Erm, what?

How does it pose any more of a problem for ACism than it does under statism?

Dammit I don't have time to get into pretzel logic with you guys, which is why I deleted.

This accident very likely could have been prevented if the US had the same regulations as Norway and a bunch of other countries. Environmental disasters present a threat to the entire public that isn't remotely accounted for in the financial or civil liability of decision-makers at companies that can just dissolve if the **** hits the fan. Nobody wants to go through the learning-curve of letting the free market sort out only the soundest companies for 100s of years (after dozens of preventable disasters filter out the failures of corporate Darwinism).

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...-GreenBusiness

Damn so much for Norway being the land of pure greenieness.

Of course it could happen anywhere. Your link would make a bit of sense if I had somewhere stated Norway is impervious to oil spills. The point is that Norway requires the acoustic switch, which very likely could have prevented this. We didn't require it, mostly due to strong corporate lobbying in this country.

Sorry, I have too much to do today to get sucked into this. My mistake. Never should have posted.

Probably a good idea

Sounds like the statist world is pretty fantastic too.

Not sure about this but my take from the article is that the acoustic switch technology has improved a lot since 2003 when the USA rejected the technology. However, I also got the impression that the problems with the acoustic switches were such that they shut off wells when they shouldn't have. Don't know how big of a problem that would be but it would seem to me if the acoustic switch can be used to close off the well it could be used to also open it back up but not sure.

I thought I saw a headline that legislators are trying to up the liability into the billions.

Why don't they just make it the cost of the clean up since you know they caused it?

Why would BP be footing the whole bill? Transocean own the drill, BP merely rents it to drill on their leased area.

because they have the money

The funniest thing is that you say this after the disaster happened in a statist society.

Solid logic. Any damage caused by any business in a statist society must be because of the statism. Clearly if we give business free reign and don't regulate them at all, these kinds of problems will go away--not get much much worse.

I think the real question is, are we getting a good return on our investment per regulation dollar spent.

Pretty hard to say. The last major rig spill in the US was in 1969. Who knows how many more would have happened with zero regulations, if any. It's about as impossibly small of a sample size as you can get to try to analyze.

I'll agree with that.

Don't forget Haliburton.

IMO the real question is can we ever reconcile difference between the monetary value placed on damage from spills and the actual damage done to the ecosystem? I'm not convinced. I think your approach is flawed because it's not a degree of return that will be observed; this basically alludes to the sample size comments as well. How would one analyze whether or not we are getting a good return on investment per regulation dollar spent wrt oil spills? It's a pretty ridiculous proposition, especially because you won't know whether or not it was "worth it" until something goes awry. According to recent results, we can conclude that we should have been spending more money on regulation, no? And at what cost have we discovered that profound, unimaginable notion? Can you define that cost objectively, since we objectively break down how much money we've spent on regulation thus far?

No we really can't. In the grand scheme of things, money is absolutely worthless. It servers its purpose to humans as a medium of exchange, but does not do anything for the planet and/or life in general.

Once life is lost (or our oceans turn to oil) there is no amount of money that can undo that damage, that damage that was caused by the pursuit of money.

In the grand scheme of things, humans are absolutely worthless.

Makes debating things a breeze too.

Yeah, I mean, clearly businesses have every incentive to let things like this happen.....

Oh wait, the whole ordeal costs them **** tons of money. Eleven people died, BP market shares have been hit hard, and so long as the leak persists, the company loses upwards of ~10,000 barrels a day. Definitely something businesses strive for and have no incentive to do everything they can to avoid. Better call up the government!

Oh hey, without the limited liability protection offered by the state, it costs them **** tons more. Funny how the state subsidizes the liability for damages like that, yet it is ACism that gets attacked here for not making companies liable....

So in AC-ism you propose holding actual people liable for damages caused by the companies they work for? Do you anticipate them having a few billion lying around to clean up environmental disasters?

Individuals who make decisions for businesses take stupid risks all the time that run counter to the public will and counter to the long term health of their company. It doesn't matter if 99% of them are capable of policing themselves, if the 1% who can't are able to cause disasters of this magnitude. Regulatory compliance is one way to minimize the damage they are allowed to cause. For some reason Norway seemed to think that switch was worth mandating. We didn't. Oops. Score another one for self-regulation not working out too well.

Also you completely missed my point about the public not being willing to wait through all the disasters it would take for natural corporate Darwinism to weed out the BPs of the world. I think most would generally approve of a proactive stance when it comes to prevention of environmental disasters, as opposed to a "let the free market sort it out after the fact" stance.

Yes, shame on me for proposing to hold individuals liable for damages they incur.

The limited liability corporation is a political construct.