He Was Supposed to Be Competent
- Thread starter Pop Sickle
- Start date
Quote from Gabfly1:
Retract? Not strengthen and properly enforce? You want the likes of BP to have free reign? Yeah, that'll work.
There were many regulations already in place that were ignored. Ignored and never enforced. Why do you think more will work?
There is one regulation that caused shortcuts and that is the liability cap on damages and cleanup. I would remove this regulation immediately.
These oil rigs need insurance to operate. So insurance companies always have short positions and all the risk for these projects.
Unfortunately insurance companies rely on history and government oversight to access the risks. It would be for there own good to boot the government overseers out of the process.
With open ended liability it would not pay for oil companies to take shortcuts.
The best check and balance is always the guy who has money at risk. The Government never has its own money in the game.
What would you do if you owned an oil company and you wanted to reduce risk and you did not have any government rules, regulation or oversight to control your actions. How would you maximize profits and minimize risk? Can you think of any actions or business structures that would protect you from liabilities and still let you gain from the profits?
I don't think I'm an 'extreme leftist'. I happen to think Obama is somewhat lacking in experience, although his moral compass is working better than most of his competition. I'm basing my comments on the idiotic content of the article you quoted. For example, Noonan describes
"...his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration".
as a 'major political disaster' in his Presidency. I don't even know what the fuck this refers to. The fact that she wrote this means a) she's an absurdly partisan windbag who has zero credibility, or b) she's just so stupid that she can't figure out what's going on around her.
Either way, it's an epic fail for Noonan. If we listen to the Obama haters, the guy is responsible for most of what's wrong in the world.
Didn't he kill the electric car as well?
How does a company protect itself from liabilities? How do you protect yourself from liabilities? Car insurance health insurance, Life insurance.
Before an insurance company will underwrite your risk they need to access your risk by checking your driving record, your health condition...etc
These oil rigs have lots of underwriting to cover the workers and the structures. If I am an insurance company before I accept one premium and assume the liability I need to make sure the company is operating safely. Now I could accept that the government agency is doing its role of enforcement but that seems to always fail. Its ironic that to shield the insurance companies from incompetent government enforcement, government helps share the risk by limiting liability and having immunity from civil lawsuits.
Government has no risk in this business operation so they become indifferent, incompetent. If you remove Government then the insurance companies have a greater burden of the risk and they will make sure procedures are being enforced.
Does a company like BP need insurance?
If they do everything according to the book, if everything is engineered properly...then the only insurance they would need would be act of God insurance.
The oil spills we have seen, almost all of them have come due to the incompetence of the private sector and their employees...not the government.
The big lie of the right is that the markets will self regulate when there is an open market.
That is pure horseshit. History shows that unregulated markets bring out the worst element in corporations. They will do anything to put profit above safety.
Something goes wrong? They fight it in court forever. They don't pay out. They go BK and reform under another name.
The truth is that pure capitalism is a disease that left to its own devices will eventually destroy all of society.
Without an external conscience, forcing corporations to act in the public interest...they will rape and plunder to their hearts content. They they will reform and do it all over again.
The goal of the corporation is opposite of the goal of any reasonable society. There needs to be a balance between the safety of the people and the opportunity for profit for those who take risk.
Right now, and over the past few decades, corporations have become more and more without a social conscience...as "greed is good" has been pushed into the mind of America.
A small country like France has 7 nuclear reactors for producing electric energy.
They have been regulated, and kept safe.
Can anyone in their right mind imagine companies like Haliburton giving a shit if there were a nuclear accident?
Look, an accident is something like driving a car and someone jumps out in front of the car. Unavoidable by the driver.
These oil spills are 100% avoidable if proper procedures and safety first steps are taken. They are not accidents, they are negligence, criminal negligence...and the market doesn't sort these things out.
If they do everything according to the book, if everything is engineered properly...then the only insurance they would need would be act of God insurance.
The oil spills we have seen, almost all of them have come due to the incompetence of the private sector and their employees...not the government.
The big lie of the right is that the markets will self regulate when there is an open market.
That is pure horseshit. History shows that unregulated markets bring out the worst element in corporations. They will do anything to put profit above safety.
Something goes wrong? They fight it in court forever. They don't pay out. They go BK and reform under another name.
The truth is that pure capitalism is a disease that left to its own devices will eventually destroy all of society.
Without an external conscience, forcing corporations to act in the public interest...they will rape and plunder to their hearts content. They they will reform and do it all over again.
The goal of the corporation is opposite of the goal of any reasonable society. There needs to be a balance between the safety of the people and the opportunity for profit for those who take risk.
Right now, and over the past few decades, corporations have become more and more without a social conscience...as "greed is good" has been pushed into the mind of America.
A small country like France has 7 nuclear reactors for producing electric energy.
They have been regulated, and kept safe.
Can anyone in their right mind imagine companies like Haliburton giving a shit if there were a nuclear accident?
Look, an accident is something like driving a car and someone jumps out in front of the car. Unavoidable by the driver.
These oil spills are 100% avoidable if proper procedures and safety first steps are taken. They are not accidents, they are negligence, criminal negligence...and the market doesn't sort these things out.
Great post
You really don't get it do you. If all government rules and regulations are removed they will also be removed for the insurance companies.
There are ways to incorporate separate units of operations to minimize risks. What happens when a large loss hits the corporate entity with the liability goes insolvent or bankrupt, remember under your want to be rules, there would not even be any requirement for insurance. Without government rules and regulations business would be like the wild west, it'd be a crap shoot on who is reputable, who is insured, what insurance companies will actually pay their bills and on and on.
You really don't want to live in that world, us small fish would get eaten alive. Read a little history about the industrial revolution and you will see what happens to small business and individuals and the enviroment without government regulation, it ain't pretty.
Here is a simple example of corporation protecting profits and limiting risks and this happens everyday in every city and town in America.
A small contractor (another highly risky business) incorporates his business, the majority if not all the profits are paid to the major shareholder/owner of the corporation for management, loan repayment, leases, car rental and on and on. The corporation is basically broke at the end of every tax year. Even with insurance if a large liability happens that the insurance doesn't pay for and the shareholders decide not to pay for the liability then the damaged person/s are shit out of luck. That is one of the main reasons to incorporate to protect the owners profit. The owner can be worth millions with every penny coming from the corporation, and the company hits a bad streak, a large loss of a lawsuit and the owner walks away scott free, without the business but with all the money the business earned.
Large corporations can also separate high risk portions of their business from liabilities and lawsuits in this fashion. The ONLY thing protecting the individual is government regulation.