According to a left-wing statist:
Source: hXXp://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8248706
How does one refute this claim?
I’m assuming that oil rigs are regulated enough so was this oil spill a result of bad company management, corporatism, or simply an accident that occurred regardless of regulations or some combination of factors?
I think its safe to assume that the oil-rig spill is simply due to human error, though there will be argument made about how the government needs to regulate the industry with better escape/clean-up plans
Even assuming oil drilling platforms are completely unregulated, why haven’t we seen many more of these kinds of accidents? The answer seems obvious to me: they hurt the oil company’s bottom line. You don’t need government regulation to convince an oil company executive not to loose millions and millions of dollars for no reason.
I have no idea how much regulation there actually is in this area, and I have no clue how this particular accident happened. It just seems funny to me when the people who constantly complain about how greedy corporations ruin everything don’t seem to realize it’s that very “greediness” that gives the corporation every incentive not to let this kind of accident happen.
Based on what I’ve read, this was an accident. As a poster already pointed out, this isn’t exactly a picnic for BP.
I don’t understand what people would want regulated either.
Every morning, they’re supposed to test the Blow Out Preventers (BOPs) to make sure they work. The BOPs are an emergency shut off mechanism to stop the well from getting out of control if you take a gas kick or can’t hold back an unanticipated overpressured zone. The BOPs will then close over the wellhead, shearing off the pipe and closing the connection.
Little is known, but shrewd observers suspect that, as the well was nearing completion, a problem with the BOPs may have been ignored since the well was so close to completion. It takes a lot of time and money to change out a set of bad BOPs in offshore drilling.
So, long story short, this accident is occuring because someone, (drilling rig manager? engineers?), decided to take a gamble. Tbh, the odds were probably 1 in 1000. The real issue here is that BP ought not only to be liable for its own assets lost during the accident, but also accept liability for the cleanup and any potential damages to other’s lockean homesteading rights.
We have water socialism. This is tragedy of the commons.
I’m willing to bet that at least one of the bajillion regulations out there had a hand in helping this to happen.
How does one refute this claim?
Judging by how few responses there are to this thread, apparently one doesn’t.
Government regulation in this area is 100% legitimate, because while it’s true that BP is losing money, the money they are losing is NOTHING in comparison to the damage they are causing. Saying BP will regulate itself because of fear of losing money is like saying that no one will drive too fast in a pedestrian area in the absence of any laws, because if they hit a pedestrian it will dent their car and the blood will be messy to clean up.
No, you actually need laws in those situations, because the externalities are so huge. You can’t have laws without a government, because that’smostly what a government is; a political system that enforces laws.
Regulation doesn’t mean no accident. If you decide to force oil company managers to control very carefuly the production doesn’t mean that they will become god-like and be able to prevent every problems.
Nothing about government is 100% legitimate. Read Snowflake’s response. I’d add that regulation would best occur via incentives from insurance providers. Accidents happen. What about these “externalities” is so huge? Because the ocean is a tragedy of the commons?
It seems the pro-regulation crowd can only fall back to fallacious attacks and appeal to emotion. I’m not a fan of the oil industry myself; it’s just that view of regulations/subsidies as cartel enablers is a much more realistic one than “with enough regulation we can create paradise”.
The answer is painstakingly simple. Regulations does not matter. All regulations are is superstitions that keep the company in business. Because BP should foot 100% of any damage occurred. If they have to sell so much assets that they go out of business, then so be it. A new company who buys the rigs will take it’s place. The reality is just that simple. I’d wager the government is either a) slowing down the clean-up. Because if BP is 100% responsible, they would do EVERYTHING in their power to minimize the damage they would have to pay for. And b) increase the cost of the clean-up, because if tax-payers have to fund the cleanup, then cost is not the top priority.
have no idea if this is true or not, but on the very liberty friendly Free Talk Live, the host suggested that he believed that regulations actually made it very difficult if not impossible to build brand new oil rigs and that forced companies to only be able to upgrade old ones, which sounds to me like a recipe for disaster. No idea if that is true or not just passing on the info. But I agree with those that have identified the real problem of waterway socialism.
It is my understand that also, in a free society, that even if the cost of the clean up would more than wipe out the company, that all the owners of the company would also be personally responsible? Assuming that was the case, how would people go about collecting their restitution, especially if it put each owner millions of ‘dollars’ in debt, more so than they could ever repay? Would the debt be passed on to the heirs of debtors? If you knew you had a bunch of debt, couldn’t you just not name any heirs?
And without governement, with private legal system, they still would have to pay if they’re responsible for the accident.
There is always the option of garnishing future wages.
From the beginning there is incentive for providing not the best quality, because government has their backs for any clean-up responsibilities. Meaning, certain risks may be acceptable. Perhaps that 1/1000 risk might have been too great for that engineer. Also, the structure of the company is heavily government based. The management strucutres has been based on military for a very long time. It’s only been recently horizontal management strategies have been practiced.
@Benjamin, I’m ok with passing laws to regulate oil rigs but I don’t know what laws could be passed to prevent things like this. BP is paying for all the cleanup anyways.
The bottom line is that this is not in BP’s interest. I mean what do they get out of this?
BP has already come out and made a (unusual) public statement that they will pay for ALL costs associated with the cleanup AND all legitimate claims against them by affected parties (i.e. fishermen, etc.)
Estimates of that price tag are running in the BILLIONS so far. How anyone could think that BP wouldn’t take all reasonable precautions to prevent a loss like this is beyond me. Regulation has nothing to do with anything. Heck never mind regulation, it could be flat out state ran and s**t would still happen sometimes, and probably actually more frequently.
Heck never mind regulation, it could be flat out state ran and s**t would still happen sometimes, and probably actually more frequently.
They handle everything else so well.
Ok, but let’s not talk about BP like it’s a person.
BP is a limited liability corporation. What are the time frames the management at BP thinks in? If I’m CEO of BP, and I can make a much bigger bonus by installing cheaper oil rigs which will have a 1 in 100 aggregate chance of catastrophic failure in a year, do I take that gamble?
The issue is that PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS or associations should not be allowed to gamble with everyone else’s business, especially around things which might negatively affect entire regions of the Earth.
That’s ideally what regulation is for, so society can have input into what’s approriate for issues that potentially impact society in general.
“PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS or associations should not be allowed to gamble with everyone else’s business”
I agree. We should outlaw any activity that has any statistical probability of causing any persons or property any harm. That’s the road to prosperity for sure.
Your standards are, to put it mildly, absurd. Personally my standard is reasonable precaution and state regulation rarely encourages that standard.
And, just taking this specific example of the oil spill, no amount of regulation is going to stop all accidents from happening. The safety shut-off failed, shit happens and it always will even if you regulate firms into bankruptcy. As far as I can tell they certainly met my “reasonable precautions” standard though. Now did someone screw up and not service that valve or whatever? I have no idea and either does anyone else at this point.
Try to come up with a business idea which could not, in ANY respect, possibly affect other businesses negatively in any possible manner.
Putting the government in charge of risk taking is the quickest way to drive a stake through capitalism’s heart.
Collectivist nonsense.