Progressives Promise Prosperity by Dependency

Better safe than sorry is just another way to say 'don't worry, we'll take care of you' - all you have to do vote for us and we promise to make you safe and healthy.

This is the agenda of the modern progressives. The liberal Democrats. It's the new 'normal' for America - dependency.


Should "Better Safe than Sorry" Guide Our Public Policy?
Source: Jonathan Adler, "The Problems with Precaution: A Principle without Principle," The American, May 25, 2011.

It's better to be safe than sorry. We all accept this as a commonsense maxim. But can it also guide public policy? Advocates of the precautionary principle think so, and argue that formalizing a more "precautionary" approach to public health and environmental protection will better safeguard human well-being and the world around us. If only it were that easy, says Jonathan Adler, a professor and director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Simply put, the precautionary principle is not a sound basis for public policy. At the broadest level of generality, the principle is unobjectionable, but it provides no meaningful guidance to pressing policy questions. In a public policy context, "better safe than sorry" is a fairly vacuous instruction.

Taken literally, the precautionary principle is either wholly arbitrary or incoherent. In its stronger formulations, the principle actually has the potential to do harm. Efforts to operationalize the precautionary principle into public law will do little to enhance the protection of public health and the environment. The precautionary principle could even do more harm than good.

Efforts to impose the principle through regulatory policy inevitably accommodate competing concerns or become a Trojan horse for other ideological crusades. When selectively applied to politically disfavored technologies and conduct, the precautionary principle is a barrier to technological development and economic growth.