So again, you expect these individuals to be able to cover more than a tiny fraction of the damage they are capable of inflicting? They already run the risk of losing their jobs (and hence lots of money), have to go before congress, face possible criminal charges, public humiliation, etc. And yet they still gamble for the big bonus payday and cause havoc. So none of that stuff is dis-incentive enough to discourage dangerous gambles with the public well-being, yet removal of the LLC would somehow snap everyone into line?

can you give us a few examples of regulations coming into existence before a problem happened or before there was significant public and private sector changes already happening to remedy those problems?

So, have we reached peakoilspill, or will there be worse ones?

Didn't I just do that - when talking about Norway and other nations requiring the acoustic switch while we declined to do so?

Also can you see how it's kind of hard to prove when a given regulation has done it's job and prevented disaster before it happened?

facepalm.jpg

What part of "limited liability corporation" do you not understand? You are criticizing ACism on the basis of a state created political construct that in all likelihood would not exist under "ACism."

And, even assuming that the corporate entity as is existed as a legal construct under such a society, it still does not follow that incentives would be increased for such behavior.

Yes I am criticizing AC-ism on the basis of LLCs. You've just ignored 90% of my point and twisted the other 10% so bad I don't even know how to unravel it. Kudos.

Please let's not talk about anything substantive like the acoustic switch and how socialist Norway might have not had this disaster. I can see why you'd want to just avoid that whole topic, which is the main thrust of my point, and focus on something on the periphery.

Do tell, how are the incentives for such risky behavior increased in ACland when you increase the liability of the actors involved?

Speaking of ignoring things....

http://in.reuters.com/article/enviro...nnel=0&sp=true

Also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7140645.stm

Accidents happen, with regulation or without regulation. You can bet that certain safety measures will be adopted by companies learning from this incident with or without regulation.

So in AC-Land, they'd be able to come and take your house and personal money since there would be no more corporations to protect individuals. I think it's uncertain if people would ever be able to collect. And who are they collecting from? The CEO? Board of directors? Every employee? How would you go after someone's offshore anonymous account? It doesn't strike me that there would be much more disincentive without the corporation because it's pretty damn likely you could just avoid payment.

Well you would have a court system to determine who is liable for what and for what damages.

In a world of private property (ugh I hate using that redundant term), if you soil someone else's property, you bear the liability (or the corporation if such a legal entity exists). One of the problems is that the oceans are considered to be commons (unowned by anyone), which makes it extremely difficult to assess actual damages incurred.

who did they lease it from?

Seems like not having the government involved here makes things like an acoustic switch more likely.

If the well is on private property, the property owner is also likely to be liable if he allowes third parties to drill on his property without reasonable safeguards. An acoustic switch seems like a reasonable safeguard to me. So why isn't the "property owner" in this case liable?

Is this really that hard? There are still companies even if they aren't "corporations" in the present sense of the word. There's still a company bank account, ledger book, assets, etc.

Obviously.

But Montius was arguing that under AC there would be more incentive to be environmentally friendly because you couldn't protect yourself behind a corporation as you can now. This doesn't come into play unless the damage wrought is more than the total assets of the company. When it does, who do victims go against? And how? There's no empirical evidence for how a court system would be set or how "hidden" funds would be found and how force would used to enforce judgments, but in my mind it would be fairly easy to simply skirt those judgments.

Not sure if this is a "i hate gubment" thing or if you are seriously asking, like maybe im wrong, but dont the oil companies like BP lease the land of the goverment?

Or was this in int. waters so they werent?

Whilst im here how does Halliburton fit into this story? Saw their name come up before.

And how exactly does a state solve the problem of some people causing more damages than they are worth?

Oh yeah, I forgot, they make a bunch of other people who had absolutely nothing to do with the damages fit the bill. As it stands right now, limited liability basically ensures that in the event of a catastrophic event, the public is going to foot at least some of the bill.

The owners of the company would be one potential target. They are shielded currently.

Oh, well, in your mind! OK, /thread.

Yes.

Now, if the lease had been with a private landowner, wouldn't that private landowner be on the list of parties that could be potentially liable for damages?

I have no comment on what the law says. However imo that would depend entirely on the terms of the deal.

Given there will need to be a cleanup and BP only seems to be liable for 750 million then the government will pay anyway so it seems like a tangential point. But Transocean who owns the rig and drilled the well i would personally consider the most liable with the government probably not even on the list unless the lease was written extremely badly.

There is an argument on whether the government should force companies to go to the nth level of safety and requires them to use these remote cutoff valves and whatever other safety net features. I would assume you are not one of these people however.

No, I'm not one of "those people". I'm one that thinks property owners should be potentially liable for things they explicitly let people do on their property. So when people like suzzer come around and say that a stateless society would be filled with companies just pumping oil directly onto beaches, I've got an opinion to offer.

Ok, i see where you are coming from on the subject now.

FYP

Because this isn't AC, it's America, and the primary rule in America, with the full support of both Republicans and Democrats, is that corporations don't have to pay for their mistakes.

It is when it's the state that's limiting their liability to anything less than all of it.

Seems like any device that costs $500,000 on a rig that costs hundreds of million would have been absolutely required by the company's insurance carrier if it was the end all be all lest that firm really sucks at the whole risk audit thing.

Something I read a few days ago made it seem like if the switch shut when there wasn't a crisis going on it would cost a **** ton to get the well flowing again, I'm not sure about this perhaps someone else could confirm/ deny.