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The state of the art was stuck at a crappy free market local max, where no one was willing to invest in a thing that might pay off later. Turns out, we all win
by beej71 15y ago
The state of the art was stuck at a crappy free market local max, where no one was willing to invest in a thing that might pay off later.
Turns out, we all win; someone just had to bite the bullet and fork up the sweetener.
But we really should have smelled an opportunity here. Like the article says, what else are we missing?
- justincormack 15y agoThe article presents it like that, but oil companies actually have a huge incentive to make better faster cheaper cleanup, as they have to pay the cleanup costs. I suspect though they are not really paying enough though to incentivise them, and they should pay higher fines for externalities like spills, eg based on amounts of non recovered oil.
- bluedanieru 15y agoThey pay nothing close to the cost of the cleanup. Exxon paid less than half of the cost of the Valdez spill, and recovered most of that from insurance claims anyway. They have held up on appeal further damages awarded by the courts for twenty-two fucking years. They still haven't paid. If you think BP is going to pay anything close to the cost of the Deepwater Horizon spill, you really haven't been paying attention. The fact is that buying a stake in the legislature and the courts provides a much better ROI than investing in cleanup technologies.
- anamax 15y ago> recovered most of that from insurance claims anyway Insurance companies don't lose money in the long run, so Exxon paid that money too. Insurance companies make extra money by charging for more risk than is actually present. One way they can do that is by making certain things a condition of insurability.
- Selvik 15y agoIf the big companies don't have to pay for the mess they make, that's not a free market maximum. It's the typical incestuous government/corporate elite exploitation of the masses.