Formalized risk regulation would still fail to register regret over tragic choices

Evidence

The precautionary approach to environmental law also embodies an underappreciated expressive wisdom. Even if mechanical devices of the kind sought by economic proponents could be identifi ed to grapple with uncertainty, to resolve analytically prior ethical questions such as wealth and resource equity, and to address challenges posed by future generations and other unknowable others— in short, even if economic proponents could fully formalize environmental lawmaking— the approach still would fail to register the sense of regret that accompanies risk regulation’s tragic choices. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 72

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Severe tragedies can resist the usual moral justifications for lax regulation; Risk discourse retroactively moralizes outcomes whose causality it denies beforehand — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 342; Statistical risk comparisons can normalize accepting innocent deaths as collateral cost — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1926

Broader Connections

• Statistical risk comparisons can normalize accepting innocent deaths as collateral cost #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1926
• Severe tragedies can resist the usual moral justifications for lax regulation #qualifies (0.75)
• Risk discourse retroactively moralizes outcomes whose causality it denies beforehand #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 342