Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
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.
|
The demand for oil is very real and no person I have ever heard from supports drilling without balancing the trade offs between the risks and benefits. If you know a person who has taken such a stance, please share.
Quote:
|
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.
|
This assessment is superficial. BP is motivated to make a profit or to maximize price for its product after costs - so BP will act to increase price and lower costs. We all know this. Given what we know, we have regulators, regulations, laws, taxation and other consequences for unacceptable behavior by companies like BP. It is obvious that BP's interests can conflict with "our" interests. I don't get your point? BP is going to do what they do - but so what? "We" need to do what we need to do! No one is taking a position of having no regulation.
Quote:
|
the line that "business knows business better than regulators know business" seems to me lunacy in this context.
|
It is either true or it is not. Regulation is the context. Again I don't get your point. There is a reason "regulation" is responsive. If you don't agree, please share your thoughts on the issue.
Quote:
|
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.
|
I interpret Friedman differently and your interpretation here is not understandable to me. All market participants have roles, is your point that they don't, or is it that you just don't want there to be a profit motive?
Quote:
|
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.
|
I am assuming you have no respect of the work of Friedman, is that correct? If so, what view in contradiction to his do you support? Friedman is by far the economist I most respect. I re-read his book Free to Choose every couple of years. My first exposure to him was in college in 1983, and it changed the way I view the world, economically, politically and socially. I will take this as serious as you want to take it.