Key Messages
How Government Policies Can Make Us Less Safe: Exploring The Paradoxical Nature Of Safety Measures
When it comes to foolproofing your life, the lessons we learn from Foolproof: How Governments Made the Global Financial Crisis Worse can be invaluable.
We’re all familiar with how governments and the financial sector were blamed for causing the 2007–08 financial crisis, but what if that wasn’t the entire story? In reality, many of the measures taken by governments to protect themselves ended up making them even less safe.
Through these sections, you’ll gain insight into why helmets made football more dangerous; how an economic crisis improved Thailand; and why pilots need space to make smart decisions.
Ultimately, this book encourages us to think twice before buying into a false sense of security when it’s not necessary.
With this advice in mind, you’ll be able learn how to truly foolproof your life.
When Making Activities Safer Can Increase Risks: How Safety Regulations Can Backfire
The take-home message from Foolproof, is that sometimes when we feel more safe and secure, we can actually become more reckless.
This phenomenon has been well documented in a variety of situations, including driving cars with anti-lock brakes, playing contact sports such as American football and ice hockey with protective helmets and other safety features.
When drivers trust the anti-lock braking system too much, they are likely to drive faster and brake harder.
Similarly, players of contact sports may take greater risks while wearing protective helmets because they feel excessively shielded.
Research has shown that in these types of scenarios, injuries from head fractures have decreased while spinal injuries have increased drastically.
The lesson here is simple: just because something makes us feel safer does not mean it will necessarily keep us out of harm’s way.
Sometimes our perceived security can give us a false sense of invincibility, causing us to become even more reckless than before.
The Effects Of Safety Measures: How Government Regulations Helped Cause The Financial Crisis Of 2007–2008
Although it can be comforting to feel like our economy is stable, this security can be deceptive.
It was during the 1980s when the US Federal Reserve began its effort to manage economic instability with their regulations on banks; they believed if the banks were stable then so too would the economy.
This plan had an unintended consequence as shadow banking techniques rose to fill the gap in unregulated credit.
By 2007 only 20 percent of US household and business credit came from traditional banks compared to 46 percent in 1979.
Unfortunately, this illusion of safety led to an increase in risk-taking which caused the 2008 financial crisis.
The same thing happened with Europe when they introduced the euro in 1999, although it lead to greater financial stability it also meant that wealthier nations supplied southern counterparts with billions in loans without realizing the countries’ underlying domestic issues until a full-blown debt crisis unfolded in 2009.
These examples show that although stability can make us feel safe, it ultimately can be quite deceiving and pave way for more serious economic troubles later on.
How Our Attempts To Prevent Disasters Could Lead To Even Greater Catastrophes
When it comes to natural disasters, human behavior has a significant influence on how much damage is caused.
We put in “preventive measures” to keep safe and often end up creating more problems.
Take forest fires; they’re worse today because of the advent of forest management, which has meant that smaller fires are regularly extinguished.
This leads to an accumulation of leaves, branches and other dead foliage around the flooring which leads to bigger and worse fires.
One example is the violent fire in Australia’s Victoria State in 2009 – 173 people were killed and many homes destroyed.
Though climate change was a factor, Political Scientist Robert Pielke Jr pointed out the bigger problem: people had been living in wooded areas known to be susceptible to fires for some time before then.
Had the region not been so densely populated as it was during that period, the amount of destruction caused wouldn’t have been as extensive as it was in 2009.
As our economies continue to build in disaster-prone areas, we should expect that any future disasters may become even more expensive than before.
Take Miami’s Great Hurricane of 1926; with only 100,000 inhabitants at the time, it cost around $1 billion dollar at today’s values – if something similar occurred now, when Miami’s population is five times larger than it was then, damages would be nearly $200 billion!
It’s human behavior, not Mother Nature – such as building or living in risky areas – that increases the amount of damage inflicted by disasters It pays to always be mindful and cautious when temperatures rise or conditions get hazardous – future calamities can be avoided altogether if we take extra precautions ahead of time!
It’S Better To Accept Systemic Risk Than Try To Avoid It, Despite The Disasters That Follow
Sometimes, it’s better to accept the risk of disasters or crises than to try to prevent them.
This is something that experts agree upon and is something that has been demonstrated by research looking into the economics of Thailand and India between 1980 and 2002.
In this case, while Thailand experienced greater economic growth with booming foreign investment and a privately owned banking system, they also experienced a financial crisis as a result of their recklessness.
But even then, their GDP per capita still increased by 162 percent compared to India’s 114 percent.
Another example can be seen in nuclear power.
Even though it may seem daunting at first thought, nuclear energy is actually much safer than burning coal or natural gas.
NASA estimates that 1.84 million deaths have been prevented thanks to nuclear power from 1971-2009!
If we choose to shut down these nuclear power plants in countries such as Japan, Germany and Switzerland in favor of fossil fuels, we will be causing more deaths due to pollution, as well as contributing further to global warming.
So next time you’re considering tackling a potential disaster or a risky situation head on, don’t forget that sometimes accepting it can be more beneficial in the long run than attempting to avoid it altogether.
Shakespeare Was Right: Fear Can Be The Key To Our Safety
Sometimes, when we feel like we are surrounded by danger, that’s when we take the greatest precautions and are actually safest.
This is something that Shakespeare alluded to centuries ago when Ophelia said to Hamlet, “the best safety lies in fear”.
Take British Airways Flight 9 which was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Auckland in 1982: due to our heightened fear of air travel, every precaution was taken and it resulted in a safe emergency landing in Jakarta.
Despite the numerous flight disruptions caused by the subsequent eruptions of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010, there were no casualties reported.
There have even been times when death could have occurred – such as Exxon Mobil’s Valdez oil spill disaster of 1989 or their pressure problem encountered during 2005 deepwater drilling project – but these disasters were avoided through a zero-tolerance strategy for risk management combined with an Operations Integrity Management System (OIMS).
This is why sometimes the more fearful we are about something and the more precautions we take, the safer we actually become.
Find The Right Balance Between Risk And Security For A Foolproof Existence
Today, striking a balance between limiting danger and accepting the inherent risks we encounter in the world is more important than ever.
If a situation or activity is inherently very risky, sometimes opting not to engage in it is better than trying to make it safe – as illustrated by TD’s decision to cease trading in derivatives before the financial collapse of 2007-2008.
At the same time, there are ways that we can foolproof our lives if necessary.
Creating space between potential dangers is one way of doing this; for instance, building structures close to bushfire-prone areas should be done with a buffer zone of defensible space, and pilots must maintain a certain level of distance from other aircraft when flying.
It’s critical that we understand that foolproofing doesn’t mean attempting to remove all risks altogether; rather, it means striking the right balance between risk and security so that we don’t constantly find ourselves in dangerous situations.
Doing this will ultimately help us stay safe while still allowing us to engage with life around us.
Wrap Up
Foolproof is a book meant to remind us that life is full of both risks and surprises.
It urges readers to find a balance between taking calculated risks, and learning to trust their gut instinct – something we all have.
The book talks about the concept of space being necessary in order to stay safe.
Just like airplanes need to leave 1,000 feet between them for safety – something as simple as creating a generous buffer zone when driving your car can help reduce the likelihood of accidents drastically.
In short, Foolproof offers us an accessible way of understanding how we take risks and make decisions in our lives – something which can help give us an edge when it comes staying out of harm’s way.
