I am still not clear on how the oil spill is supposed to speak against libertarian/conservative ideas.
BP applies for and is granted permission to drill (after donating money to the Obama campaign). I don’t see any conservatives or libertarians involved.
Regards,
Shodan
They will probably do anything and everything they can to correct the situation and minimize the damage. Why? They are businessmen, not supervillains. Could they do a better job? Maybe. Could they do a worse job? Maybe.
That’s a fair approach. I feel “comfortable” in thinking they MIGHT have taken a shortcut here or there. But, I would not be comfortable in thinking they caused a disaster out of some evil plot to destroy the world (scary music and everything).
Should they clean it up? Yes. Should they pay damages, considering the overall effect and how it impacts the lives and businesses of others? Yes. It’s part of the risk of doing business, and part of acting responsibly. But, let’s not all be reaching for the hanging rope. BUT, having said thata, expecting them to cover the damages is no oppressive “boot to the head” in any way (no matter what Mister Doctor Paul thinks).
We have often heard that big rewards (huge bonuses, huge paychecks etc) are to counteract the huge risks involved. So. One of those risks has showed up. If BP allows itself to be “bailed out” and then doesn’t have to pay anything (or just a tiny pittance) to cover the damage done, then I’d say that would disprove the “big risk big reward” argument.
That could be a whole 'nother thread, on its own. It would probably be one hell of an interesting one too.
And are they not trying to do the former? And have they not owned up to the latter?
Um, no. BP blamed the TransOcean, who blamed Halliburton, who blamed BP. They’ve owned up to liability. Not to responsibility.
(rest snipped for bandwidth)
Agreed entirely.
could you tell me what big risks the decision makers at BP were taking that they deserve the reward for? unless they are held criminally responsible for the result of this spill, which seems unlikely based on past cases, i doubt they took any risks. i don’t consider the loss of future potential income much of a risk. in addition, what principle are you talking about? getting rewarded for placing others at risk? and when risks turn into actual harm, the risk takers have to be held responsible for the making the injured parties whole. have i misunderstoods your argument? remember, the current law holds them accountable for only a limited amount of what will probably be the actual cost of the cleanup. if we can restore the gulf for less than $75 million (if that’s the figure), then i have no point, but i doubt that will happen.
The final cost of this thing could be big. Very big. A lot of money could be lost for the company. Additionally, there is a chance some heads could roll, ending careers. When you drill for oil, there you are, gambling with the company’s money. You’re betting you will find oil, there will be enough to make it worth drilling for, and the company will make enough to cover all the costs (plus a decent profit). In this case, the “bet soured”. BP lost, and continues to lose money. They will lose more as they go along. I’d hate to be the “guest of honor” at their meetings right now.
Harm has been done, definitely. But, to make it a criminal case, you have to clear some hurdles - intent, malfeasance, criminal negligence, gross incompetence, PROOF and EVIDENCE, etc. I don’t think that is the case. I think this was a “shit happened” moment, and no one was deliberately causing it. There will probably be a lot of civil cases and lawsuits because harm was done. BP will lose MORE money. But, I don’t see anything criminal. It was a FUBAR, or a SNAFU. It was an Oh Shit. And people will get pink slips instead of bonuses. Just cuz you are a businessman, or even (shudder) an oil man, doesn’t mean you are the sum of all evil. Some people just screw up sometimes.
This is nonsense. The punitive damages are capped at $75 million. That has nothing to do with the cost of closing the well up, cleaning up the area, environmental restoration, etc., which will certainly run well up into the billions of dollars.
As far as risk goes, do you know how much it costs to drill? They may have models, computer simulations, geologists and the like, but until they hit oil they are doing nothing but drilling a hole in the ground. Is it not a risk to spend millions upon millions of dollars to potentially drill empty holes? If not, why not? Would you be willing to assume the financial burden of that?
Like I said, it’s a gamble. A big high stakes gamble.
This is reasonable as far as it goes.
To me there are other issues. One is why BP was allowed to drill there in the first place, where is a blowout is exceedingly difficult to seal, and in such a vulnerable envirnment. The EPA waived BP’s requirement to do an environmental impact study – why did that happen?
Another is why doesn’t the US have a capable environmental emergency response team? Because it has been too willing to believe industry’s assurances that there won’t be any serious problems, and if there are industry has all the necessary resources to deal with it.
The US goverment has acted with a rather libertarian outlook in its dealings with the oil industry. This spill is a predictable result of that kind of relationship.
While I’m neither a conservative nor a Libertarian (simply a guy who has some libertarian leanings), I do play one on the Straight Dope, so I’ll give my two cents.
WRT the question above, it hasn’t affected my views at all. I have to ask myself…what could the government be doing differently? Answer: nothing but getting in the way. The government is good at whining and complaining, as well as passing the buck and criticizing…all of which they seem to be doing their usual bang up job at. But actually DOING stuff? No, I’m not seeing what they could be doing that would be better than BP has attempted thus far.
Well, I’m not, but I don’t see the conflict. BP had an accident. BP has spent millions of dollars attempting to correct that accident to the best of their abilities from everything I’ve seen. If the government was in charge then the same accident would have happened, and the only difference is that we’d have spent many times more money for many times less results. But, we’d have some good speeches, no doubt, from our government on how hard they are working to fix this problem.
Fouled it up even more. The government doesn’t have the specialized knowledge, personnel or equipment to do this stuff. So, they would have had to contract it out. So, the first thing they would have tried would probably have been to send in the military…who also doesn’t have the specialized equipment or training needed. They would have tried and failed. In the mean time, the government would have most likely been setting up a contracting process, to bring in the specialized people and equipment necessary. Even in hurry up no bid mode that would have taken time. And guess who they would have brought in to fix the problem? Probably BP, since they DO have the specialized equipment and personnel, and they are already familiar with the situation and the set up there. The only difference is it would have taken longer and cost more in the end.
Um…no. I’d say they are a good example of the ‘shit happens’ reality thing. It was a low probability accident that BP has made a good faith effort to correct…at a fairly large cost to them.
I seriously doubt that, for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that the Corps of Engineers would have been a lot less capable of fixing the problem than BP was or is.
-XT
the government does not have the resources to take direct action, but they could do more. first enacting legislation to make BP pay large sums of money (the language they understand) up front to cover their potential liability. this would prevent BP from gambling on their ability to avoid responsibility in the future. second, a political statement of intent that future legislation would place hardships on all oil company executives based on the outcome of BP’s reaction to this case. this would put peer pressure on BP to do a job that satisfies the needs of the injured parties instead of their own best interests (which are not magically aligned). third, we could have put more oversight resources on BP’s current actions. relying on profit motive by BP caused this mess in the first place. why should we rely on it to clean it up? if we do not have military public sector personnel capable of doing this, we could hire from the private sector for this purpose. fourth, if possible, we can hire someone else to do the work. i prefer this, BP has shown their lack of responsibility already. fifth, something else i prefer, charge the BP executives and engineers with murder. i can find a dozen engineers this afternoon who would testify that BPs drilling plan lacked the most basic safeguards (i see it’s getting late, maybe i wouldn’t be done until tomorrow morning). any prosecutor would tell you how much this would help.
please don’t use the ‘the government screws up everything’ response. that is an anarchal concept, and it is just as easy to say ‘BP screws up everything’.
accident means not on purpose. not many people think BP wanted the blow-out. but i think BP was grossly negligent. the same ‘accident’ would not have happened if even existing regulations were enforced. i believe the engineer who claims that BP rigged the ‘blow-out preventer’ tests. the evidence of BP bribing public officials is well known (and why were they allowed to operate in the US after that?).
i’ve already addressed this. BP has done nothing useful so far. we could have found someone else to do the job by now (if someone else is capable, i don’t actually know that. i wonder if we’ve even bothered to find out.) BP by their own admission has no more familiarity with the situation than anyone else. if they did, that simply confirms my gross negligence claim.
it was a near certainty that this would have happened. BP knew the ‘blow-preventer’ did not work. they knew there was high pressure natural gas in this well (maybe liquid below the surface, but the term ‘gas’ is still used). they ‘on purpose’ did not take steps to prevent the blow out. they did not follow regulations concerning documentation for their equipment. they knew that similar situations had occurred in shallower wells. they knew that they did not know what would happen in the event of blow-out at this depth. this was a faulty system, and faulty systems are more likely to fail than not.
as mentioned, the corps of engineers was not the only alternative. where are the hellfighters? i have more faith in them than BP to make the decisions.
sorry to slam everything you say, but you wanted to play a libertarian.
“you knew the job was dangerous when you took it fred”
And how would this be useful in helping the current situation?
No, it wouldn’t, as the government can’t simply fix blame by fiat (or legislation). They would have to prove their case in a court of law. And, again, how would this be useful in fixing the current problem?
Leaving aside how it’s unclear how this would be a good idea, how will it solve the current problem? I know this is sounding broken record like, but none of your solutions actually seem to be addressing the problem…only attempting to dictate blame by fiat and go into CYA mode for the government after the fact.
So, you want to (attempt to) dictate success, as well…and you think this would be a way to do so? I’m not seeing it, sorry.
Can you demonstrate how we don’t currently have sufficient oversight resources keeping an eye on the problem? I ask this in all seriousness, as I haven’t heard experts saying that the government doesn’t have enough eyes on the problem, or isn’t watching events and keeping tabs on developments.
I disagree that this problem was all about profit (by which I presume you mean greed) for BP, so obviously I disagree with your conclusion here as well. I think BP is doing everything they can to fix the problem. As for the clean up, I’m sure that BP will be paying out large sums (available to them because of that nasty profit stuff) as part of the clean up after ward. I know they are ALREADY paying out large sums in trying to defray some of the worst of the damage, let alone to try and actually fix the problem.
Why shouldn’t we?
Are you asserting that the private sector would do this at cost?? If not, you do realize that would entail some of that distasteful ‘profit’ stuff, right?
That’s true, and it’s the first instance you’ve given so far of an actual step towards addressing the problem itself. I agree btw…if BP can’t cut the mustard on this issue then we need to bring in someone who can, and we need to pin at least some of the associated costs on BP. The problem is, I’m unsure whether anyone else could do better at this point. I think that folks are vastly underrating the technical and logistics problems involved in this issue.
No, they haven’t. Quite the opposite IMHO. I think they have shown a willingness to do whatever they can to try and fix this problem. The thing is, in reality you can’t just dictate success…nor can you simply wave your magic legislature wand and order success by fiat. No matter how outraged you are.
:rolleyes: Charge away. Sadly, for you, just like your first assertion you can’t simply do this by fiat or legislature, but you’ll have to prove it in a court of law.
Feel free to produce them. Every thing I’ve read on this suggests that there was no negligence in the design and that it was a low order probability accident…which means that you have next to zero chance of getting through a charge of murder. But if you would like to produce experts (real ones, as opposed to the 9/11 CT variety) who are saying something different I’m all ears.
Again, feel free to demonstrate this, rather than assert it.
You can’t dictate success, much as this concept seems to be lost on you. As my request above, feel free to cite some reputable sources that indicate that what BP has tried so far was wrong, or that they have implemented their plans inexpertly, or that someone else could have done it better. YOU claim a lot of stuff, but unless you are willing to demonstrate your credentials in doing so you are going to need to back some of this stuff up, or at least do more than simply assert it is so.
Ditto…please feel free to provide reputable cites backing up your assertions here and elsewhere.
You tell me…where are they? What is there official position on what BP has tried so far? What are the ‘hellfighters’ specific expertise with capping wells under the conditions prevalent in this specific situation? And if they have more experience, why exactly HAVEN’T they been consulted? Who has dropped the ball on this?
No worries…I’m used to it. Sorry to slam you back, but you assert a lot, but I’ve yet to see why your simple assertions should be taken seriously on this.
Oh, I’ve had much worse, so don’t fret about it.
-XT
Ok, you’re first few items all are in response to your phrase ‘what they could be doing that would be better than BP has attempted thus far’. You then complain that anything that does not guarantee success doesn’t fit that qualification. But do you deny BP has produced minimal results so far? These things could help, I don’t guarantee it. Do you guarantee BP will get the job done?
In addition you keep spouting political philosophy about dictating success. Dictating success is not a guarantee of success, but it greatly increases the likelihood. Would you tell employees to do their best, and then ignore their failures, or would you let them know there are consequences for failure to do their job. Its called incentive, and its a core concept of traditional conservatism, and getting things done (I am not a conservative ideologue, but that concept is well accepted in the real world). All of the legislation suggested is feasible and constitutional. The legislature is not required to conduct trials to establish the need to follow regulations, and act for the benefit of the people.
It isn’t a matter of the number of eyes, its the quality of the eyes and the authority required for enforcement. Experienced engineers are required. I see politicians and administrators.
Are you saying BP was not operating in what they perceived as the best interests of their stockholders? They have already attempted to get people to sign away their right to sue for damages in exchange for a paltry sum. BP has already demonstrated bad intentions. They have done so in the past as well, fighting legitimate claims in order to reduce their cost.
I did not assert in any way shape or form that the private sector would do this for free. Neither did I in any way characterize profit as distasteful. You did by calling it greed. Lack of regulation to ensure honest profits is distasteful. People and businesses do not simply behave morally because it suits Libertarian philosophy.
I totally disagree with you… wait, we seem agree on that, lets move forward.
If you can’t see the irresponsibility demonstrated so far, there is no point discussing this further. BP has admitted they do not know what to do. Why then did they risk a catastrophe they could do nothing about? What form of responsibility is that.
The government does not need to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to bring charges. Once charged defendants become very cooperative if they are innocent, and very uncooperative if guilty. So if it doesn’t help, then they probably belong in jail anyway. This type of action is taken often when there are great public interests at stake. (OK, this one is making even me gag. Prosecutors would make this arguement, but I don’t like a lot of prosecutors. But I can play a role for the sake of this argument also).
OK, I’ll start looking, but due to time constraints I will unfairly counterpose: Where is an expert of standing that says this was unforeseen? That there was no negligence? Please show me the sources you’ve seen. It will save me time if I am actually wrong. Please don’t try pass off people in the employ of BP as having standing, or for that matter, politicians who take bribes from BP, or television personalities who… well you know what they do.
You are woefully uninformed if you don’t know about these cases. Are you using a rhetorical tactic, or are you truly ignorant of these circumstances?
What does this have to do with dictating success? Can you tell we what useful steps BP has taken so far? What success have they achieved? And apparently you don’t understand that proper management requires dictating success, even if it is not guaranteed. Also, nowhere in the preceding paragraph is there anything remotely resembling a dictation of success. Finally, several executives of BP and their paid shills have stated that BP is taking this long to do anything because they have no experience with this situation occuring at this depth. That is it right there. I, you, and everybody else has just as much experience dealing with a blow-out at this depth as BP, by their own public admission! Or were they lying to avoid responsibility, I might be wrong about my previous admission then? And I need no credentials to tell you what BP executives said publicly on TV. Or was that CG? It’s not like I trust CNN or anything, so do you suppose this is a conspiracy to pin the blame on BP by a news channel? If not, please deny that unassailable fact. BP says they did not know what they were doing. You can’t have it both ways (although contrary to popular belief you can have your cake and eat it too. Just two days ago I had a cake, and I ate it too).
As mentioned before, I am pressed for time. I have my own profit motives. But I will endeavor to locate citations for each of these claims at the earliest opportunity. You seem to be questioning my facts without any background on the subject though. There have been public reports about each of these. If you are going to just insist that you are the final arbiter of all facts, tell me now, so I don’t waste time.
I don’t know for a fact that there is anybody. I specified ‘decisions’ in regard to the Hellfighters. I’d make a joke here, but its mildly bigoted to some few people, so I’ll refrain. I did not say they have more experience in this case than BP, but as I mentioned before, they have just as much experience as BP, as do you and I. They do have a very good track record, IIRC, they cleaned up BP’s mess in the North Sea, leading to that joke. I don’t know who dropped the ball. My disdain for Libertarian philosophy doesn’t mean I am a fan of the US Government. Everything I mentioned about what the government could do was a refutation of your baseless claim that the government could do nothing. And as noted previously, this is the one point we agree on.
This is fun, I am short on time, but I plan to return to this before the end of the week. My assertions should be taken seriously because I review all of the information available from all sources without predjudice, before making judgements purely on logic, which I will claim a high success rate in being validated. You will scoff at my claim, but you will notice in all my postings on the SD board so far, I have been willing to listen to counterarguments, admit when I am wrong, and change my opinions based on new information. I do have a bad habit of littering serious remarks with facetious comments and general ‘smart-assery’ though. I apologize for all such past ands future instances of unnecessary irreverance. But I probably won’t stop doing it. If it bothers you, there is a John Belushi quote that will sum up my feelings in that area. I’m sure you can figure out what it is.
That sounds like ending on a sour note. I have decided to spend unprofitable time on this board because I don’t get enough intellectual stimulation from the people I deal with regularly. When they aren’t largely ignorant of complex subjects, then they tend to be heavily focused on narrow technical areas. You and most other posters here offer insightful, well thought out, and informative discussion, and I appreciate challenges to any of my assertions. If I can’t determine when I am wrong myself, I need such feedback to correct my mistakes. Thank you for your efforts.
You (ed) are conflating multiple things I’m saying there. I apologize if the confusion is on my post btw. I’m answering multiple aspects of your post, however, so if you run them together it makes it difficult to pick out which parts relate to which things I was addressing in your own post.
The first part of my post you are quoting there is directed at the several of your first solutions, which I’m saying don’t seem to really address anything about the actual problem.
I think you are misunderstanding what I’m saying. I’m not complaining that what you are suggesting doesn’t guarantee success, I’m stating that the middle solutions you provide are attempting to dictate success, which I think is silly. As for whether or not BP has producted minimal results, I’d say that this is self evident. The crux though is whether or not anyone ELSE could have gotten even minimal success. THAT is what you have yet to demonstrate. Saying, in essence, ‘Well, BP hasn’t been successful’ isn’t really saying anything if no one else could have done better. Sometimes success is elusive…you can’t simply dictate success, not and have it actually achieved.
The guarantee thing puzzles me, as I never used this term. I don’t believe you are asserting that someone needs to guarantee success…I think you want to dictate success, as if you can just say ‘be successful in this because we say so’, and it will be so.
It has nothing to do with political philosophy, and I’m not the one spouting it. It’s implied in your own comments, and I’m merely pointing it out as a curious assertion.
Look, here is the thing…if you want to say that BP isn’t doing a good job, that’s fine. Demonstrate this without assertions but with facts. But if you say that BP could be doing better without demonstrating that you are doing more than asserting this as fact then basically what you want is to dictate success…you want to say BP is doing bad but someone else (government, another company, hellskittens, wood elves, whatever) could do better…why? Because you say so and it needs to be fixed.
So, you are asserting that the government doesn’t have enough qualified eyes (engineering types) looking at the problem, and that it’s mainly politicians and administrators? Ok…I’d buy that, since that seems to be standard operating mode by the government. But do you have any actual evidence of this? And, more importantly, can you show where the government had operated differently in the past? You are asserting in the section I was responding to there that “we could have put more oversight resources on BP’s current actions”, which would imply that we did so in the past, and that this time we are somehow being lax. Can you back that up, please?
Is BP acting in the best interests of their stockholders? Of course they are…that’s what companies do. Could you provide some examples on how they are demonstrating ‘bad intentions’ on THIS particular problem? I’m not really interested in having you provide a bunch of examples from other incidents, I’m interested in evidence that they are acting in bad faith working this problem, or that they acted in bad faith in their original design and implementation of the system that failed.
What lack of regulation? What regulation do you feel should have been reasonably implemented based on the knowledge they had before this event? As for the other, you were the one who said “relying on profit motive by BP caused this mess in the first place. why should we rely on it to clean it up?” and then went on to suggest that we (presumably the US government) should get someone else to do it. I’m merely pointing out that whoever you got to do it would ALSO be ‘relying on profit motive’ in cleaning up the mess and fixing the actual problem…no?
So…I’ll take that as a ‘no, I’m not going to provide a cite to back up my assertion’ and move on from this.
So, you advocate that the government files charges even if they don’t have any proof, in order to coerce cooperation? Because that’s what you SEEM to be saying. Or, IOW, what do you have evidence wise that shows any kind of guilt on BP’s part wrt the accident and your assertions that the execs and engineers should be charged with murder?
You could, for instance, provide a cite by a drilling specialist who (prior to the events) warned that the type of system BP was going to be putting in was inherently dangerous. Or a cite by an expert in the field saying that how it was implemented was obviously and fatally flawed. Or a cite by an expert demonstrating that the plans and implementations they have done to fix the problem were either flawed or incompetently executed, or both, and that a better way would have been to do…whatever.
Well, feel free to fight my ignorance then. That IS what this board is all about, after all. If it’s this much of a slam dunk then it should be very simple for you to demonstrate conclusively your assertions, no? To refresh your memory, here is what I was responding too: "accident means not on purpose. not many people think BP wanted the blow-out. but i think BP was grossly negligent. the same ‘accident’ would not have happened if even existing regulations were enforced. i believe the engineer who claims that BP rigged the ‘blow-out preventer’ tests. the evidence of BP bribing public officials is well known (and why were they allowed to operate in the US after that?). " My emphasis. I underlined the parts that I think you need to provide something more than your bald assertion for. So…fight my ignorance! Thank you in advance.
Well, certainly I can lay out the steps they have taken so far. Were they useful? Only in so far as they showed what wouldn’t work. In hindsight they weren’t useful because they didn’t fix the problem. YOU, however, are the one asserting that they aren’t doing the right things, aren’t taking the right steps. So I’m asking you (again) to demonstrate your assertions. If they are coming from your own special knowledge, then I’m asking for you to show your credentials in making these kinds of assertions (for instance, if you are a deep water drilling and capping expert).
As for dictating success, that is what YOU are doing…or, what you are trying to do. You can’t look at the steps BP has taken and go ‘well, where was the success??’, not unless you are going to demonstrate what they should or could have done differently that would have had a better chance of success. Note that I didn’t mention anything about a guarantee.
AFAIK, no one has experience with this situation. If someone does, then that would probably be a great place for you to start on all that requested backing up of your assertions…well, assuming that whoever has had this type of experience also thinks what BP is doing is wrong or poorly implemented.
Um…I, you and everybody else has as much experience landing on Mars too. Still, I’d trust NASA to land people on Mars before I trusted you (or even myself), all things considered.
I don’t think they were lying, no…be pretty easy to check, ehe?
No, you don’t need credentials for that…but you might want to consider a translator, because to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I dinna thin’ that means what you THIN’ it means, kimosabe.
Well, that sort of excludes the middle option, donchaknow?
It’s your assertions old boy. Feel free to back them up or not, as you will. I’m not going to do the work for you, however. Even if I wasn’t a lazy and shiftless person, I’m not inclined to do others work for them.
I’ll clue you in on something, however…I never said I was the final arbiter of, well, anything. I asked you to back up your assertions with something like facts. That’s really all. It’s your choice what you do from there, and I completely understand time constraints, as I frequently have the RL impinge mercilessly on my posting.
Well, if I implied the government could do nothing at all, then that wasn’t my intent. My intent was to illustrate that the government doesn’t have the specific resources in house, so to speak, to handle this little problem on it’s own. So, they would be forced to either build up that expertise, or, more likely, to contract it out. And, ironically, BP is one of the contenders who would be in the running to be awarded such a contract to fix the problem…at a much higher rate to the public, of course.
-XT
OK, no time for complete deconstruction, but I’ll spend time on the citations. You are not required to belief anything I assert, without documentation. We are arguing about a lot of pointless interpretation of each other’s arguments, so I’d like to concentrate on demonstrable facts instead of rhetoric. Excellent use of Inigo Montoya BTW.
No rush. Enjoying the discussion, as I always do. That RL stuff can be a bitch.
-XT
Err, we don’t? We call ourselves anarchists.
How would a Libertarian government deal with the oil industry, and how does that compare to what our current government has done?
I’m not really sure I know the answer, but just looking at the Libertarian Party’s web site, the one thing they say would be different is that the government would not be able to limit a companies liability as we did for BP.