When Table Saw Markets Fail
Great discussion here. If you haven't seen FWW's piece today on this, check it out. An email exchange with Steve Gass of Sawstop. He and the FWW writer say, in part (this is just me paraphrasing what I read, not any direct quote):
• the cost of adding sawstop technology to jobsite saws is estimated at $55 (we'll believe it when we see it, but it's not $1,000)
• the next step is for manufacturers to give CPSC advice on how to achieve greatly enhanced safety
• standard is preventing serious injury if flesh moving at one foot per second contacts the blade
• manufacturers have had a lot of input already as CPSC has worked on this
• costs of injuries are $2 - $3 billion annually
• FWW writer seems to strongly support riving knives as the solution, but Gass says that misses the point of the bulk of the injury costs and of the CPSC's investigation
Now, on the economic and political aspects of the problem:
Free markets are great things, but they aren't perfect. They fail sometimes. When markets get bigger they fail more often and in more ways. Failing basically means someone imposes a cost on others without having to pay for it. This is classic Econ and the classic examples are pollution, accidents and monopoly or oligopoly markets (any time it costs so much to start a business that it is extremely difficult to enter the market).
We're lucky, or something, two of the three classics apply to our table saw problem (pollution, including smoking, doesn't exactly apply). The third failure applies since Sawstop's entry (against the odds) to this market changed the stakes in the safety discussion.
We do pay for some of the costs of table saw accidents... insurance premiums, tax subsidies for huge insurance companies and for medical institutions, to name a few ways we pay. There are others.
This is what happens when free markets fail, everyone pays.
And that is precisely when government should come in to help... NOT in any socialist way, but usually at the request of capitalist businesses trying to balance costs and payments for market failures. Remember, most all of our politicians are pretty darn rich and got that way in our capitalist system. Many pols go back and forth between business and government, and all of them deal with big money lobbyists.
The idea is to mitigate the costs to society at large from the table saw industry's market failure. It's a natural part of any modern capitialist economy.
We should be able to give input, as primary consumers of TS's. I'll bet there's a nice little chunk of the overall TS market here at SMC. This link may be at the start of the thread, but in case, here it is again:
http://www.cpsc.gov/volstd/tablesaws/tablesaws.html
CPSC asks for comments at cpsc-os@cpsc.gov. The more people who comment, the more likely it is the a big agency will take note.
We want to keep our country free. However, freedom is not just the absence of government. In some cases we are not free unless government intervenes. The less intervention the better, but the economics here seem to me to make a lot of sense.
And hey, thanks for all the info. I read SMC a lot even if I rarely jump in. You all are the experts.
Bill