ABSTRACT
Risk management must deal with conflict, for conflict is inherent to the problem. This chapter explores the source of risk, how risks are handled by corporations and individuals, and why government as presently constituted must make a mess of resolving the conflicts inherent in risk management. Some of the risks from technology arise from simple ignorance or the failure to be aware of the potential danger. A deep current underlying the middle-class view of risks is ignorance, particularly as to the workings of technology. The problems of the middle class, however, go well beyond that. The middle class tends to be both risk aversive and risk embracing; it is risk aversive collectively and risk embracing individually. If government's search for workable risk management is not defeated by the bureaucratic mentality and a vain search for "acceptable risk," then surely it faces the greater threat that its own structure will permit or produce increasingly massive failures of technology.
