ABSTRACT

Many have seen an explosive growth in concern about risks to health and physical safety. There has been a metastatic increase in the efforts by government agencies to reduce such risks as much as possible. Virtually no attention has been paid to many ways in which the direct effort to reduce identified risks can, perversely, bring about a net increase in those same or other risks. Numerous examples of this paradox—less risk is more—can be cited, and the beginnings of "taxonomy of risk errors" can be suggested. Opportunities to reduce existing risks through innovation are merely ignored, and thus are never properly brought into the balancing of risks and benefits. Safety precautions may lower small risks while increasing more major risks. Inability to get credit for improving safety, as we have seen in the law of torts, makes insurance far more expensive than it would otherwise be.