Rynar wrote:
What were they supposed to do?
Dig the relief well before they dig the main well, so if an explosion occurs, the gulf of Mexico isn't utterly destroyed for the foreseeable future. Or, they could not cut corners when it comes to drilling the main well in order to save some money at the margins. Or, they could come to the conclusion that digging for oil in a situation where they lack the capacity to deal with the worst possible outcome is a
bad idea to begin with.
Quote:
This is a new problem with no known solutions.
This is not a new problem. The only thing new about it is the depth of the well. The solutions they are using are not innovative - they are the same solutions we have had for the last several decades. Why? Because private industry has very little motivation to develop the technology to clean up after themselves, and a great deal of incentive to develop new ways to drill for oil.
This disaster is a shining example of why the "free market" is simply a myth. The free market cannot undo the harm that has been done to the environment we all share. The free market, in fact, is directly responsible for the accident. A lack of real regulation with real teeth combined with the profit motive may very well have killed the Gulf of Mexico. And for what? The obligation to a few shareholders?
We keep hearing how BP has the most brilliant minds at work on this problem because they are a private business with tons of cash. Horsecrap. If they had the most brilliant minds on this, those minds would have made sure to take the precautions necessary to avert this kind of disaster. They would have hired the kind of people who would not have cut corners on the site. They would have the kind of leadership that would not be enjoying yacht races while the earth bled out into the ocean. They would double the amount of money they had to have wrung out of their hide by the President, and they would have done so immediately.
Instead, they are going to fight tooth and nail to pay as little as humanly possible to the people most affected by this disaster of their creation. These externalities are the very thing that shows the "free market" ideology to be the sham that it has always been. The invisible hand didn't cause this - greed did. The invisible hand can't fix this - only government action can. The invisible hand ignores human nature, and it lacks the capability to fix the damage done by free market greed-based choices in a time frame that's relevant to the people most affected.
In Canada, they have to drill the relief well before they drill the main well. Here in the US, we let our regulatory agencies snort coke of the *** of the oil industry lobbyists they were ****. Real regulation, real laws that force companies to take care of the environments they profit from, are the only way to actually bring these corporations to heel and prevent these kinds of disasters in the future.
This is, without a doubt, the fault of free market ideologues. It is, as the article posted says, very much the fault of the insanity that is Ayn Rand's philosophy (and those like it). The people who adhere to those sorts of philosophies *do not care* about the harm they do to others in the name of seeking profit. They don't care if the Gulf of Mexico becomes a dead sea. They don't care about the wildlife they kill, or the impact this accident has on the Gulf Coast. They don't care about the economic impact it has. They care about one thing - their money.
Me, me, me, me, me. No matter the impact on you. It's all about me. My profit. My company. My bonus. My golden parachute. Me. You can't regulate me! That's socialism! But I can poison your ocean and destroy your coastline. I can kill your sea life and destroy your fishing industry. I can do all of that because I'm at liberty, and you can't do anything to stop me because that's socialism.
That's the insanity that ideologies like Ayn Rand, and others like her, espouse. The government is only there to protect the interests of the enfranchised, and no one else. Equality under the law? Such ideologies give those concepts lip service, but in the end, they leave it in the waste basket. Ayn Rand never believed people were equal. And neither do her adherents. They all look at themselves as if *they* belong in the Special Club. The group of uber-persons that would mesh well in John Galt's little gully.
This disaster is the result of decades of deregulation and corporate power broking in Washington. We, as a country, need to decide if America is going to remain on it's knees to the most powerful corporate interests, or if we will take the reins back and put those corporations, and the corporate assholes who think themselves untouchable at the top, back in their place. I hold out little hope of that ever happening.
_________________
It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show
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