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Wishing You A Respect-Filled New Year

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

I hope that, in the new year, we all will treat one another with greater respect.  So, for example, if I want a business to cater to my tastes, I will speak respectfully with the manager to explain my wishes and then will spend my money in the businesses that serve me best.  I will not lobby the city or state or feds to force the business to do things my way.  If I want children to be better educated, or if I have some other pet cause, I may send money to support that cause or may personally take action to promote that cause, such as tutoring a struggling child, but I will not ask the legislature to take more money from my neighbors by force in order to use the money for my pet cause.  I will respect my neighbors’ right to use their money to support their pet projects – even if they are projects I would not support myself, and I will not try to dictate to them by force how to live their lives.    

In the past couple of days, we have seen large spreads in the C-J promoting an agenda of greater force and less respect – treating adults as if they were children.  First, they want us to feel sorry for the Vehicle Emissions Testing workers in Louisville who lost their jobs when the testing ended.  I respect the decision of those workers to continue working at the VET instead of seeking other employment despite the fact that they had at least one year’s notice that their jobs were going to be eliminated.  I assume they made the choice to stay for some good reason.  While transitions are often difficult, they are a normal part of life.  Very few people have as much time to adjust to a transition as these workers have had, so I certainly do not feel sorry for them. Now, instead of spending their time working at a job that achieves nothing of value for the community, they have an opportunity to find a useful job that will benefit the community and that someone is actually willing to support on a voluntary basis.  This is something to celebrate, not to feel sad about.

Next, we see a large spread in the C-J promoting more government regulation of businesses for the purpose of worker safety.  Certainly, the deaths they cite of workers who were digging trenches are very tragic, especially since the accidents easily could have been prevented simply by following standard safety practices which involve shoring up the trenches as they are being dug.  However, instead of promoting a solution that respects the parties involved, the C-J, as usual, wants a policy or increased force and less respect.  We already have plenty of safety regulations and a huge bureaucracy to administer them.  Obviously, this force-based approach has failed even in the simplest situation of trench digging, in which the safety procedures are straightforward, well known, and easy to observe.  If the use of force-based rules, regulations, and fines hasn’t worked in this simplest situation, how can more use of the same approach be expected to improve matters? 

The real problem is twofold:  First, the business owners have been relieved of financial responsibility for creating a dangerous work environment, due to workman’s compensation laws.  Accountability is part of respect, and the business owners should be respected enough to be accountable for the way they run their businesses.  Second, workers have a false, child-like sense of security, because they have been told that some government agency is going to protect their safety.  Workers would be better off if they assumed some responsibility for their own safety and if they could sue their employers in the event of an injury caused by the employer’s creating dangerous working conditions. 

Any worker who is digging a trench knows the safety procedures and can readily see whether they are being used.  If those procedures are not being used, that person should refuse to get into the trench.  If he chooses to go into an unsafe situation, knowing that he is risking his life, I think it is very foolish, but I respect his right to do it, just as I respect his right to jump off a cliff.  If his employer was aware of such risky practices and did nothing to make the workplace safer, then the employer should be at risk of having to pay substantial damages to the dead employee’s family.  Any sane employer who knew he might be held accountable would fire employees who failed to use the normal safety procedures.  Thus, the workplace would be much safer if the government treated both employers and employees with respect rather than treating them as children to be controlled and regulated.  It’s time to stop living in a make-believe world in which we put our faith in regulators to protect us and start living in a real world, in which respect and accountability are applied.

The benefits of treating adults with respect are endless.  They include an abundant economic pie with benefits that are more accessible to everyone, as people are able to use the fruits of their labor to further their own agenda.  They include greater peace, as we stop using the government to plunder each other, and there is no longer any need to fight and struggle to control the plunder.   And they include more happiness, as people are free to chase their dreams rather than being tethered to the welfare state.   

 So, for your health, wealth, and happiness, here’s wishing you a respect-filled new year!

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