4 ms·

But I thought regulation was always bad? Isn't that the consensus here?

• seldo 16y ago
  I would love to hear the libertarian defence of a private enterprise's accident that is putting thousands of people out of work and destroying an entire coastline's worth of ecosystems.
  • mynameishere 16y ago
    #1 On the whole these wells are net positive. #2 It's the government capping BP's liability. Not a libertarian, but please.
    • anigbrowl 16y ago
      Agree with #1. but on #2, that $75m liability cap is a crock - it only applies in cases where there has no been gross negligence or willful misconduct. If it can be shown that BP lied to the MMS or created the situation by failure to comply with regulations (even if they started complying once they realized they had trouble), then the limit doesn't apply. See http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode33/usc_sec_33_00002704----000-.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode33/usc_sec_33_0... subsection c.
  • andreyf 16y ago
    I'm not a libertarian, but I imagine a libertarian plan might include the privatization of parts of the ocean and shoreline. When an spill like this happens, BP can then be sued for violating the rights of the owners of the clean ocean surrounding the rig, and the damage they've done to the shoreline. As long as the shoreline is public property, they can get away with convincing senators and bureaucrats that they'll spend $x on cleanup, donate $y to their campaigns, and that's that. If the cleanliness of the ocean/shoreline were privatized (those private rights enforced by courts), the threat of a lawsuit would lead to both more responsible pre-accident risk assessment on behalf of BP and a more responsible cleanup strategy.
    • ojbyrne 16y ago
      Isn't tort reform and an ending to "frivolous" lawsuits one of the clarion calls of those same libertarians?
      • mrkurt 16y ago
        Usually corporatists, not libertarians.
        • jbooth 16y ago
          Splitting the hairs pretty thin at that point.
          • mrkurt 16y ago
            Really? I don't think so at all. Libertarians are generally proponents of a whole swatch of changes that would knock large corporations in the US down a few pegs. That's in addition to greatly limiting the power corps have to do business by legislation.
            • jbooth 16y ago
              Well, I'd say my picture of "what libertarians are proponents of" boils down to 3 categories or "levels of advocacy": 1) The "if we could remake the world", fully libertarian state -- I can see some libertarians agreeing with you about knocking corporations down a peg here, but many other "libertarians" that are basically supply-siders or mainline republicans with affectations that wouldn't. 2) The things libertarians actually advocate for as far as real-world policy, as in people lobby for these things and vote for candidates that espouse them. 3) The subset of those things that actually get traction Out of those, 3) winds up being an unabashedly pro-corporate set of policies advanced by the republican party and 2) actually seems to lean more pro-corporate than anti. YMMV. But I can see your point in regards to 1).
    • angrycoder 16y ago
      Suing is all fine and dandy. But no amount of money is going to fix the ocean.
  • bh23ha 16y ago
    Well you could calculate the total damage of a spill and personally charge everybody from middle managed up for it. If that's not enough, go after the share holders, even grandma Millie. But we can't do that, the whole point of LLPs and Incs. is to limit the investor's liability. This is partly why we have agency risk. This is why while I consider myself a libertarian, I still think we need competent and aggressive regulators in all the places where the market is not self-corrective. But I'm not sure how we could avoid regulatory capture for ever.
  • deleted 16y ago
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  • ewanmcteagle 16y ago
    Why would a libertarian viewpoint defend this? Are you suggesting that this is happening because it's an unregulated industry? Also, what is the success criterion for number and severity of accidents before whatever approach to regulation has been taken can be judged a success? If any time an accident happens it requires throwing away the whole system that might be too high of a standard to work with.
  • jeffreyg 16y ago
    The libertarian belief is that BP is responsible for all costs incurred by its neighbors because of its actions. Your use of the word 'defense' here just shows ignorance.
    • anigbrowl 16y ago
      In passing, this is an example of where libertarianism breaks down as a practical alternative. How will you determine what these costs are? It might be simple if I have a fishing business in Louisiana, but what if I'm a bar owner who depends on the dollars of hard-drinking oil workers when they're on shore? What if I'm just depressed by the whole thing and miss work? There are millions of people living in that area, and the gulf coast economy is about 2-2.5 trillion. You simply can't handle every individual case in court, it's going to be a series of class actions. And without some kind of judicial standards for how those should be handled, the result will be arbitrary at best. Additionally, BP will argue that oil drilling is fundamentally risky and the residents of the area liked it when the going was good. So there will be further arguments about the degree to which it is really their fault. Again, without agreed standards in place the outcome of such wrangling will be arbitrary. Finally, whatever a court orders BP to hand over as compensation for its poor drilling practices is purely hypothetical unless there is some way of enforcing it; BP might just sink the remains the of the rig, announce the failure of its 'gulf operations subsidiary' and just turn its attentions to operations elsewhere, where they have never had an accident. Perhaps they'll just blame the whole thing on inferior oil workers in that region. So without standards for judging claims and liability, or mechanisms for enforcement of judgments, the situation will not be properly resolved. Those standards and mechanisms are the basis of laws, and we elect governments to serve as our agents in establishing and promulgating them.
      • deleted 16y ago
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      • ArturSoler 16y ago
        In a libertarian society, BP would just need to compensate the owners of the properties directly affected (ocean and shoreline). Fishing business would then not pay those owners to operate in their property and lose an opportunity, but they are not owed anything, since those owners have no obligation of letting the fishing business operate in their property.
  • Encosia 16y ago
    A Libertarian would probably point out that regulation played a significant role in this mess. The $75m liability cap gave BP incentive to continually act as recklessly as they did over the years. $75m is a joke compared to getting a new, high-production well up and running months or years earlier than if they were more cautious. Obviously, it wasn't a good gamble this time, but it should be no surprise they've acted as our rules and regulations incented them to.
    • anigbrowl 16y ago
      Forget about the $75m cap - it doesn't apply in cases of negligence or misconduct. That was only newsworthy when BP's 'oh no, what a terrible surprise' posture seemed credible.
      • Encosia 16y ago
        That liability cap does apply to negligence. It applies to any civil suits. However, it does not apply to criminal charges, and the DoJ has intimated that it may pursue criminal charges against someone in this. Even if the liability cap is pierced during this particular incident, that's still orthogonal to the impact it has had on the behavior of exploration up until now.
        • anigbrowl 16y ago
          (c) Exceptions (1) Acts of responsible party Subsection (a) [incl the $75m cap] of this section does not apply if the incident was proximately caused by— (A) gross negligence or willful misconduct of, or (B) the violation of an applicable Federal safety, construction, or operating regulation by, the responsible party, an agent or employee of the responsible party, or a person acting pursuant to a contractual relationship with the responsible party (except where the sole contractual arrangement arises in connection with carriage by a common carrier by rail). [...] sounds pretty cut and dried to me. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode33/usc_sec_33_00002704----000-.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode33/usc_sec_33_0...
          • 16y ago
• silentOpen 16y ago
  The protection of rights overrides the spectre of regulation. It is illegal for one citizen to kill another or even endanger another. Similarly, it should be illegal for corporations to endanger thousands and wreck ecological destruction on a wide scale.
  • ojbyrne 16y ago
    Doesn't this preclude the manufacture of automobiles?
    • j_baker 16y ago
      No, but it does require the manufacturers to build in safety features.
    • silentOpen 16y ago
      It seems that the citizenry of the United States, the carmakers, and the government have come to an agreement on the regulation of automobiles. In addition to safety regulation compliance before sale is allowed, most states have emissions standards and complex road laws. Yes, automobiles have many negative externalities but they are distributed and stochastic. Arguably, it is actually the petrol that is directly responsible for these externalities as simply owning a car endangers no one and only has a sunk environmental cost. In the case of automobiles, we have, as a society, agreed that this is a good trade-off. In the case of industrial accidents, we have, as a society, agreed that the scale of the potential failure should be matched with commensurate concern for safety. BP clearly has difficulty controlling their risk and they should be held liable for that just as you or I would be held liable for causing an auto accident.
    • philwelch 16y ago
      It's the government's own highway infrastructure that causes the problem. The problem there is that government, vis a vis its role as provider of infrastructure, has enabled, incentivized, and encouraged the use of large numbers of automobiles--not that the private automobile industry is at fault.
• ams6110 16y ago
  Regulations are generally the after-the-fact reaction to irresponsible, negligent, or ignorant behavior. The problem is, the folks who think that more regulation is the answer seem to think that the government regulators are benevolent gods who themselves never make mistakes, are not subject to greed, corruption, political influence, negligence, incompetence, etc.
  • RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    >the folks who think that more regulation is the answer seem to think that the government regulators are benevolent gods who themselves never make mistakes, are not subject to greed, corruption, political influence, negligence, incompetence, etc. Give me a break. When you've finished tearing that straw man to pieces, maybe you can seek out what real people who support effective regulation are saying about it.
• deleted 16y ago
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