. Citizens engineer and operate industrial systems intended to provide societal benefits for example, food, water, housing, transportation, energy, and services. Citizens work within the regulatory structure that flows from laws dictated by elected government officials; these activities include regulation and enforcement.

The existence of engineered systems within the societal structure poses the possibility that citizens can be exposed to harm; just a few or even all citizens could be exposed to harm; the population exposed to harm, to the extent they are unaware of the risk for harm, are referred to as “involuntary stakeholders.” Involuntary stakeholders may or may not be part of industry, regulation or as well beneficiaries of industrial activity providing for access to products and services. Similarly citizens working in regulation or industry may also be involuntary stakeholders as well as beneficiaries of industrial activities.

Governance

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The citizens as shown in are the same as government and participate in the various activities of industry and regulation. Through election citizens comprise the representative government, the Congress, Judiciary, and Executive branches. In this system, the Congress (House of Representatives) creates laws that come under the review of the Executive and if need be, the Judiciary; we are concerned with those laws that are designed to cause protection from harm, particularly harm from industrial activities.

Both in lawmaking and regulation, complete information is absolutely critical to arriving at the best decision-making; rule making is the regulatory activity requiring the best information regarding the potential for harms. The most important information is the potential harm that can result from industrial activity, the possibility for it to occur, and the efficacy of protections put in place either by the industry or required by regulation.

As stated previously, Congress proposes laws that, if they come into effect, become the subject of rule making done by citizens working in the civil service. In the absence of laws accompanied by regulation, industry applies protections as it sees fit primarily in the interest of maximizing profit. The difference between protections afforded by regulation through laws and those implemented by industry is this. Regulations require protection prior to events that can cause harm; if harm is caused, the Judiciary determines liability compensation from injurer(s) for those injured after harm is caused.

Judiciary

The judiciary adjudicates disputes among citizens as individuals, as collections of individuals, as industrialists, as elected representatives, and as regulators. In his opinion as to the case of “United States v. Carroll Towing” where a barge broke loose in the harbor and cause damage and sinking, Judge Learned Hand summarized injurer’s exposure to liability as follows:

Since there are occasions when every vessel will break from her moorings, and since, if she does, she becomes a menace to those about her; the owner’s duty, as in other similar situations, to provide against resulting injuries is a function of three variables: (1) The probability that she will break away; (2) the gravity of the resulting injury, if she does; (3) the burden of adequate precautions. Possibly it serves to bring this notion into relief to state it in algebraic terms: if the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i. e., whether B $>$ PL ¹

The ethical principle of utilitarianism seems to underpin Judge Hand’s assignment of liability; that is, under utilitarianism an action that could result in harm is weighed against the combination of the level of harm and the probability harm will be realized. As long as the balance favors no harm, the risk posed by the activity is judged acceptable under the ethical principle of utilitarianism; the injurer would not be liable for damages when harm is realized. The notion of future loss as the combination probability and loss level is often referred to as “risk”.

Of course the risk balance in Judge Hand’s ruling requires knowing and agreeing to the value of something we can never know with any certainty except in very special cases; that is knowing the probability a sequence of events will come to harm. In his article, From the casino to the jungle, Hansson describes the difficulties of knowing probabilities except in special cases.² In general, we think of risk as some sort loss that we expect to happen in the future although as Hansson points out in “Philosophical Perspectives on Risk”, the meaning word risk can be vague.³ In Hansson’s Rule (5):

Nobody should be exposed to a risk unless it is part of an equitable social system for risk-taking that works to her advantage. (Hansson 2004)

This rule implies risk is taken to be future harm and comports with the basis for protection in engineered systems; when protection breaks down, harm could be caused. As stated above, the Congress proposes laws that ultimately come under regulation and enforcement which is the purview of the Executive branch.

Executive

Congress

1. 159 F.2d 169 (2d Cir. 1947), The case of ‘United States v. Carroll Towing Co.’ ↩

2. Hansson, S.O., 2009. From the casino to the jungle. Synthese, 168(3), pp.423-432. ↩

3. Hansson, S.O., 2004. Philosophical perspectives on risk. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 8(1), pp.10-35. ↩