The effects are functionally the same, but I think the ideology and rhetoric behind then and now have changed.
There really isn't a purportedly "principled" system of logic behind these decisions, in the past these decisions would be dressed in principled rhetoric no matter how heinous they realistically were.
They aren't even bothering to dress it up in rhetoric that says there is something noble behind these decisions.
The building up backlash is going to be horrific and i hope it will not lead to decomplexification movements ala pol pot or islamism.
In closing, I do not think it is like the 1950s in that basic science has identified and amplified many fundamental advances since then, materials science is sci-fi now compared to then, but it is similar in the economic-first and actively thumbing the nose at all things green and eco regarding the market.
> Please note that the CSB is not an enforcement agency - they don’t assign fault or levee fines or bring any charges or write any regulation.
So, by that analogy, I think the NTSB is amazing and has done crucial, instrumental work that makes flying safer (as the saying goes, aviation regulations are written in blood). So I think getting rid of the CSB sounds colossally stupid, and I think it's elimination could lead to a willingness by companies to be more careless when it comes to chemical safety.
Do CSB recommendations inform policy? Do CSB recommendations get implemented? Do CSB recommendations when implemented increase safety?
Hmmm, 1950s attitudes, hmm. What if we consider the hypothesis that the animus towards the CSB is for the absolute stupidest reasons possible? Here are the 3 current CSB board members [1-3].
[1] https://www.csb.gov/members/board-member-catherine-sandoval-...
[2] https://www.csb.gov/members/board-member-sylvia-e-johnson-ph...
This is not from the 1950s, but from the 1970s, most famously (though others piled on after Friedman's (in)famous NYT letter):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
In the mid-twentieth century corporate management's focus was more broad:
> This view was shared not only by scholars but, surprisingly, by many corporate executives. In 1949 General Foods’ president Clarence Francis told Congress that he had a “three-way responsibility to the American consumer, to our associates in this business, and to the 68,000 [stockholders in General Foods]. We . . . would serve (the company’s) interests badly by shifting the fruits of the enterprise too heavily toward any one of those groups.” Two years later, the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey claimed that managers needed “to conduct the affairs of the enterprise in such a way as to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly interested groups—stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large.” So widespread were such views that, in 1959, one writer in the Harvard Business Review complained that it was no longer “fashionable for the corporation to take gleeful pride in making money.” Instead, he complained, it was typical “for the corporation to show that it is a great innovator; more specifically, a great public benefactor; and, very particularly, that it exists ‘to serve the public’.”
> Even the law bent, at least a bit, toward this “social” view of corporate purpose. When the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld corporate charitable donations in its 1956 A.P. Smith Manufacturing Co. decision, it rested its judgment less on any benefit that would accrue to the company than on the belief that corporations had responsibilities beyond those owed to shareholders; corporations needed, the court held, to “acknowledge and discharge social as well as private responsibilities as members of the communities within which they operate.”
* https://www2.law.temple.edu/10q/purpose-corporation-brief-hi...
The fact that people do not know this history, and think that corporation and capitalism was 'always' about only making money, limits the options under discussions for fixing some of the social ills we are experiencing currently. Yes: corporations need to (at least) break even to survive, and ideally have some sort of return, but there are degrees to which they have to push to accomplish this.
* https://beatricecherrier.wordpress.com/2025/06/18/beyond-pro...
Some of the highest levels of economic growth (and its distribution to all) was done during times when shareholder primacy was not the main goal—though there were other factors, which may or may not be replicable, that helped with that growth:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_American_...
I think part of the reason for this decline in thinking was that government regulators came into the picture and so they became the "public" that needed pleasing and over time they all got bought or otherwise captured via revolving door and other mechanisms.
>The fact that people do not know this history, and think that corporation and capitalism was 'always' about only making money,
There's no incentive for anyone who stands to advance their ideology by point out the abuse of corporations to inject such nuance.
This is SOP for policy extremists. They'll never show you any potential middle ground, they want you to skip over it toward the solution they're peddling.
If that were the case, the US would be dumping trillions into spinning up manufacturing like China did.
The US has the power to do this, they did it during WWII, and like it or not, this current era requires heavy strategic investments that may not produce returns for decades, if at all. It's what China is doing and if the US were trying to compete, they'd do the same. We were getting somewhat close to this with the CHIPS Act, but that's on the chopping block[1], too.
Truth is US capital is happy to sell off manufacturing capability to cash in on cheap labor, and there is no monetary incentive to re-shore manufacturing capacity unless the government provides serious incentives or does it themselves.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act#Subseque...
i.e. perhaps the whole point is that breaking these things will do damage and lower the status and functionality of the United States, making it actively worse by a considerable amount and sabotaging key structural parts normal people wouldn't even know were there.
In short, it's possible that it being bad is the point.
I'm no expert, but even if they somehow managed to get manufacturing back, slashing your competitive advantages and just taking the market position of "China 2: This time it's more expensive" doesn't strike me as a winner for exports.
Now they're going back 70 years instead of moving forward. Big brains there.
Bringing manufacturing back is a stated goal of this administration.
Nevermind that you're not going to convince an American to work for Chinese wages in a sweatshop. Ignore that.
But the intended outcome of everything Dump is doing is to de-emphasize advanced education, bring back all basic manufacturing, and restore the "traditional" American values (white, straight, Christian). It's an absolutely stupid idea, but he's been pretty clear about it.
Meta: the si parameter is a form of tracking, as is pp. Considering trimming them from any copy-paste if you can.
I can't think of another use of my tax dollars that I get as much direct pleasure from.
They're 50 employees with an annual budget of $14.4 million. The cost/benefit ratio here is very good.
What's this administration trying do, return the US to the Third World or the Dark Ages? Madness.
> The President’s Budget proposes $0 for CSB’s FY 2026 budget with the expectation that CSB begins closing down during FY 2025. CSB’s emergency fund of $844,145 will be appropriated to cover costs associated with closing down the agency. Exact closing costs will be determined upon consultation with OMB and Congress.
> The President’s Budget proposes $0 for CSB’s FY 2026 budget
https://themortgagepoint.com/2025/06/23/senate-parliamentari...
They basically do NTSB aircraft crash investigations for large scale chemical accidents. Critically they don’t assign fines or act proactively like EPA or OSHA, it’s a neutral investigation.
> The Senate legislative history states: "The principal role of the new chemical safety board is to investigate accidents to determine the conditions and circumstances which led up to the event and to identify the cause or causes so that similar events might be prevented." Congress gave the CSB a unique statutory mission and provided in law that no other agency or executive branch official may direct the activities of the board.
I think a huge, huge amount of the government is wasteful but the CSB is doing incredible work. Some of the smartest chemical engineers go on to work there later in their career. Due to the average age of the knowledge-holders, this isn’t an agency that you can shut down and easily restart. Young engineers don’t make good investigators - you need a super keen sense of industry to walk into a place where you don’t know anyone and put all the clues together correctly.
The CSB produces very neutral but incredibly detailed reports. Please note that the CSB is not an enforcement agency - they don’t assign fault or levee fines or bring any charges or write any regulation.
All they do is figure out why every major industrial disaster occurred and communicate that to other companies so that they have the know-how to prevent if from happening again if they so choose. The CSB’s reports are invaluable to the operations of so many companies and plants.
Some of the top comments on a 1-year old video with 3.5 million views:
> I can't believe that a government agency makes some of my favorite YouTube videos. I've been watching these for years now
> Finally, a good use of my taxes
> I work in the petrochemical industry, with polymerizable substances that are quite similar to butadiene. The findings hit home. I will share this video tomorrow with all my colleagues in the plant management, who I am sure will appreciate it.
> An amazing service, thank you. When I worked at a copper mine in Yukon I would always replay your videos when it was my turn to give the safety brief and they were ALWAYS well received. Your videos save lives
> USCSB is the only US government agency I have subscription notifications on for. You all have done fantastic work for these 25 years.
> CONGRATULATIONS on 25 years to the CSB! A quarter century of excellence in safety education and investigations. I have learned so much about industrial processes and the safety measures utilized (sometimes not successfully) by industry thanks to the brilliant videos produced by the CSB. Thank you for your hard work, CSB!
> This is hands down the most positive comment section on YouTube. I, and everyone else it seems, love this channel. I’ve learned so much
> Thank you CSB for all that you do. As an engineer and new supervisor at a production facility, I utilize your videos all the time to help teach the operators the dangers that we have lurking. You improve and save lives all over due to your work. Please, keep it up.
> Love the analysis and insights to these industrial disasters that the USCSB provides. Hope you stay well funded to continue commissioning these mini documentaries.
It feels like there is some type of reverse Gell-Mann Amnesia that goes on with government spending and programs.
Those close to the subject matter typically view government spending in their area of expertise as necessary, even “incredible” as you state. When it comes to spending in an area they are not an expert, it suddenly becomes “wasteful.”
Going one level of abstraction higher: there is no evidence that demand/supply dynamics alone will regulate a society over larger populations and time scales. Even the phrase "invisible hand" appears only once in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, somewhere around page 500, and that refers not to the market at large, but to the emergence of protectionist behaviours among suppliers within a country.
Laws and regulations are part of the free market system. As rules approach zero, competition approaches war.
I thought we've known since well before the 1952 Cuyahoga River fire that sparked the formation of the EPA.
Although TBF, there's never been a lot of demand for literal burning rivers.
It's the same tragedy of the commons we see with vaccinations. Vaccinations work, so we then forget why we had them in the first place, so then we think "well... what if we just stop?"
I'm also a fan of their written reports, which are much more informative than the videos but less well known.
But contrary to other posters here I'm less convinced that it's so obviously cost effective: $14.4 million dollars a year isn't much compared to the staggering waste in other federal programs. But it certainly sounds like a lot compared to only investigating 180 incidents over 27 years-- 6 incidents a year (which is also the figure for 2022 so it's not just a product of a slow ramp though some years have less or more).
So it's something like more than a million dollars an incident which seems not so efficient.
It's also a small enough scale that it ought to be pretty reasonable to fund it through the industries directly.
That said, OSHA's budget is more like $700 million a year... and I'd rather see CSB's funding just come out of that. If public money is to be spent supporting industries, I'd rather more go to investigations and education than on a regulatory empire.
Waiting for all of the people who said that doge would lead to increased efficiency (or at the very least a smaller deficit) to say they're wrong.
Even if they do I'm worried that this kind of sabotage of progress will become the new norm, with each subsequent administration undoing everything the previous one did as standard, and going even further to appease the extremists.
I know this has always happened to some degree with executive orders (the was a great tradition of presidents signing all sorts of crazy stuff just so the next guy would have to undo it and look bad) but it seems nuclear now (sometimes literally)
Why is it that no one is pointing out the contribution of these institutions to the US and the world?
The US, has a society, has grown so materialistic, that they fail to see anything beyond money.
Somethings cannot be measured by money. In fact, when it comes to public governance, money is the least useful thing.
Not just in the US but all over the world. The fight now is anybody with some critical thought ability vs willfully and violently ignorant. The former is getting fewer in the numbers and the latter is out for blood. We need to be very efficient to disarm and passivize the violent ignorants otherwise they will slowly kill us and the humanity.
Not in India. Here, there is no concept of Big Govt. The concept is "What is this govt. going to give me for free for me to vote for it"
Its the other end of the complimentary spectrum.
It isn't the narrative. It's what a small band of institutional hackers want to do to the country. If anything the narrative is to not care about anything.
And which society are you contrasting this with?
A lot of the worlds govts spend a lot through public institutions.
I can only assume Trump administration is incompetent, corrupt and negligent.
A case of the baby getting thrown out with the bathwater, I suppose. And make no mistake: there was enough dirty bathwater to go around.
After 50+ years of budget cuts, what makes us think that the solution is more budget cuts?
Any evidence to share?
However, where is the critical thinking and debate on what actually the institution does, what can be improved and what can be changed?
Its all become X uses Y billion USD a year, so we have to make ti Y/2 to save the universe.
"The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating chemical incidents to determine the cause or probable cause."
Out of curiosity, I looked up the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment in 2023 and can't find their investigation on their site in either the active or completed investigation sections. Looking elsewhere, I'm only finding FEMA's concerns about cancer clusters, nothing from the CSB. Can anyone else find it?
CSB is for manufacturing / processing incidents.
It looks like the distinction is whether the potential source is stationary or not.
Which reinforces the "duplication" point. Remove the distinction for the EPA and you have the need covered.
Increase safety?: X
Make more money?: YES
The USCSB makes life safer for everyone in this country, especially people that work around potentially dangerous chemicals and pressurized equipment.
Today we have a fully deployed modern infrastructure and slow to negative population growth. Cutting regulation won't change that.
Don't worry, they're counting on us all being so desperate we'll take those jobs, anyway.
That's the beauty of our system: companies are at fault, not people, and companies can be destroyed and remade at will.
The reality: the company makes a new company (that's identical to the old company in assets and operations) and says "we had nothing to do with the old company" and they're left off with zero consequences while the old company (that has no assets but holds legal liability) goes bankrupt and pays nothing.
There's also a new and improved method that avoids even this small amount of effort. Alex Jones introduced it. When you're found liable for a billion dollars in damages, just say, "I won't pay it. Fuck you." And there's absolutely nothing they can do.
The legal system means absolutely nothing now.
The people in charge KNOW what the CSB does, that's why they want it gone
The CSB makes it known how much your employer is willing to kill you over saving like ten bucks.
Chemistry industry executives don't like that.
Do you HONESTLY believe that these people who have spent the past 60 years crying about how much the EPA makes their business "harder" (literally 1% more expensive) don't know exactly how the EPA protects the public from them?
They don't care that their actions literally kill people. They don't care.
Dupont did not care at all that they were dumping PFOAs that they confirmed were acutely and chronically toxic to mammals upstream of a small town's drinking water.
They do not care. Executives don't make money for caring.
Keyword: "independent".
They investigate before talking. They narrate the fact instead of reading the official narrative. Those pesky wokes must go.
The United states of america MAGA movement wants to compete with taliban in turning their countries 500 or even 900 years back.
Who will win? Not really sure. Its a touch and go situation and it can turn any either way and emerge as the winner
We should, of course, be efficient with our money. Any dollar we can save is a good thing but until I hear someone talk about raising taxes and cutting social spending I'm not going to take serious the idea that we're trying to balance the budget.
Or, I guess, cut the funding, and next Dupont or Deridder or Bhopal, we will just shrug and hope the company responsible for the incident is transparent and forthcoming in their internal investigation /s