Are there historical cases where you think international technical standards have been especially effective in preventing harm by being both cost-effective and widely followed? (That is, something like “saving a good number of DALYs compared to how much it cost companies to follow them”.)
I’m familiar with international prohibitions against certain types of weaponry, which seem to have been fairly effective, but nothing comes to mind on the consumer side (though I’m sure examples do exist).
I have worked on developing energy efficiency standards. Sometimes they come from international organizations and are adopted by individual countries. But sometimes individual countries develop standards and then they can go international (I gave an example of this in my 80,000 Hours podcast near the end). This has happened quite a bit with the US Energy Star program. I agree with the original poster that standards development can indeed be dull, but I think this is an important effort.
Are there historical cases where you think international technical standards have been especially effective in preventing harm by being both cost-effective and widely followed? (That is, something like “saving a good number of DALYs compared to how much it cost companies to follow them”.)
I’m familiar with international prohibitions against certain types of weaponry, which seem to have been fairly effective, but nothing comes to mind on the consumer side (though I’m sure examples do exist).
I have worked on developing energy efficiency standards. Sometimes they come from international organizations and are adopted by individual countries. But sometimes individual countries develop standards and then they can go international (I gave an example of this in my 80,000 Hours podcast near the end). This has happened quite a bit with the US Energy Star program. I agree with the original poster that standards development can indeed be dull, but I think this is an important effort.