The rationality of a safe minimum standard

The Safe Minimum Standard (SMS) is a policy shift to safety defaults to forestall irreversible outcomes. Critics charge an inconsistency: what justifies 'business as usual' cannot also justify switching to teh SMS. Currently, the SMS is only a procedural shift where economic optimality procedures are buttressed by extra-special focus on uncertainty. Yet social welfare function may not be complete enough, warranting a more fundamental SMA shift. Numerous moral positions support this SMS approach. This SMS also operationalizes the intolerable cost as a trigger point, noting societies with lower tolerance for sacrifice must trigger the SMS earlier.