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

roachboy · 07-14-2010, 02:47 PM

who the hell apart from you is talking about a regulatory system that eliminates the space for human error? no-one, ace.
that is your projection. either that or you have reading comprehension issues.

the same ridiculous circle again and again---the problem is that this regulatory system placed all response development in the hands of oil corporations. in a catastrophic situation, the result of that has been 85 days worth of fucking obvious--there is no coherent containment, there is no coherent strategy to deal with the oil---spray dispersants on it the toxicity of which is not known in enormous amounts so people on shore won't see the oil?---in short there is no back-up and there is no organization that could bring together a back-up in the event of a failure. and this is a state of affairs that follows from the reactive nature of regulation, from the all-too-cozy relation between regulators and the industry being regulated and from the profit-seeking tactic of firms like bp and exxon (for example)...all these taken together.

and THAT was a central conclusion from the exxon valdez report, THAT is a main conclusion in the book i cited on the second or third page of this thread about the 40-year long oil spill in california (which is still the best crash course in the baroque formation that is te regulation of the oil industry in the united states) and THAT is the conclusion that most analysts have come to about the deepwater horizon disaster.

this has nothing---at all---to do with the straw man that regulation is supposed to eliminate human error.
and it is not the simplistic move that you make to isolate corporate cost cutting from context and then complain about isolating corporate cost-cutting from context. in a different regulatory environment, it'd be unremarkable. combined with the existing regulatory environment it can---and has---resulted in disaster.

yours is a politically motivated straw man of course: following your "logic" any regulation of drilling would be stalinist (rather a metaphysical variant of stalinism, a stalinism you get from the stalinist propaganda, but taken as Trurth by people like yourself) and doomed to fail. because you assign it an arbitrary objective, an unmeetable, stupid objective and then say whaddya mean, regulation can't stop that....

but it's a straw man ace. it's been a straw man every time you've repeated it.

i like the fact that there's discussion in this thread, but can we move on to something more interesting that debating your straw man?

07-14-2010, 02:47 PM	#499 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	who the hell apart from you is talking about a regulatory system that eliminates the space for human error? no-one, ace. that is your projection. either that or you have reading comprehension issues. the same ridiculous circle again and again---the problem is that this regulatory system placed all response development in the hands of oil corporations. in a catastrophic situation, the result of that has been 85 days worth of fucking obvious--there is no coherent containment, there is no coherent strategy to deal with the oil---spray dispersants on it the toxicity of which is not known in enormous amounts so people on shore won't see the oil?---in short there is no back-up and there is no organization that could bring together a back-up in the event of a failure. and this is a state of affairs that follows from the reactive nature of regulation, from the all-too-cozy relation between regulators and the industry being regulated and from the profit-seeking tactic of firms like bp and exxon (for example)...all these taken together. and THAT was a central conclusion from the exxon valdez report, THAT is a main conclusion in the book i cited on the second or third page of this thread about the 40-year long oil spill in california (which is still the best crash course in the baroque formation that is te regulation of the oil industry in the united states) and THAT is the conclusion that most analysts have come to about the deepwater horizon disaster. this has nothing---at all---to do with the straw man that regulation is supposed to eliminate human error. and it is not the simplistic move that you make to isolate corporate cost cutting from context and then complain about isolating corporate cost-cutting from context. in a different regulatory environment, it'd be unremarkable. combined with the existing regulatory environment it can---and has---resulted in disaster. yours is a politically motivated straw man of course: following your "logic" any regulation of drilling would be stalinist (rather a metaphysical variant of stalinism, a stalinism you get from the stalinist propaganda, but taken as Trurth by people like yourself) and doomed to fail. because you assign it an arbitrary objective, an unmeetable, stupid objective and then say whaddya mean, regulation can't stop that.... but it's a straw man ace. it's been a straw man every time you've repeated it. i like the fact that there's discussion in this thread, but can we move on to something more interesting that debating your straw man? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 07-14-2010 at 02:54 PM..