What is the "small/no government" solution to the BP spill?

Great Debates
1

It appears that BP might have cut a few corners in the Deepwater Horizon drilling. It appears some governmental regulations were ignored or skirted. It is apparent that many Gulf residents are being severely impacted by the oil spill. It is apparent there is likely to be lasting environmental damage.

Those on the right often, but not always, complain about the existence of some, if not all, governmental regulations. I’ve heard suggestions about getting rid of the FDA and letting the market sort it out, for example.

Okay, so given a world with less or no governmental intervention or regulation on BP, what would now be different? I’d posit that you can’t just say “They would have drilled in shallow water” since property rights would still exist in a small or no government world and they still might not have the drilling rights.

What, if anything, would have prevented the blast? What, if anything, would be different about the spill? What, if anything, would BP be doing about those impacted by the spill?

To me, this is a case that demonstrates just how necessary the government is to hold BP responsible for the ways in which their actions impact others and the environment, and it shows that regulations are needed and must be enforced.

What’s the other side?

2

People who were damaged by BP’s actions should be able to show the damage in court and get compensation. If BP gets a reputation for carelessness and shoddy engineering it is also possible they will be shunned in the market as a result.

Personally, I think this is crap. The way our court system works most people will not have the stamina to get anything out of BP. The BP lawyers will drag everything out (as the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slowly) and only the most dedicated or wealthy claimants will get compensation. It will also be difficult in many cases for people to prove harm. Tragedy of the commons and all that…

As far a being shunned by the market, this just won’t happen. Oil is a commodity and when you get gas at the station the oil used to create the gas may come from any number of sources. This, combined with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns make it unlikely that a large corporation will every pay in the market unless their behavior is truly egregious. Examples of this abound: Nike and sweatshop labor, Cracker Barrel and discrimination, Ford and their 40 superfund sites. None of these companies have taken a huge hit in the marketplace for their behavior.

3

Since BP clearly thought they could make a profit from deep-water drilling, the shallow-water argument is nonsense - they’d drill in both places.

As for the penalty, I agree that court takes too long, but even if people are made whole the shoreline and ecosystem cannot sue for damages. Perhaps there should be a death penalty for companies screwing up in this way, but no one doing risky things expect them to fail. It didn’t stop Enron, after all. Perhaps a death penalty for CEOs?

4

I’d say the OP is confusing small governemnt with no government. The too are not the same, and often deeply opposed.

Here’s why: I am an small government type. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that we are more connected than ever as a nation today, we don’t need the government to be nanny so much. But another major issue for me is that I want government to be lean and powerful when it does act.

If we actually look at government today, yeah it’s big, but it’s weak. It fails to even accomplish relatively trivial tasks, and when it does them is succeeds at vast cost and dubious utility. The Left is making government bigger, true, but they are stretching it much too far - way farther than it can handle, or ever will be able to handle.

This is an example. I ultimately want lots of relatively small, but focused federal government offices, which can prepare for things efficiently, and then be pumped up when problems strike to quickly and effectively squash it. But the offices must then be squished back down again afterwards. Otherwise, the government will slowly weaken over time (exactly as has happened). The most efficient offices we see are relatively small, focused on a very specific issue which can’t be handled regionally, and the products of long experience.

5

In this case, it’s the same as the big-government solution: make BP fix it.

6

No. The OP is specifically giving people the option to answer from a small or a no government position. But I want specific answers, not handwaving.

7

Okay. Who decides and how should it be enforced?

8

Who decides what? How should what be enforced?

9

No, you didn’t. I’m a textualist, and when you say things like this: “Okay, so given a world with less or no governmental intervention or regulation on BP, what would now be different? I’d posit that you can’t just say “They would have drilled in shallow water” since property rights would still exist in a small or no government world and they still might not have the drilling rights.” … it reveals a fundamental lack of any perception fo the differences between the eople you fancy your opponents.

The fact that you immediately call my post “handwaving” further tells me a lot about you; none of it flattering. In the future, perhaps you should avoid insulting the people who give reasonable responses to ill-informed posts.
But I’ll humor your ignorance.

BP was subject to government regulation. The regulators failed. In contrast to sweet li’l miss pelosi’s assertions, the regulators were not Bush appointees or any such thing, and BP has been a darling fo the Left in general thanks to its high-profile (if low-result) green energy campaigns. So if you posit more regulation as the answer, then it becomes rather

First, I probably wouldn’t try for regulation by fiat. Instead, I’d hire companies - multiple independant companies - to carry out inspections. Any bad grade would require I’d also require regular disaster-recovery plans to be filed - but in contrast to the feds, would emphasize knowing what people plan on doing rather than trying to force them into one mold. Molds are usually bad, popular though they be with bureaucracies. This frees up a lot of government space for more useful things.

But my emphasis in this case would be on response, not prevention. My general assumption is that in most instances, somebody will screw something up sometime. Rather than attempt to prevent people from being people, I favor scrict liability, far-reaching accountability (including criminal sanctions). CEO’s may run a company into the ground or ignore safety laws if they think it will earn them a fatter paycheck, even if it destroys the company. They will think twice when the law says they go to jail, and their subordinates will have many more reasons to inform.

Likewise, I consider emergency preparedness a watchword. If you are going to spend money, sopending it on backups is an extremely good way to do it. Personally, I’d like to become director of FEMA just to spend my time doing that. However, in contrast to trying to maintain fleets of ships myself, or some nonsense like that, I’d constantly maintain a source list of where I can get them, crew and all, ready to go.

10

I’ll admit I have zero clue whatsoever about your point. So there’s that.

11

Who edits your posts, Rosemary Wood?

12

The small government solution is that BP compensates people who have been harmed by the spill. This is the exact same solution as the large government solution except with fewer useless agencies.

13

Piffle. BP’s “small-government” fiduciary responsibility is to its shareholders. It would not be meeting that responsibility if it compensated the harmed people without being compelled to by your so-called “useless agencies.”

14

What’s this “I” business? Who is “I”? Have you installed yourself as the new “leaner government”? If not, who is the “I” doing these things in a small government situation? The “market”? Privateers? What is their incentive?

You obviously don’t understand the issues being raised by the OP. Whether you realize it or not, you’re just proposing a different style of big government regulation/intervention (the “I” in your posts). The question isn’t" what should big government have done differently?" The question is what happens in a “small government” society to prevent/react to Deepwater-Horizon-like disasters.

Ah, the “I” again. This is of course in I’s capacity as “smaller government.” Yes a government of one is smaller than what we have.

15

What agencies? The compensation comes from tort law.

16

And who in this situation should BP compensate for damage to communal resources? Even if you posit that all shoreline should be privately owned, who has standing to sue for the overall damage to the environment and wildlife?

17

The people who are hurt, if there was no one harmed, there is no tort.

18

And this is why tort law is inadequate to address environmental disasters like DH. Yours is an oversimplification and like most oversimplifications, pretty worthless in a discussion of complex issues.

19

So how, exactly, would that work, from an employment standpoint?

Bear in mind I have recently set up a display for the Despicable Me movie that involved inflatable Minion characters, so I have this picture in my head of inflatable government staffers, folded up and shoved in packing crates when not needed.

But seriously, from a practical standpoint, how would you staff these squishy offices and still get experienced people in place? Would you be suddenly hiring scores of temporary workers who would have to be trained at the last second, and then have to endure their learning curve? Would you move people around from place to place, effectively not allowing them to have a stable homelife or to get a feel for a particular region? Would you lay people off, and ask them to not get a permanent job elsewhere so that you could call them back from stand-by for the next crisis? How could people live like that?

We have the same problem with hiring part time workers that we can’t give hours to…we spend money training them, then can’t put them on the schedule regularly, then when we need them they have gone off to other jobs and we have to start over.

While I agree that many government offices are over-staffed, your concept just seems like it would lead to even more inefficiency. Please show me what I am missing here.

20

Short version: you’re first being hyper-technical, like most of the whiny liberals around here, demanding what I and others like me might think and then putting forth specious issues, simply claiming it doesn’t work, or throwing No True Scotsman fallacies so you don’t have to listen. I condemned your assumption that small government is similar to no government; the two are utterly different. The latter is anarchism, the former prefers a government which only accepts reasonable tasks.

You don’t like the solution. So what? It’s small enough for me to be comfortable with - far smaller than we have today. The fact that you don’t like that I am not some mythical ideologically pure mega-Libertarian doesn’t bother me. The OP doesn’t raise any issues. She asks a question (badly).

Yes, I’m assuming I would be setting out the government policy here. If not, what’s the point? Any actual policy will be inevitably bitched over and mucked around in Congress. But that’s always the case. It (OP) did ask for a fairly theoretical solution, so I gave one (gasp horrors!).

I do have in mind a government smaller than we have: less taxation, vastly fewer employees, no utopianist certainty that if we can only do a little bit more we can somehow make things “right”. That is not a particularly small subject, either, and I don’t intend to lay out here my entire principles of government.