OSHA workplace inspections

Somewhere in the vast bureaucratic machinery of the United States, safety inspectors began noticing more workplace hazards at precisely the same rate that Indian film certification boards began approving more movies, and nobody involved in either process had the faintest idea why. It is rather as though the universe decided that if Americans were going to get hurt on the job more frequently, Bollywood ought to expand its output proportionally, as some kind of cosmic compensation scheme. The correlation coefficient is 0.949, which is to say almost perfect, which is to say completely impossible, which is to say exactly the sort of thing that makes you wonder if the universe is having you on.

Both are administrative counts that collapsed in 2020 for the same reason: there was nothing to inspect or certify. OSHA couldn't send inspectors into closed workplaces while India's film board couldn't certify films that hadn't been shot. The correlation isn't between Indian cinema and American labour law — it's between two bureaucracies and a virus that sent them both home.

What we are looking at, then, is not really a correlation but an echo—two entirely separate institutions both responding to the same invisible hand, the hand of population growth and economic expansion, which is to say the hand of time itself. This should comfort you slightly and disturb you somewhat. The pattern exists, but it means almost nothing.