Risk assessment: Proactionary principle v precautionary principle

"Proactionary Principle" against the far more popular "Precautionary Principle." Intro: "We can call this “the” Proactionary Principle so long as we realize that the underlying Principle is less like a sound bite than a set of nested Chinese boxes or Russian matroshka (babushka) dolls..." The best of the Russian dolls:


a. Triage: Give precedence to ameliorating known and proven threats to human health and environmental quality over acting against hypothetical risks.

b. Symmetrical treatment: Treat technological risks on the same basis as natural risks; avoid underweighting natural risks and overweighting human-technological risks. Fully account for the benefits of technological advances.

c. Prioritize (Prioritization): When choosing among measures to ameliorate unwanted side effects, prioritize decision criteria as follows: (a) Give priority to risks to human and other intelligent life over risks to other species; (b) give non-lethal threats to human health priority over threats limited to the environment (within reasonable limits); (c) give priority to immediate threats over distant threats; (d) prefer the measure with the highest expectation value by giving priority to more certain over less certain threats, and to irreversible or persistent impacts over transient impacts.


Underlying the whole discussion by the author is a deep appreciation for the great economic concept of opportunity cost. The progress you don't see because you didn't allow change is as much a cost as the losses you do see because you did. It's only because some places and times allowed drastic change that we can look back in time to 1000 A.D., or across the border at Third World countries, and realize how lucky we are that proaction prevailed over precaution.

source: www.econlog.econlib.com


Economics

The three most important things said by Adam Smith: Number one was that Smith exploded the notion that people could only enrich themselves at the expense of others. Not so, said Smith. Wealth is created by specialization and exchange.

Number two was the invisible hand, that spontaneous ordering of society which means that when we act in our legitimate self-interest, we often benefit countless others we shall never meet. When we buy we unwittingly create employment and pay wages. When we sell we provide other people with goods they value more than the money they part with.

Number three, from the Theory of Moral Sentiments, is that the most striking characteristic of humankind is our propensity to empathize with our fellow men and women, feeling sadness at their grief and pleasure at their happiness. The three points, taken together, amount to a powerful social philosophy and gave the world not only the scientific study of economics, but an understanding of how human beings interact with each other. Truly a powerful contribution.

source: www.adamsmith.org