Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Louisiana Oil Rig Fire / Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

roachboy · 05-05-2010, 12:17 PM

even the national review is backing away from the drill baby drill insouciance about the consequences the bidness of amurica is bidness line of the head-in-the-oil-saturated-sand conservative set. but here we have a milton friedman *defense* of the lax regulatory scenario that allowed *both* the deepwater horizon disaster and---worse---the inability to control the spills or to manage effectively a clean-up.

no-one would say that the accident itself was a result of an a priori situation (were that the case, there'd be no accident, just an unfolding of the consequences of a situation set up in advance)...problems arise from the ways in which the context was amenable to manipulation by bp for its own financial advantage at the expense of--well as it's turned out the gulf of mexico.

the line that "business knows business better than regulators know business" seems to me lunacy in this context. business as milton freidman defined it is the extraction of profits for shareholders. the only environmental protections that follow logically from that are the barest minimum to conform with legal and technical requirements---anything more would impact on vital shareholder profits. and uncle milton went on to argue that for a bidness to go further and try to actually be responsible for the resources that they plunder---erm use----in a more-than-bidness kinda way is both outside the competence of bidness and also unethical. for milton freidman anyway. whom no-one in their right mind takes seriously in 2010 as a philosopher of bidness.

you could, were you to for some reason find it amusing to play along with the uncle milty game, argue that it is **Exactly** for the reasons he outlines that extensive and ongoing regulation of business aimed at protecting not only natural resources (a yucky capitalist phrase) but also the environment from which they come that stewards one way or another these resources and contexts (bidness ain't great at context) from a non-business viewpoint would be necessary to compensate for the boundedness of a business rationality.

markets are obviously neither rational or equitable left to themselves and no-one in their right mind believes that firms will provide adequate environmental protections if ways around having to do it can be found (in the interest of vital shareholder profits of course)---i mean if you want proof just look at the colossal environmental disaster this thread is about and to the increasingly clear history of bp acting all milty friedmany about its responsibilities to plan for contigencies. and it's still ongoing, this disaster.

the disaster is largely is not a direct result of the accident itself. it's a result of the inability of british petroleum to manage the situation, which is a result of its not having planned for it, which is a result of their manoevering a pliant, pro-petroleum industry regulatory apparatus to exempt them from having to plan for it.

05-05-2010, 12:17 PM	#54 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	even the national review is backing away from the drill baby drill insouciance about the consequences the bidness of amurica is bidness line of the head-in-the-oil-saturated-sand conservative set. but here we have a milton friedman defense of the lax regulatory scenario that allowed both the deepwater horizon disaster and---worse---the inability to control the spills or to manage effectively a clean-up. no-one would say that the accident itself was a result of an a priori situation (were that the case, there'd be no accident, just an unfolding of the consequences of a situation set up in advance)...problems arise from the ways in which the context was amenable to manipulation by bp for its own financial advantage at the expense of--well as it's turned out the gulf of mexico. the line that "business knows business better than regulators know business" seems to me lunacy in this context. business as milton freidman defined it is the extraction of profits for shareholders. the only environmental protections that follow logically from that are the barest minimum to conform with legal and technical requirements---anything more would impact on vital shareholder profits. and uncle milton went on to argue that for a bidness to go further and try to actually be responsible for the resources that they plunder---erm use----in a more-than-bidness kinda way is both outside the competence of bidness and also unethical. for milton freidman anyway. whom no-one in their right mind takes seriously in 2010 as a philosopher of bidness. you could, were you to for some reason find it amusing to play along with the uncle milty game, argue that it is Exactly for the reasons he outlines that extensive and ongoing regulation of business aimed at protecting not only natural resources (a yucky capitalist phrase) but also the environment from which they come that stewards one way or another these resources and contexts (bidness ain't great at context) from a non-business viewpoint would be necessary to compensate for the boundedness of a business rationality. markets are obviously neither rational or equitable left to themselves and no-one in their right mind believes that firms will provide adequate environmental protections if ways around having to do it can be found (in the interest of vital shareholder profits of course)---i mean if you want proof just look at the colossal environmental disaster this thread is about and to the increasingly clear history of bp acting all milty friedmany about its responsibilities to plan for contigencies. and it's still ongoing, this disaster. the disaster is largely is not a direct result of the accident itself. it's a result of the inability of british petroleum to manage the situation, which is a result of its not having planned for it, which is a result of their manoevering a pliant, pro-petroleum industry regulatory apparatus to exempt them from having to plan for it. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-05-2010 at 12:23 PM..