6 ms·

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

by 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.
- holygoat 16y ago
  The idea is that assigning a tangible cost to fucking up will cause people to try hard to avoid it. For example, if everyone in the BP executive chain were personally responsible, and would go to jail/get beaten up/etc. as a consequence of an oil spill, then this might not have happened.
  - angrycoder 16y ago
    No, it won't. The execs will make their money, spend it or squirrel it away, and be gone when the damage is done. Even if you did something as extreme as threaten jail time, the chance to make millions still outweighs the chance of any punishment. Thats all it is at that point, its gambling. Either you make a ton of money, or you loose. The only problem is, when you loose, you make a whole shitload of other people and the environment loose in the process.
- byrneseyeview 16y ago
  That argument applies to any transaction that transfers money. The point is to give BP the proper incentives. There is some point at which the reward for drilling (cheap energy) is worth the risk of a disaster. By ensuring that they'll get sued for the monetary cost of the disaster, you can get the socially optimal level of drilling. And if they'd been "regulated" by an insurer who promised to pay the cleanup costs of the once-a-decade spills, you can bet that these regulations would be to a higher standard.
  - MichaelSalib 16y ago
    And if they'd been "regulated" by an insurer who promised to pay the cleanup costs of the once-a-decade spills, you can bet that these regulations would be to a higher standard. Given that a large insurance provider called AIG promised to pay massive clean up costs and utterly failed at regulating its clients, I think your theory is incorrect. At the very least, it is incomplete. Your theory needs to incorporate the fact that human organizations often behave irrationally, and even when motivated by appropriate incentives, they are prone to systemic reasoning errors. In addition, it needs to deal with the fact that a representative government cannot credibly refuse to promise to clean up messes of this sort, so an element of moral hazard will always remain.
jonknee 16y ago
What happens when the firm that destroys the coast simply goes out of business afterwards? All the profits they made before the recklessness came to roost has been funneled to shareholders around the world.
- riffer 16y ago
  Not a problem, just require firms that have the potential to inflict substantial costs on the rest of society to carry insurance against such a catastrophe. The pricing mechanism on the insurance will act as an incentive to minimize the real risk to society.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    But that's regulation... Lots of it actually because the insurance companies need regulated too (lest they default when a huge oil spill occurs).
  - anigbrowl 16y ago
    Two problems here. 1. they do carry insurance. Their fuel assets are insured by Jupiter Insurance ltd. ( a wholly owned subsidiary of...BP itself. According to their annual report, they consider external insurance a poor economy and carry as little as possible - basically $1 billion per incident, figuring that any overages can be paid for out of revenues. Awesome. http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/I/BP_20-F_2009.pdf http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/gl... 2. OK, so make them carry more insurance...but then you're back to the dead hand of government regulation or whatever you want to call it. And with the best will in the world, sometimes events take place which are beyond our ability to predict. I imagine the government's recent cautious endorsement of more offshore drilling was based on a careful look at the number of rig disasters in recent years, and the assumption that the industry was sufficiently mature to appreciate the importance of risk management. It's kind of ironic that this occurred right after Obama upset the 'ban all drilling' crowd.
  - MichaelSalib 16y ago
    Sure! BP could just get an insurance policy from a reputable insurance provider like...AIG. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, a reputable insurance company like AIG would never, ever, ever offer policies for complex products that it did not fully understand for prices so low that it couldn't cover the risks involved. Insurance company officials would never ever ever cut lots of fundamentally unsound deals in exchange for big bonuses. And even if they did, such behavior could never blow up and eliminate a few trillion dollars of value in a massive economic collapse. That's totally absurd. Really now, this "solution" boils down to "assume the existence of insurance companies that act radically differently from any insurance companies we have experience with"...tis much like "now, assume a can opener".

by andreyf 16y ago

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.

holygoat 16y ago
The idea is that assigning a tangible cost to fucking up will cause people to try hard to avoid it. For example, if everyone in the BP executive chain were personally responsible, and would go to jail/get beaten up/etc. as a consequence of an oil spill, then this might not have happened.
- angrycoder 16y ago
  No, it won't. The execs will make their money, spend it or squirrel it away, and be gone when the damage is done. Even if you did something as extreme as threaten jail time, the chance to make millions still outweighs the chance of any punishment. Thats all it is at that point, its gambling. Either you make a ton of money, or you loose. The only problem is, when you loose, you make a whole shitload of other people and the environment loose in the process.
byrneseyeview 16y ago
That argument applies to any transaction that transfers money. The point is to give BP the proper incentives. There is some point at which the reward for drilling (cheap energy) is worth the risk of a disaster. By ensuring that they'll get sued for the monetary cost of the disaster, you can get the socially optimal level of drilling. And if they'd been "regulated" by an insurer who promised to pay the cleanup costs of the once-a-decade spills, you can bet that these regulations would be to a higher standard.
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
  And if they'd been "regulated" by an insurer who promised to pay the cleanup costs of the once-a-decade spills, you can bet that these regulations would be to a higher standard. Given that a large insurance provider called AIG promised to pay massive clean up costs and utterly failed at regulating its clients, I think your theory is incorrect. At the very least, it is incomplete. Your theory needs to incorporate the fact that human organizations often behave irrationally, and even when motivated by appropriate incentives, they are prone to systemic reasoning errors. In addition, it needs to deal with the fact that a representative government cannot credibly refuse to promise to clean up messes of this sort, so an element of moral hazard will always remain.

jonknee 16y ago

What happens when the firm that destroys the coast simply goes out of business afterwards? All the profits they made before the recklessness came to roost has been funneled to shareholders around the world.

riffer 16y ago
Not a problem, just require firms that have the potential to inflict substantial costs on the rest of society to carry insurance against such a catastrophe. The pricing mechanism on the insurance will act as an incentive to minimize the real risk to society.
- jonknee 16y ago
  But that's regulation... Lots of it actually because the insurance companies need regulated too (lest they default when a huge oil spill occurs).
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  Two problems here. 1. they do carry insurance. Their fuel assets are insured by Jupiter Insurance ltd. ( a wholly owned subsidiary of...BP itself. According to their annual report, they consider external insurance a poor economy and carry as little as possible - basically $1 billion per incident, figuring that any overages can be paid for out of revenues. Awesome. http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/I/BP_20-F_2009.pdf http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/gl... 2. OK, so make them carry more insurance...but then you're back to the dead hand of government regulation or whatever you want to call it. And with the best will in the world, sometimes events take place which are beyond our ability to predict. I imagine the government's recent cautious endorsement of more offshore drilling was based on a careful look at the number of rig disasters in recent years, and the assumption that the industry was sufficiently mature to appreciate the importance of risk management. It's kind of ironic that this occurred right after Obama upset the 'ban all drilling' crowd.
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
  Sure! BP could just get an insurance policy from a reputable insurance provider like...AIG. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, a reputable insurance company like AIG would never, ever, ever offer policies for complex products that it did not fully understand for prices so low that it couldn't cover the risks involved. Insurance company officials would never ever ever cut lots of fundamentally unsound deals in exchange for big bonuses. And even if they did, such behavior could never blow up and eliminate a few trillion dollars of value in a massive economic collapse. That's totally absurd. Really now, this "solution" boils down to "assume the existence of insurance companies that act radically differently from any insurance companies we have experience with"...tis much like "now, assume a can opener".