Why ‘everyone is responsible for their own risk-based decisions’ isn’t the right approach to take

[The Chairman]

The RSTC is our attempt at self-regulation to avoid any governmental regulation. They seem to be more about defending the status quo than producing great instructors. They have missed the mark when it comes to CESAs, Trim, and Neutral Buoyancy. A number of years ago, Insurance companies limited the number of Discover Scuba Students an instructor could teach. That was awesome. They should also consider restricting instructors from doing CESAs and save us all a lot of grief.

 

[sigxbill]

@GJC - Yes. It should be up to me to decide who I want to hire for anything. Why should the government restrict who I can hire?

Obviously if someone declared them self to be a nurse without actually being one, and then applied to a reputatable hospital, they would not get hired - competition would prevent that. They don’t have a nursing degree, and or other documentation proving their quality. No BRN necessary.

What is incredible to me is that you are indoctrinated in to thinking it is ok for so many professions to require permission from the government to work.

We are not going to agree on this issue, so let’s agree to disagree and not hyjac this string to debate nursing regulation anymore. If you wish to discuss my promotion of classic liberalism in industries other than scuba more, please feel free to pm me.

Cheers

 

[Roger Hobden]

They have missed the mark when it comes to CESAs, Trim, and Neutral Buoyancy. (...)
They should also consider restricting instructors from doing CESAs and save us all a lot of grief.

Should dive teaching companies stop teaching CESAs to OW dive students ?

 

[KenGordon]

https://nypost.com/2018/01/12/safest-car-in-the-world-scored-nearly-perfect-in-crash-test/

LOL! (as the kids would say). Supporting an argument with an article from the Sun, oh dear.

Seriously though, how about the point that regulation, not competition, prevents the sale of some existing cars and that is a good thing?

Some stuff can only be done by regulation and not markets/competition because the costs do not fall on the buyer or the buyer is unaware of those costs. Cars are excellent example of that. Emmisions for example, poor emmisions can benefit the buyer with lower fuel costs, but are a cost for society as a whole. Being big and primitively designed costs other road users. Being generally unsafe leads to more accidents, death, clean up costs and heathcare costs.

 

[Roger Hobden]

Too bad this interesting thread was derailed by discussions about nurses and about motor vehicles ...

 

[KenGordon]

You still missed the point of my posts. The point was that regulation reduces competition -> which reduces quality, and only helps the major players in that particular market. My posts are about SCUBA - not cars. The only reason cars came up is because I tried to use them to demonstrate how regulation makes people think cheap cars are just as safe as more expensive cars. The same can be seen in the scuba industry. The RSTC (scuba's version of regulation) makes people think that all training is the same, which reduces competition -> and consequently quality. Reliance on RSTC makes consumers erroneously think that cheap three day OW courses produce the same result as longer more expensive courses from agencies trying to compete on quality. If a consumer thinks all training is the same, because of regulation, very few are going to dig to try and find out why smaller agency training can cost twice as much.

You choose a poor way to make a bogus point. So I will attack the particular scuba versions too.

Nobody has heard of the RSTC. No prospective diving student knows they exist or what they do. They do absolutely nothing that can be called regulation. So the fact that they issue some lists of what ought to be in a course has no influence on how a user decided who to go with. Users essential choose first level training by accident. The exception is the odd one who realises having done a poor course and is a bit more careful next time. Even those that do it by personal recommendation are probably deluded as most customers think even very poor instructors are good,

So regulation in scuba does nothing, so I should hard to blame for the dominance of one company in designing and marketing courses.

In actual fact, and I watched this happen slowly and painfully, competition has done what competition does, driven away the providers who didn’t satisfy what the users wanted. In this case they wanted short, easy courses to get them in the water NOW, not in 6 weeks time able to execute a rescue, plan dives and do a bit of deco.

 

[KenGordon]

I thought we were debating the OP's premise that imposing government regulation on instructors would improve safety, so I don't understand your closing remark that seems to indicate I am complaining about existing government regulation that doesn't exist. My point is to keep regulation non-existent in scuba ....

I am contrasting the outcomes in two political systems. One which claims to be all about personal freedom/responsibility and one which invented the welfare state. In one petty local politicians get to (and seemingly actually do) impose their ideas on divers and in the other somewhat navy bloke might get a bit sarcastic if you get in the way of a berthing nuclear submarine.

Your position seems to be that the issues arising in the first one are best solved by making is a more extreme version of itself rather than looking at how things turn out elsewhere.

BTW the OP is not suggesting more regulation. He is suggesting that a knee jerk approach that when a diver has an incident that the divers direct actions are the whole story is too simplistic. Other factors which lead to those actions are important.

Training is one of those factors. Curlture is related and in the absence of an ongoing culture (such as a club provides) that mostly comes with training.

 

[KenGordon]

It is the job of an employer to screen applicants - not the governments. It is the job of nursing schools to compete to produce quality nurses - not a government accreditation body. And it is the school's job to issue exams. Then it is the nurse's job to convince an employer they are quality enough to be hired. The board does not need to investigate to make sure that practice standards are met. That is the job of the employer, consumer, and consumer advocate organizations. And what business does the government have in monitoring a free people's consumption of anything! Again, if job performance suffers - for any reason, resolving that is the job of the employer!

So, rubbish nurses, who went to rubbish schools, working for rubbish companies ought to be the consumer’s problem?

I think you want to frame all problems as having a single, simple answer. Let the market decide.

 

[The Chairman]

Should dive teaching companies stop teaching CESAs to OW dive students ?

Horizontal in the pool is enough. Asking Dive instructors to do multiple verticle CESAs is exposing them to needless risk and barotrauma as well as it sets a simply horrible example to the students. I've met a number of 'disabled' instructors who can no longer do this skill. They either stop teaching or get another instructor to do the CESAs.

 

[chrisch]

...
So regulation in scuba does nothing, so I should hard to blame for the dominance of one company in designing and marketing courses.
...

Trying hard to stick with diving as the debate seems a bit too much about providing contrasting examples of why people's personal beliefs are right/wrong about something political that there can never be agreement about.

This point is interesting in the light of an earlier (wrong IMHO) assertion that regulation kills competition.

The scuba (training) industry is barely regulated in most the world. What constitutes an acceptable level of training is not legally defined. Even supranational organisations like CMAS carry no legal weight whatsoever. As an example of deregulated industry one would be hard pushed to find a better example.

How come therefore that there is one service provider (PADI in this instance) that is such a world dominating force?

Surely in such an environment there should be a huge number of smaller providers each offering different ways to learn and entrepreneurial individuals designing innovative new training programs?

I suggest the need for an agreed standard is simply regulation by another name, another route. Whether that regulation is by sovereign governments and carries the weight of law or by the industry itself is immaterial, it is regulation. The need for government intervention and the full force of the law only occurs where the industry fails in it's duty of care. We see this with - for example - the energy industry and it's promotion of climate change inducing fuels. In the scuba industry the failure is more immediate, easier to prove - a drowned student. It is therefore clearer and has more direct effect on the earnings of the people failing.

The government(s) is not the enemy any more than it is the saviour. Sensible regulation is a needed for any life threatening activity. We should be happy that diver training does that itself so well.