Corporations often prioritize opportunities over risks, aiming to capitalize on market advantages while shifting responsibility for potential harms. Limited liability laws protect them from financial responsibility, allowing them to privatize benefits and socialize losses. This system incentivizes superficial risk assessment and plausible deniability, rather than genuine and thorough risk analysis. The profit metric further distorts incentives, leading to a culture where comprehensive risk analysis is considered unfeasible, resulting in a plethora of products with potential harms. Embracing genuine risk analysis would lead to a reduction in product proliferation, better overall outcomes, and mitigate the societal issues stemming from harmful products.
In this fourth installment of conversations with Daniel Schmachtenberger, we dive deeper into the nuances of humans using energy, materials and technology. Human’s ability to develop and use tools is one of our greatest strengths - yet has also led to increasing destruction of the natural world. How does technology intensify the binding effects of a world order based on growth? Is there any way out - or could global solutions just make the problem worse?
About Daniel Schmachtenberger:
Daniel Schmachtenberger is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue.
The throughline of his interests has to do with ways of improving the health and development of individuals and society, with a virtuous relationship between the two as a goal.
Towards these ends, he’s had particular interest in the topics of catastrophic and existential risk, civilization and institutional decay and collapse as well as progress, collective action problems, social organization theories, and the relevant domains in philosophy and science.
For Show Notes and Transcript visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/42-daniel-schmachtenberger