By Gonzalo Lira, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira
On the occasion of the BP oil spill disaster, President Obama’s delivered an Oval Office speech last night—a masterpiece of milquetoast faux-outrage. The speech was all about “clean energy” and “ending our dependence on fossil fuels”. Faced with the BP oil spill—likely the most severe environmental disaster ever—this was President Obama’s response: Polite outrage, and vague plans to “get tough”, “set aside just compensation” and “do something”.
President Obama missed what the BP oil spill disaster is really about. Though unquestionably an environmental disaster, the BP oil spill is much much more.
The BP oil spill is part of the same problem as the financial crisis: The BP oil spill and the banking crisis are two examples of the era we are living in, the era of corporate anarchy.
In a nutshell, in this era of corporate anarchy, corporations do not have to abide by any rules—none at all. Legal, moral, ethical, even financial rules are irrelevant. They have all been rescinded in the pursuit of profit—literally nothing else matters.
As a result, corporations currently exist in a state of almost pure anarchy—but an anarchy directly related to their size: The larger the corporation, the greater its absolute freedom to do and act as it pleases. That’s why so many medium-sized corporations are hell-bent on growth over profits: The biggest of them all, like BP and Goldman Sachs, live in a positively Hobbesian State of Nature, free to do as they please, with nary a consequence.
The added bonus to this, though, is that the largest corporations have convinced the governments and the people of the “Too Big To Fail” fallacy—they have convinced the world that if they cease to exist, the sky will fall atop our collective heads. So if they fail, they must be saved—without argument, without penalty, and without reform.
Let’s take BP: British Petroleum caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There were various Federal Government agencies charged with supervising their operations—but all of those agencies deferred to BP, before the accident. As a large corporation—one of the largest oil companies in the world—BP operated more or less without any Government supervision. As is emerging, because of this lax and toothless supervision, safety rules and procedures were ignored. Insane risks were taken. No safety contingency plans were drawn up.
From what some memos are saying, disaster was inevitable.
Once the accident happened, BP controlled the information it released concerning the disaster. BP unilaterally decided not to proceed with an immediate top-kill of the well—instead, BP risked a wider disaster, in order to save the oil field by drilling a “relief well”. BP’s reasoning was simple: By implementing an immediate top-kill, BP would have sacrificed the oil field (and lost its investment) in order to save the environment. BP did not do this. Instead, it tried to stretch out the process, so as to salvage the oil field (and the profits) with the “relief well”. But when it became impossible to hide the extent of the damage—when the smell of oil permeated the clear skies of Louisiana a hundred miles from the site of the spill—BP tried to implement the top-kill. We know how that ended.
Where was Authority? Where was Someone In Charge? The fact was, there was no one in charge. There was no one supervising—or at any rate, the ones who were supposed to be supervising had had their teeth yanked. And BP knew it—so they did whatever they wanted, regardless of the risks, or the costs.
Worst of all, BP realizes that, if it finally cannot get a handle on the oil spill disaster, they can simply fob it off on the U.S. Government—in other words, the people of the United States will wind up cleaning BP’s mess. BP knows that no one will hold it accountable—BP knows that it will get away with it.
No one was holding the banks accountable either. It’s no accident that American and European banks nearly went broke, but banks here in Chile sailed along smoothly: That’s because banks here are regulated up the wazoo. They literally can’t fart without an independent banking inspector supervising them, and then getting a stamped form in triplicate. When Chile’s banks went bust in the crisis of 1980, it put paid to any illusions that the banks knew what they were doing—the government bailed out the banks then, but kept them under glass ever after.
But in Europe and America, the story was the Greenspan Put. Easy Al was so convinced that the banks would “self-regulate” that he pulled the teeth of the Fed, the banks regulatory agency, and let the “free market” have its way.
With this free pass, what do you think the banks did? They went anarchic—they invented all sorts of clever “financial products” that exponentially increased risk, rather than mitigating it. We all saw how that movie ended. When Lehman busted and the credit markets froze, a slap-dash improvised “rescue package” was drawn up, then the $700 billion TARP, then Quantitative Easing, all of these efforts lubed up with a lot of talk to “strengthening the regulatory environment” and “protecting the financial markets”.
The upshot? The banks did whatever they pleased—with no supervision. And when their recklessness led inevitably to the catastrophe in the Fall of ’08, the banks got bailed out—with no repercussions. The biggest ones even managed to turn a profit off the tax payer-funded bail-outs!
Even after the worst of the crisis—when the effects of no regulation and no supervision were clearly understood—nothing happened. The zero-regulation, zero-supervision regime continued.
This isn’t the case for people, for individuals: People are regulated, people are controlled. Individuals are supervised and limited in what they can do and say—and no one complains. On the contrary—everyone is relieved, because it protects us all from the unreasonable behavior of an individual.
As an individual, I am limited in countless ways, from the trivial, like jaywalking, to the severe, like murder. I can’t even speak up and yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater—I would be arrested for inciting a panic, the general good of avoiding a potentially lethal stampede overriding my need to express myself by yelling “Fire!” when there is none.
Curiously, individuals—ordinary people—are being supervised and regulated more and more stringently. Yet at the same time, corporations are becoming more and more free to do as they please. No one notices how strange this is—we have even lost the social framework to even talkabout regulating and supervising corporations, because too many foolish pundits equate supervision and regulation with Socialism. Yet curiously, personal freedom is being chipped away, day by day, without a peep from these pundits.
Meanwhile, the banks run amok.
Meanwhile, BP runs amok.
We can look at other industries—Big Pharma, for one—but there’s no real need: Big Pharma will fit the same pattern as BP and the banks. Get so big that you can do whatever you want, and no one will challenge you, not even the government. Carry out practices that will inevitably create a crisis—like unsafe drilling, like toxic bonds—and be confident that you will be bailed out.
Bailed out, and allowed to continue, unfettered. “Allowed” to continue, unfettered? I’m sorry, I mis-spoke: Encouraged to continue, unfettered.
This era of corporate anarchy is reaching a crisis point—we can all sense it. Yet the leadership in the United States and Europe is making no effort to solve the root problem. Perhaps they don’t see the problem. Perhaps they are beholden to corporate masters. Whatever the case, in his speech, President Obama made ridiculous references to “clean energy” while ignoring the cause of the BP oil spill disaster, the cause of the financial crisis, the cause of the spiralling health-care costs—the corporate anarchy that underlines them all.
This era of corporate anarchy is wrecking the world—literally, if you’ve been tuning in to images of the oil billowing out a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico.
I think we are at the fork in the road: One path leads to revolutionary change, if not outright revolution. The other, appeasement and stasis, as the corporations grind the country down.
My own sense is, there will be no revolutionary change. The corporations won. They won when they convinced the best and brightest—of which I used to be—that the only path to success was through a corporate career. No necessarily through for-profit corporations—Lefties never seem to quite get how pernicious and corporatist the non-profits really are; or perhaps they do know, but are clever enough not to criticize them, since those non-profits and NGO’s pay for their meals.
Obama is a corporatist—he’s one of Them. So there’ll be more bullshit talk about “clean energy” and “energy independence”, while the root cause—corporate anarchy—is left undisturbed.
Once again: Thank God I no longer live in America. It’s too sad a thing, to watch while a great nation slowly goes down the tubes.
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I wouldnt get so down. Ill bet anyone the US government is going to lose total control of the economy. The problem with institutions like GS is they get so big they cant be saved by the state. How does europe plan to save a banking system thats several times larger than its GDP? It cant and it will eventually collapse.
Um, I know you know this without saying it, of course, but BP, GS, BA, etc. ARE the state, a facsist state, with Obama as its mouthpiece. They write their own script and print their own scrip. It’s the state that needs saving, by the people…if possible.
I agree about the fascism. And that speech, in the words of William Shatner, was Mamby Pamby.
Europe had regulations that were supposed to control risk in the banking system but the European banks wound up with balance sheets and leverage ratios that resembled those of hedge funds. The problem is not the free market but too much meddling by the regulators and too many bailouts.
Shrek — Agree.
Right now it has turned into a shell game. Let’s take the EU bailout. Countries are putting money into a fund which will then be used to bail them out. It will never work.
In addition, the average American is getting where more and more they are saying screw them. Them includes the govt at all levels, big banks, pharma, military industrial and etc.
Soon the crap is going to hit the fan.
Ishmael,
Not soon enough for me!
I do not see any outrage!
The day people start lynching Ben Bernanke is the day when we can be sure that outrage is there. Till them expect this guy who epitomises moral hazard to DO EXACTLY WHAT IS NEEDED TO HELP THE BANKSTERS!!
Appithy is slowly strangling us.
If Israel wanted to reach a happy conclusion with the Palestinians, then they should drop reclining chairs, digital cable TV, and Dorito’s on their heads instead of bombs. Turn them into a bunch of stupid, fat, lazy, passive people just like the US in the aggregate.
“Yeah, affordable health care sounds good.”
“No! It leads to Death Panels! It will lead to Freedom Naps for Grandma.”
“Oh, well shit! Down with affordable health care!”
You know what the sad part is? Revolution is probably the only way to right the ship, but the US government is certain to meet any large scale disobedient actions with excessive lethal force. The US will make Tiananmen Square look like a love fest. It’s not a government anymore. It’s an oligarchy that has already proven it will stop at nothing to preserve power.
The Supreme Court is one ugly head of the beast right now. It can kiss my red, white, and blue ass.
Last week I heard a brief report on NPR, that Israel was easing up the blockade by allowing in soda and snack foods. Haven’t seen anything else about it. I was wearing my radio ear protectors at work, started laughing in disgust, a fellow worker asked me about it. I told him about the story, he paused and said, “no Diet Coke and Mentos, though.”
Alternatively, we could provide American-style mental health services, i.e., anyone who is unhappy, anxious, or agitated about recent events or their lot in life is quickly medicated with one or more mind numbing medications. Perhaps a similar approach could be tried to alleviate reduce so-called “acting out” behaviors among those upset about Israeli aggression.
After 9/11, the manufacturer of the antidepressant Paxil ran endless ads urging that anyone upset about recent events take their product. Paxil, more than most SSRIs, seems to cause indifference and a lack of empathy in people who take it. Perfect for making sure that the public is disengaged from current events.
During the Iraq war, the government, media, and big pharma all tried to redefine anxiety and agitation about current events as Bipolar II disorder, a condition purportedly requiring anti-depressant AND anti-psychotic medications. It was impossible to watch television without seeing ads telling viewer to “ask your doctor if Abilify [or Seroquel or Zyprexa] is right for you.”
During the 2008 crash, I read several articles on the need to “aggressively” diagnose and treat mental illness among people who lost their life savings and developed “depression and anxiety.” Anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs (Klonopin) and anti-psychotics were all discussed.
The articles argued that because mental illnesses have a genetic and biological basis, symptoms should be treated regardless of recent psychosocial stressors (e.g., losing millions of dollars in the crash).
Palestinans upset about being blockaded, bombed, confined to a small area, and denied food could that their concerns are all symptoms of depression and/or anxiety requiring medication. Once medicated, they would still have these problems, they would just be apathetic and suffering from iatrogenic obesity. (Note: I am being sarcastic with this suggestion.)
Good essay.
The erosion of small business share in the employment market and the attack on public sector employment leaves only corporate jobs as a career path. Play the game or be condemned to eking out a living on the margins.
TSHTF is always a possibility but people like to eat and feel secure. Never underestimate the power of “going along to get along” in homo sapiens hardwiring. Hell the majority just have a vague unease that something is seriously wrong in the US. Luckily for them they can pick from a handful of hot button issues or favorite propaganda source to clearly define who to blame and what to do about it.
Re: Once again: Thank God I no longer live in America.
Yeah, rub it in why don’t ya (j/k, kinda).
No but, seriously folks, it’s not the corporations, it’s the American people.
Ask the typical dumbass peasants; do they really think the corporation they are working for – filled with fine clueless peasants just like the person you are asking this question too – is “their” corporation acting “immorally”; and you’ll just get “a masterpiece of milquetoast cluelessness”. (Btw, I work for a TBTF bank pushing debt on unemployed young people, go team!)
Americans have no idea what a functional government or society is supposed to do (or even look like). Most don’t even know corporations are “people” and have “rights” – or (worse) if they do know, are leery of questioning why they shouldn’t have “rights”. The “citizens” have gone 50+ years of having bread and circus supplied by the smothering Mommy Party and Kick-Ass Daddy Party.
STOP thinking of America as a big version of Canada. It’s a small version of China. Americans believe in bigness: big government, big corporations, big cars, and (most of all) big dicks.
It’s really time you stopped gloating about not being an American (j/k, kinda) and worrying about how far away from this place you are.
(I wish I could leave too, but I’m too old now and the parents wouldn’t survive a move).
The nation state system has ceded sovereignty, not to a transnational organization, like the UN, or through a series of treaties, but to organizations whose sovereignty has superceded nation states, global corporations. To the individual,the citizenship of America is meaningless, because we cannot be protected in our homes, our property rights or our capacity to earn a living. The rights of corporations have superceded our individual rights. We stand in lines at airports, to be physically probed and electronically disrobed, for security. But banks can gamble away our pensions, and mines can collapse, and oil rigs explode, because of profits, they escape the scrutiny we must under go, for national security. We are 2nd class citizens, we do not count as much as they do. They get to live, to pursue happiness, fulfillment and maintain the general welfare of their power and privilege. We are permanently relegated to menial servitude, to be called up out reserve, when the economy is hot and dispossessed when they need to bolster their margins. How long will their unbridled madness mock us?
I disagree. Corporations are regulated heavily as never before in history as governments have grown almost everywhere in the developed world. The solution is not more government and more rules but less. Let those that are guilty of bad judgment fail and you will see different behaviour than you do today. Get rid of the central banks and make governments much smaller and you will see savers and workers protected from the political elite that seeks to transfer wealth from taxpayers and consumers to those that are willing to pay for influence.
Let’s be clear: fewer rules for big corporations only.
No. Fewer rules. Period. What we need is an environment that protects liberty. That means the government’s job is to protect individuals from the initiation of force or from fraud, not to meddle in voluntary transactions between willing parties.
The evidence is very clear. We do not have a market system and never have. Governments meddle in all private economic transactions and impose conditions that may not have been desired by any of the affected parties. They regulate every part of our daily lives and see themselves as able to interfere in any activities that citizens engage in, even when those activities do not involve others or are entirely voluntary.
It is this system of constant meddling and growing regulations that created the economic crisis and allowed for the BP crisis to occur. If we want the economy to work properly we must let the market decide who should succeed and who should fail. We should reduce the power of governments and central banks to meddle because that would prevent the big players, who have the money to influence politicians, to game the system in their favour. We should not forget that it was Enron and BP that were the earliest proponents for carbon trading laws that would transfer wealth from consumers to themselves. We should not forget that it was the central banks’ continued injections of liquidity that allowed the banks to keep gambling on the housing markets and create a huge bubble that threatened the entire global economy. And we cannot forget that it was the government’s liability rules that encouraged BP to cut corners just as it was its prohibition of drilling in proven areas that drove activity to the more dangerous ultra deep waters.
“the government’s job is to protect individuals from the initiation of force or from fraud, not to meddle in voluntary transactions between willing parties.”
Oh boy, here come the Randroids. Pretty soon we’ll be hearing that “A is A” and this someone means that they win the argument.
We can nip this in the bud right now. Objectivist libertarian types cannot account for how an individual comes to obtain an exclusive ownership right over land and unproduced natural resources, nor can they account for negative externalities. Their entire philosophy is built on a foundation of sand. But I understand that it is very appealing for high school age kids, because it gives them a set of ready made answers to everything in a complex and confusing world.
RueTheDay writes:
Oh boy, here come the Randroids….
Your understanding of libertarianism is somewhat shallow. And for the record, I prefer Rothbard to Rand.
Objectivist libertarian types cannot account for how an individual comes to obtain an exclusive ownership right over land and unproduced natural resources, nor can they account for negative externalities. Their entire philosophy is built on a foundation of sand. But I understand that it is very appealing for high school age kids, because it gives them a set of ready made answers to everything in a complex and confusing world.
I think that it is the Hobbsean types like you that have built their philosophy on a foundation of sand. There is nothing magical needed to defend property rights, no matter how you may wish to spin the argument.
I think that it is up to you statists to defend your position of giving governments the power to meddle in voluntary transactions between individuals.
The great trick of fascism is to make virtually everything illegal, or highly regulated, and then give power to select parts of the society or the economy (the “corporations”) to set this policy, and avoid legal action themself. (“capture”)
There is no longer upward mobility, but rather a form of serfdom where the power centers may not be formally part of the government.
I agree. In the US both the left and the right have allowed the growth of the state to destroy individual liberty. From what I can tell, there is no aspect of private life that the government does not regulate.
I agree and disagree with you, Vangel.
The deeper problem is that govt is almost totally dependent on and therefore easily corrupted by the economy’s money makers UNTIL we redisign how money is created. Right now money is controlled for reasons of profit by private institutions. The solution is not to hand over total control of money-creation and control from the private to the public sector, but to take it away from money-making interests generally, and diversify the types of money we use so that total control is not possible. A hybrid of MMT and Lietaer to put it simply.
We do not have to design money because the markets are perfectly able to come up with a useful monetary system. The classical gold standard was not designed by any individual or government yet it is Western Civilization’s greatest achievement. By taking from government the power to steal from workers and savers by inflating the money supply we make it easier for those workers and savers to control their own lives.
Since when does the United States negotiate on equal footing with foreign criminals? 20BB is not enough. I resent how British Petroleum framed this as a problem between equals, saying the US is a great country, BP is a great company, etc. Since when do we allow a foreign corporation to control media access to a disaster site on US soil, as per this NY times article. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/10access.html?src=tptw
Also, what if the well is not capped by August. Read the comment by dougr here, also pointed out by Yves, which explains why the flow rate is getting worse.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967
A well failure is similar to a dam failure, little trickles leading to spectacular gushers and structural collapse.
Foreign criminals? From what I see there is a clear dispute that the courts are quite capable of handling. If I were the BP shareholders I would toss out management, put the American subsidiary in Chapter 11 to limit the liabilities, and go back to being an energy company instead of trying to rob consumers and taxpayers by pushing carbon trading schemes and alternative energy subsidies.
When you see the following written in mainstream publications, I have to think Mr. Lira has a point:
“Hurting BP also hurts America: We should not forget that BP is an American company too, says Andrew Clark in Britain’s Guardian. It has 29,000 American employees, and the U.S. owns 39 percent of its stock. “A collapse of BP would destroy livelihoods, damage pension funds, and wipe out savings on both sides of the Atlantic.” Critics in the U.S. rushing to “play executioner” should be “careful what they wish for.”
“Has US bloodlust for BP gone too far?”
http://theweek.com/article/index/203976/why-britain-is-defending-bp
choose your poison
I still think we should have bailed out Enron. You know how many good family-supporting jobs and pensions were lost there?
Touche
How ironic. BP and Enron were two companies that abandoned their proven models of increasing wealth and decided to promote rent seeking activities. They were the two companies that were most active in the carbon trading push. The Cap and Trade legislation was partially written by the BP lobbyists.
“It’s too sad a thing, to watch while a great nation slowly goes down the tubes.”
Don’t worry, it’s going faster every day.
All the bailouts are doing is drawing out the process and it wont save any mismanged corporation. If we dont fix too big to fail and our debt problem we face total financial collapse and hyperinflation.
A very good article.
However, one of the major problems behind the whole oil/banking mess is the dumb uneducated masses who make up the majority of the electorate and which sadly for the intelligent minority, will remain ever so, whilst the degenerative political and corporate elite maintain power.
“Drill Baby Drill” fans who live down South and whose livelihoods depend on tourism, fishing etc. might…might now stop to think about the consequences of cowboy-fuelled Energy policies but I think not.
Perhaps things would be very different and decidedly rosier for us all if the President of the US showed a combination of real leadership, appropriate foresight, hard balls and humane cunning.
In my mind I see a President who would have outlawed insider trading for Lawmakers long ago, rammed a Bail Out through, silencing the Porky-Pigs squeals, and redirecting America towards alternative energy thereby recovering a new leading position in the global economy, explained the wisdom behind becoming much less dependent on oil from “terrorist” states soundly appealling to the numb-skulls on the right, and a President who would have sharply slapped Messieurs Banker-Wankers with serious hardship and failure…….
Dream on……Dream on…..
“xplained the wisdom behind becoming much less dependent on oil from “terrorist” states soundly appealling to the numb-skulls on the right,”
After 9/11, many Americans, including some prominent Republicans, wanted to push for energy independence and alternative energy research so that we could stop sending money to Middle East countries linked to terrorism. (Osama bin Laden and most of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia.) Spend the money instead on solar panels from Silicon Valley, or windmills from GE, or ethanol from Kansas.
The backlash was incredible.
The media, the political left, human rights groups, and Muslim groups all denounced the idea as racist, simpleminded, promoting stereotypes, and imposing “collective punishment” on innocent Middle Easterners who depend on oil income.
The pro-globalization activists argued this would undermine “interdependence,” was protectionist, etc.
Supporters of Israel worried that if we stopped needing oil, we would withdraw our military from the Middle East.
If, in 2001, the government had promoted conservation and taxing oil imports to fund alternative energy projects as a way to prevent terrorism, there would have been widespread support. Political correctness got in the way.
“My own sense is, there will be no revolutionary change. The corporations won…Thank God I no longer live in America. It’s too sad a thing, to watch while a great nation slowly goes down the tubes.”
The despair in Lira’s lament is understandable under the persistent drubbing of relentless rolling manmade disasters. It feels like being inexorably sucked into a black hole toward an apocalyptic event horizon.
On the other hand, with so many dire crises now converging simultaneously—political, economic, ecological, AND, certainly, military — an imminent ‘perfect’ storm will inevitably FORCE change despite Obama’s ‘eloquent’ efforts to sustain the unsustainable. We are headed for something momentous, in which no one can remain a sideline bystander. It can be something great on the other side.
This posts hits all the points. The reason this government is technically illegitimate and a tyrannical usurper is because it has abdicated sovereignty, leaving behind a Hobbesian vacuum into which anti-sovereign corporate power has surged. That’s the main subject of my blog.
One of my very first blog posts, on this same subject, was entitled “Corporate Anarchy”.
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/corporate-anarchy/
And here’s a more recent one touching specifically on BP’s assault on American sovereignty.
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/transparency-vs-kleptocracy-bp-oil-spills-wikileaks/
But in Europe and America, the story was the Greenspan Put. Easy Al was so convinced that the banks would ‘self-regulate’ that he pulled the teeth of the Fed, the banks regulatory agency, and let the ‘free market’ have its way.
Um, that’s NOT what the “Greenspan Put” was. Greenspan did do these things, but the “Greenspan Put” refers specifically to his decisions to inject massive liquidity and to support asset prices in general any time Wall Street’s bad investments got them into trouble. This conditioned investors to believe they could buy risk assets with confidence that downside risk was limited (hence the term “put”) because the Fed would not tolerate severe declines. It was arguably Greenspan’s most ANTI-free market policy.
This is a fascinating comment. Linguistically, calling this the most “anti-free market” step suggests that, in a ‘free market’, financial failure would not be bailed out by the government. That is, financial failure would lead to bankruptcy — to failure of the firm.
Failure of the firm, though, would demand some legal mechanism that is enforceable. That enforcement, in turn, would demand a government. Even if parties to a contract specify in advance a series of steps to resolve such failures, there still needs to be a government sitting behind those steps.
Thus, had there been no “Greenspan put”, Andrew’s comment suggests we would have had a more ‘free market’ because we would have had government enforcing the consequences of failed financial choices.
On the other hand, Andrew’s comment suggests that the “Greenspan put” was ‘anti free market’ because we have government bailing out bad financial decisions.
The first point to note in all this is that both these conditions include some government presence and policy. Thus, ‘free markets’ cannot exist in the absence of government.
The second, though, is much more subtle. In effect, the ‘Greenspan put’ was a policy and action of the executive branch. Bankruptcy and/or other enforcements of failure are initiated by the executive branch, but are overseen by the judicial branch — and underpinned by choices made by the legislative branch.
With the ‘greenspan put’ — like TARP and so forth — the action is initiated by the executive branch with not much more than an after the fact rubber stamp of the legislative branch — and similarly the judicial branch is cut out of the equation: again, except for after the fact approvals.
All of which means we’ve moved to a situation where ‘free markets’ cannot exist in the absence of government — but exist much more to the benefit of reckless, self-interested, bonus seeking executives so long as they can rely on the center of gravity/action of ‘government’ resting in the executive branch.
For another example, look at what the FIFA is doing in South Africa.
It isn’t only that corporations do what they want, it’s whether or not the government established any mechanisms for enforcing the laws.
Congress makes it look like they are tough on corporations by passing laws but then they don’t pony up any money for anyone to properly investigate if the laws are being followed. They don’t provide for heavy fines and other types of stiff punishments when corporations break the laws. If it’s just a slap on the wrist, and a company can continue to get rich by breaking the laws, then they’ll do it.
Or the government won’t do anything at all and just look the other way.
BP had a documented history of not following the requirements. The government agency tasked with overseeing BP was staffed with oil lobbyists–put there by Bush and left there by Obama’s choice to run the agency. Those guys chose to look the other way and take bribes (consisting of drugs and sex). I’m not sure if a single one of them ever went to jail.
This country remains completely fucked.
And with rules like the Senate Filibuster, which allows a single Senator — say, Murkowski, who represents 1/7th of 1% of the US population — place a ‘hold’ on legislation, and shut down the entire Senate attempts to raise oil spill liability for anarchic corporations, then we’re toast.
Something wicked this way comes.
I suspect it takes the form of a seabed collapse in the Gulf of Mexico.
Gonzalo, regarding your close; “Once again: Thank God I no longer live in America. It’s too sad a thing, to watch while a great nation slowly goes down the tubes.”
It should read; Once again: Thank God I no longer live on planet earth. It’s too sad a thing, to watch while a great planet slowly goes down the tubes.
Your article fails when you set up Chile as being free of predatory corporate machinations. You can run but you can not hide. Corporations are predatory defacto nation states that roam and rape all over the planet at will. Chile is being gang raped by corporations as you write. We are all Gazans now. I think you might want to broaden your viewpoint.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
I need to ride one of those corporate anarchists up a double or a triple bagger on the NYSE and then I’ll high tail it to the absinthe bar and tell the whoremaster to go diddle himself with his vaseline. If I were a saint, I’d be done with it already. But that’s a high bar. Best to get flu$h first, get a harem or at least one or two (that takes cash), and then walk the high road, in style. LOL. Ecce Homo.
The Absinthe Bar has been taken over by CA, they won’t accept cash anymore. Bring your credit cards …
THIS CONSENT AND AGREEMENT TO BUYOUT AND RELEASE is made and entered into this 16th day of June 2010, by and among CA (Corporate Anarchist), a Delaware limited liability company (the “Screw Everybody Company”), Inc. f/k/a Up Yours, Inc. (“Back Door Entertainment”), and Absinthe Bar, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “Whore Master Hollow” and which entity is a wholly owned subsidiary of Whore master Harem and Highs, LLC which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pimpdom Entertainment).
I’ve heard that the US has more laws against sex than violence…errr???
As they say time and again during a soccer game:
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!
As transnational agencies, agreements, and corporations reduce the ability of nation-states enforce their will on international or financial issues, states will compensate by increasing their regulation of citizens’ behavior. Countries will increasingly act like a parent who, losing authority at work, comes home and beats the kids so they still feel in charge of someone.
This mindset is discussed at length in a book called __Anti-Drugs Policies of the European Union: Transnational Decision-Making and the Politics of Expertise__
Treaties have, for example, restricted the ability of countries to effectively wage war using strategic bombing (e.g., the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo), starving civilian populations through blockades, or mass imprisonment of military age males. Decisive World War II-type decisions are now impossible due to human rights conventions.
Countries now wage, instead, the “War on Drugs,” using the states’ police power against its own citizens to show everyone that that the State still has the power to enforce its will. The use of paramilitary SWAT teams with automatic weapons and armored personnel carriers are becoming more popular for this reason. Conspicuous CCTV cameras and a proliferation of minor laws being enforced serve a similar purpose: showing that a loss of power abroad has not not diminished government authority at home. The modern “War on Drugs” began in the United States when respect for the the federal government was at an all time low: shortly after it withdrew from Vietnam.
As governments lose the power to regulate global corporations, they increase enforcement against small businesses and individuals who violate financial or environmental laws. The government may not imprison anyone for the BP disaster, but small fisherman, sailors, and boaters who violate clean water laws are regularly prosecuted and/or imprisoned.
The article is complete nonsense.
“BP’s reasoning was simple: By implementing an immediate top-kill, BP would have sacrificed the oil field (and lost its investment) in order to save the environment. BP did not do this. Instead, it tried to stretch out the process, so as to salvage the oil field (and the profits) with the “relief well”. ”
A top kill does not affect the oil field at all.
There needs to be some quality control at nakedcapitalism.
Vacuum,
I warned Lira that his post was off beam in that detail and would get pushback, but did not get a correction prior to when I had scheduled the post to run. But your comment is overreaching. His misconstruction here does not invalidate his argument, contrary to your heated assertion otherwise.
He has corrected it at his blog (which this post links to, at the top) and I am updating the post to conform with it.
In that case, feel free to delete my comment.
Thank you, Mr. Lira (AND Yves!), for yet another excellent article exposing the “truth” of our times. Similar sentiment for the astute and poignant comments from the “usual suspects.” (You know who you are.) :) Alas, all of this verbiage falls well short of the true scope and depth of “the problem.”
While I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Tioxin’s concise yet eloquent comment, it still only describes the more egregious symptoms of this unwillingly shared quagmire. Without doubt, NOTaREALAmerican and globalnomad correctly reference the “uneducated masses,” however, this term is also too narrow in scope. That is, most readers will only infer this means those with a HS “education” or less. That is erroneous. I can’t even begin to count the number of people I’ve worked with or encountered over the past 40 or so years who possess 1 or more pieces of paper proclaiming their “level” of education (baccalaureate degrees and “higher”) yet can’t exhibit that they “know” ANYTHING about ANYTHING. Regardless, the more important aspects are that they also seemed incapable of reasoned thinking on ANY subject and abysmally only act in contradiction to what they say. In other words, the vast majority of the populace are abject hypocrites and wouldn’t recognize “consistent” thoughts and actions even if their lives depend on that consistency… and they do.
I’ve quit a dozen or more positions (some with a 50+K/yr salary) because I refuse to compromise my integrity and honor for a pittance of a paycheck while supporting a growing “fortune” for some utter dumbass (or collection of dumbasses). My point here is that it is not ONLY the huge, “global” corporations that are riding rough-shod over their employees AND “customers/clients,” but virtually EVERY company (regardless of incorporation or size) that practice this behavior. This is most certainly a cultural condition of 2 antithetical(?) cultures. It seems quite clear that many here on nakedcap accurately perceive the culture of the “elites,” but few seem to acknowledge the culture of apathy exhibited by those who remain in the employ of the former. The “wizards of Wall St.” and the corporate “titans” can’t accomplish their destruction and continual accumulation of wealth without those remaining subservient to their “criminal” endeavors who could, in fact, be accused of aiding and abetting. Of course, since the TBTF banks, oil/energy companies, pharma, etc. are NOT being charged with any crimes, everyone blissfully continues BAU.
I do not know what the causes are for these cultural behaviors but I have my suspicions. Alas, an even greater unknown is how to resolve this. By and large, at least one impetus to this state of affairs is the incessant “encouragement” to “compete” rather than “cooperate.” Everyone, everywhere, all-the-time is “conditioned” to do “whatever it takes” to “get ahead.” This is a divisive concept and, like the old adage states, “united we stand, divided we fall.” Alas, the precipice on which we are precariously teetering makes those that Wile E. Coyote plummeted over seem minuscule in comparison… and too few “get it.”
Personally, I’m glad I’m closing in on 60 yrs of age because I don’t see this “ending well” in any sense. Frankly, I think the sooner TSHTF, the better… in a certain, not necessarily valid, sense. Sometimes I think the “best” we could hope for is the mother-of-all-CME’s to occur in the next few years and render life-as-we-know-it to a memory… for those who can “remember.” Good luck to us all.
I’m sorry to swim upstream on this one, but much of this post – particularly as it relates to the oil and gas industry – is slapdash conspiracy theory. As Paul Dirac once said, “it isn’t even wrong.”
BP (and its counterparts, as we saw yesterday) deserves censure and worse for not recognizing the non-negligible risk of a deepwater blowout and not having well developed containment plans for such an eventuality.
The BP managers (and possibly Transocean managers, from an operational perspective) involved in designing and drilling the well will need to be held accountable for disastrously shoddy work, resulting in 11 deaths and considerable destruction and loss.
BP will be bearing billions of dollars of costs for years to come; likely, the careers of several mid level and senior managers will be terminated, and many others not directly associated with the incident will also be damaged. This isn’t unfair; it happened in the cases of Enron and Arthur Andersen, as a result of the shoddy business practices of those companies. And, of course, it doesn’t compensate for the 11 lives lost on the drilling rig.
But it’s grassy knoll stuff to write that BP held off attempting a top kill of the well to try to preserve its economic interest in the reservoir. The engineering work done at 5000′ below the surface, working with a damaged well which stretches multiples of this down into the earth, is ferociously complex. Obama is right that the company’s and the rest of the country’s interests are aligned in stopping the flow of oil. It isn’t just BP working on this – every part of the energy industry has been consulted in how to deal with the situation.
And to write “BP knows that no one will hold it accountable—BP knows that it will get away with it” is just la-la land. The markets are already holding the company accountable: nearly half the company’s market value is gone, much of that for good. The authorities are holding the company accountable, through the escrow fund announced today and in the day to day consultation the company is required to take before undertaking any significant action. And its officers know that they are in genuine jeopardy of criminal prosecution, as Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay and others were before them.
This site has been a valuable resource to me for over three years for its analysis of the financial crisis. However, much of the material posted on the Deepwater Horizon blow out and its aftermath has been very poor. Go to the Oil Drum for informed commentary, much of which is rightly excoriating of BP’s management, but doesn’t dwell in fantasy land.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.
—————–
A Merchant whilom dwell’d at Saint Denise,
That riche was, for which men held him wise.
—————–
Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour . . . . These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen, who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine, of their own accord, to raise tile price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions, sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are
desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their
masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters, upon these occasions, are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.
———–
I’ll eloquently add to these passages that there ain’t a goddamn new thing under the sun. Please stop with the narcissism of thinking that there is anything fundamentally new about people or their institutions at this time in history.
Sorry, addressing Lira and not you Andrew. Basically agree with you.
I have to agree with the thrust of Andrews comment; this article is riddled with conspiracy theory rhetoric that does not stand up to scrutiny. Yves, please stick to factual analysis as I’ve spent the last few years enjoying the tone, substance and style of your blog. I would be saddened to have to lower it in my estimation but the recent posts on the Gulf of Mexico have begun to wander off into irrational and unobjective woo-mongery and I may be forced to reconsider.
Are you in danger of listening too much to the fanboi and fangoyl knee-jerk and unthinking sycophancy of some of your commenters? Please don’t be seduced by the attention you are receiving and try to remember that the fan-base you have developed is as a result of solid, objective and rational enquiry fueled by a desire for fairness and transparency; that doesn’t need to change in my opinion.
Allan,
Thank you for your readership. However, I must make several observations:
1. This is a guest post
2. I indicated elsewhere that I told Gonzalo that his discussion of the top kill was problematic. He told me he corrected it at his blog and asked me to revise it here. However, I don’t see an updated version there. He is a new blogger, he may have made the correction “backstage” and forgot to save it
3. That section is a detail and not critical to his overall argument. His error there, while annoying, does not invalidate his thesis.
4. One of the problems with economics is its false science mantle, something I discuss at length in ECONNED. It pretends not to be political, when in fact it is acutely so. So discussions of this sort, which you appear to deem not “analytical” are germane precisely because they force the discussion of some of the underlying dynamics (who is really benefiting from various policies and why? What mechanisms and propaganda are supporting economic land grabs?)
I have no wish to wash dirty linen in public and would happily take this to email if you prefer. A couple of points;
1. Yves; ‘Thank you for your readership.’ It remains my pleasure; thank you for your sterling work, intelligent commentary and solid investigative reporting.
2. Yves; ‘This is a guest post’. Your blog, your quality standards.
3. Yves; ‘I indicated elsewhere that I told Gonzalo that his discussion of the top kill was problematic. He told me he corrected it at his blog and asked me to revise it here. However, I don’t see an updated version there. He is a new blogger, he may have made the correction “backstage” and forgot to save it.’ I repeat, your blog, your quality standards.
4. Yves; ‘That section is a detail and not critical to his overall argument. His error there, while annoying, does not invalidate his thesis.’ He has no thesis worth examining in anything other than a superficial manner. Paraphrasing; ‘This oil spill is just like the financial crisis and betokens corporate anarchy’; as others have shown here and could be done in more detail, it’s not even wrong. His other point? ‘Thank God I no longer live in America’; who gives a shit? That’s not even an argument or debate point. Poor article.
5. Yves; ‘So discussions of this sort, which you appear to deem not “analytical” are germane precisely because they force the discussion of some of the underlying dynamics’. Have they done that? No; a series of uninformed rants and prejudiced and vacuous comments. Did you use the more general ‘think-piece’ nature of the article as the launch-pad for exactly the kind of in-depth examination of the underlying dynamics (which would indeed be useful)? Not so far, I live in hope. Your response here reminds me a little of the tabloid fixation for throwing a little raw meat into the water (‘chumping it up’) in order to elicit a feeding frenzy and it is as unnattractive a tactic here as it is there. More so as I avoid those tabloids for exactly that reason and expect more of you.
This criticism is mild and intended purely as a minor course-correction piece of advice which you are of course free to ignore, take or resist; please continue your good work.
Allan,
I suggest you take note of the number of posts daily and typical time at which I post. Keeping up this blog has come at a considerable physical toll and comments like yours are not motivating, particularly invoking “quality standards” with regard to a free service. My response to you made clear that I saw your comment as well as the other less than happy remarks about this post. Your reply to that was browbeating, pure and simple.
Second that browbeating! And over the top gaggingly pretentious.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Your whole response is noted.
Let’s remember, it’s a blog. It’s not the National Intelligence Estimate or the next quarterly report of the BIS. When you encounter something that doesn’t ring true, how about simply thinking “well, that doesn’t ring true” and moving on.
Yves thank you for your good work! Keep motivated. Life is a stochastic process – there will always be variance :)
I won’t speak to regulating corporations and oil companies but how does one regulate an inherently dishonest and unstable business, fractional reserve banking? Regulate too little and it runs amok, regulate too much and growth is stifled. Can we afford either? What we need are optimum banking and money solutions that only a true free market could provide. But what do we have instead? Ans: Government backed fractional reserve banking in a government enforced monopoly money supply. Greenspan’s error was to assume that partial liberty was stable; it is not.
Regulations cannot change human nature. This is why we need to reduce the power of governments and central banks to meddle in the economy and let the market pick winners and losers on the basis of how well producers are able to meet consumer demand.
Who is this market that can pick winners and losers so efficaciously. Show me.
It’s the invisible hand. It’s magic.
Take a look at the consumer electronics and computing sector. It is not regulated very heavily so dominance is gained by the ability of companies to convince consumers to purchase their own products. As such, many of the early players were destroyed or marginalized by competitors who were better able to meet demand. IBM no longer makes PCs. The first great American electronics company, RCA, is now gone. What about formerly great producers, Bowmar, Burroughs, Wang, Compucorp, Commodore, Lloyds, Rockwell, Monroe, Marchant, Litronix, and many, many more.
Better yet, look at Apple. Not too long ago it was in danger of going bankrupt because consumers rejected its expensive computers, which did not perform as well as those of its competitors. The company changed, adopted a new hardware structure that improved the performance of its computers, took advantage of its operating system, and got into other sectors that it began to dominate. When consumers saw its products as cool and worth the extra premium, its market value is around the same level as that of Microsoft or Wal-Mart.
And what is this “human nature” of which you speak? And why might it matter that it is unchangeable?
What matters are behaviours, which are indeed very flexible AND manipulatable. Explaining oddities like pedophelia, suicide and necrophilia is otherwise impossible. The world of advertising is also testimony to how easily influenced humans are.
If you say, for example, humans are greedy by nature, then you have to point out where greed exists in human nature, or how it exists there to become fixed greedy behaviours. I doubt a greed gene will ever be found, for example, so if greed is there in the body, how? Also, not everyone is greedy. And those that have been, can be changed. And then there’s the problem of defining greed satisfactorily, and on and on it goes.
As for the ‘selfish gene’ that’s just a phrase. A gene cannot be selfish, since it has no sense of self, and can make no choice between two courses of action, where one is altruistic, and the other selfish. Selfishness and altruism are emergent properties of those animals (emergent properties here being observable behaviours) capable of choosing between the two. If there is no choice, there is no selfishness. At least, that’s how I see it.
And what is this “human nature” of which you speak? And why might it matter that it is unchangeable?
Human beings choose between alternatives. They do what the judge is the preferred action over other possible actions. When a bureaucrat has the power to influence activities he will choose what is most beneficial to himself, his family, his friends, or his constituents. We see perfect examples of this in the lobby community around Washington. It is full of former politicians and retired bureaucrats that used to regulate the industries they now work for.
BP wants carbon trading because it knows that is a way to make money for its shareholders. It does not care about American industry and American consumers paying more for their energy. It does not care about American jobs that will be destroyed when industries choose to relocate to areas that offer cheaper access to power. The politicians don’t care either because they stand to personally benefit when subsidies make their investments more profitable or when they get jobs in the industries that they diverted funds to.
What matters are behaviours, which are indeed very flexible AND manipulatable. Explaining oddities like pedophelia, suicide and necrophilia is otherwise impossible. The world of advertising is also testimony to how easily influenced humans are.
Humans are not all that complicated to figure out. They always choose to act by taking a route that they prefer to the alternatives.
If you say, for example, humans are greedy by nature, then you have to point out where greed exists in human nature, or how it exists there to become fixed greedy behaviours. I doubt a greed gene will ever be found, for example, so if greed is there in the body, how? Also, not everyone is greedy. And those that have been, can be changed. And then there’s the problem of defining greed satisfactorily, and on and on it goes.
Humans choose and when they do, they act. It is as simple as that. Is it greedy to choose to take home the better looking woman over the other alternatives? It is greedy to choose the better job? Greed has nothing to do with anything because we all choose what we prefer and when we do, we do not engage in zero sum games. When a fisherman exchanges his fish for loaves of bread he prefers the bread to the fish. But that does not mean that he rips off the baker because the baker prefers the fish to the bread.
When we engage in voluntary social and economic transactions both sides do what they feel is best for themselves, which you would define as acting greedily. But those choices do not mean that anyone loses. On the other hand, when you have governments intervene in social or economic transactions they can cause one or both parties to be less well off and to settle for an outcome that they would not prefer to the alternative if they had a choice.
As for the ’selfish gene’ that’s just a phrase. A gene cannot be selfish, since it has no sense of self, and can make no choice between two courses of action, where one is altruistic, and the other selfish. Selfishness and altruism are emergent properties of those animals (emergent properties here being observable behaviours) capable of choosing between the two. If there is no choice, there is no selfishness. At least, that’s how I see it.
You are mixed up by assuming that we are living in a Malthusian nightmare where voluntary transactions create losers because all transactions are zero sum games. History teaches us that you are wrong and that you need to reexamine your logic.
While Lira may be right on his criticism of the U.S. governement and about american people, he is dead worng concerning the Chilean situation in 1982. As some said it here, the manner the Pinochet dictatorchip sailed out of the banking crisis was by simply putting the ON SALE poster on the whole country. And I am not uttering an opinion here. I was there at the time and that was exactly was the people were saying; they are selling the furniture to save the house. At the end, it seems, they also had to sell the whole house to survive. Not to mention the devastating cost the whole process had on the Chilean people, specially the poorest of them all. Mister Lira seems to have witnessed all that from the comfort and security of his high class mansion in the Barrio Alto. Anyway, whatever the end could have been in Chile it was the people who paid for it, as it is the case now in the U.S.A. No difference there.
BTW, it wasn’t Dirac who said that. It was Wolfgang Pauli.
The BP oil spill is part of the same problem as the financial crisis: The BP oil spill and the banking crisis are two examples of the era we are living in, the era of corporate anarchy.
Anarchy? There are more rules and regulations today than ever before so what we have is hardly anarchy. A few bucks spent on a dictionary and a course in critical thinking may be helpful.
corporatism is the correct term, not anarchy. The regulations are not properly enforced because of regulatory capture. The capture is two way. Just like there needs to be a seperation of church and state, corporatism is a very dangerous form of government.
corporatism is the correct term, not anarchy.
I agree.
The regulations are not properly enforced because of regulatory capture. The capture is two way. Just like there needs to be a seperation of church and state, corporatism is a very dangerous form of government.
Yes, corporatism is a very dangerous form of government. When the federal government takes the power to meddle, a power not given to it by the Constitution, it allows for a level of corruption not possible in a market system. That is why you have the government allow big corporations to write most legislation in such a way that it is used to reduce competition and harm consumers. The only way to have the economy work efficiently is to take away the power of government to meddle in voluntary transactions. The problem is that the federal courts, which are arbiters of disputes regarding federal powers, have been corrupted by the appointment process that puts into power judges that do not question the government’s right to assume powers not delegated by the constitution. That means that the only recourse is to have the states nullify unconstitutional laws. I do not know about you but I do not see them being ready to take such a course.
That is why you need to remove from government the power to meddle
I think of it more as corporate feudalism. I can hardly wait until BP hires Blackwater to take over Exxon’s wells… or BofA launches a cyber attack on Barclays…
They won’t do that unless they can outsource those jobs to India or China for 10 cents an hour.
BP was a bad company that took its eye off the ball. Its shift from a producer of fossil fuels to a rent seeking carbon trader and its relationships with the government encouraged it to take its eye off the ball. Why spend money on safety checks and quality control systems when there is more money to be made by getting subsidies and mandated privileges?
quit griping about corporate america. the average american, or for that matter, the average earthean, has developed some pretty rich tastes. big corporates is the only known mechanism for a ‘good’ lifestyle, ask any of those who have lost their jobs, e.g., who are cleaning the spill. the big question is how are we all to have a ‘good’ lifestyle without messing up.
all this BP-lynching is usual american indignation. see shell in the niger or union carbide in india. americans like to think that an oyster catcher ‘deserves’ a million bucks in compensation forgetting that the same oyster has this value because its largely eaten by BP and goldman-sachs employees.
anyway, go on and enjoy yourselves.
Money makes the world go round.
Corporations = salvation
This is the ‘trickle-down’ theory. Theory is a misnomer though, ideology or even nursery-rhyme would be more accurate.
Large corporations do not exist for the benefit of their employees– what a quaint idea! There is at best an uneasy truce between the advantages/ disadvantages of reducing wages/ stimulating the economy (enabling consumers). And guess what? For the last 30yrs approximately, the average income has basically remained stagnant. The real winners have been some sections of our society– (some particular professional roles in some particular professions.)
I would like to hear my politicians saying things like, “sustainability,” “quality,” “standard of living,” “human capital,” etc. much more. What is the point of the military action in Afghanistan? There seems to be no hope of achieving a long term, not to mention a mid-term, benefit from this war. The war surely can’t be about terrorism– you don’t invade and occupy a whole country for the sake of removing a relatively small number of extremist radicals.
Well, be that as it may be, it’s another divisive issue– we need to start pulling together and working on and improving some of the things which we can.
I have to laugh at the people who post here decrying the massive amount of regulation on the books as though it were somehow relevant. Regulation is never enforced on the main offenders, just their little guy competitors.
Regulation is irrelevant. When corporations are massive enough they distort the space around them, just like a black hole. Call it the mass effect of a huge pile of money. Corporations write the laws they must obey and should an offending regulation accidentally slip by they lobby endlessly to neuter it. It’s not odd or strange that BP treats USGOV as an equal. BP is in practice sovereign.
Removing regulation will not remove the problem. Adding regulation will not solve the problem. Attempts to enforce regulation will be ignored. No regulation will work so long as there are corporate actors beyond a certain size. You must break them. Like Lessig and others I have come to believe a Constitutional Convention is the only solution with any chance of success.
No matter what you say, no matter what the truth is, they will repeat it, and it will become true by virtue of repetition.
I agree with the general premise that there was anarchy (or utter lack of regulation: self, government, or otherwise) in the banks and oil companies (and mortgage issuers, appraisers, developers, government cabinets, etc).
However, multinational corps and fortune 500 companies are mainly a fascination for the media; they don’t actually affect the average american all that much. AIG and Fannie and Freddie might leave a mark, but not compared to Iraq or Afghanistan (or Roberts and Alito for that matter).
“While the percentage of Americans employed by Fortune 500 companies steadily drops (from 20 percent of the workforce in 1980 to less than 9 percent today); an average of 9.36 percent of the population could be found over the last decade starting their own businesses.” http://bk.ly/snQ
Even for layoffs: The Forbes.com Layoff Tracker, updated weekly, currently counts 703,385 layoffs announced at America’s 500 largest public companies since Nov. 1, 2008. Most people claim we’ve lost around 8.4 million jobs, so that’s about right.
Lastly, standard oil was a hell of a lot more powerful than Exxon is now; IBM, ATT, GE are all shadows of what they used to be, and Apple and Microsoft are not even close to their replacements. JP Morgan is a featherweight compared to the company when a Morgan ran it. In case anyone forgot, the great depression was a lot worse the last time around. Even if Americans face a decade of stagnation or two it’s a hell of a lot better better to and end up Japan 1990-2010 than Japan 1925-1945, and so far Euro-zone Germany’s problems are a longshot from Wiemar’s (both cited as examples of the last financial collapse’s effects).
We aren’t as bad off as we have been; we’re certainly better off than others have been in similar circumstances. We’re just used to seeing Argentina or Indonesia or whatever suffer the consequences of poor oversight, greed, and corruption; not us, and that makes it harder to fix.
The world needs a new guiding philosophy.
“The world needs a new guiding philosophy.” KC
How about true capitalism instead of pseudo-capitalism? How can a true free market exist when the bankers have a government backed cartel in a government enforced monopoly money supply?
You don’t really expect me to compete with people who are better than me do you?
I suppose not. I expect some more heat needs to be applied till enough see the light.
while the top 100 multinational corporations may well be a media fascination,
there is an overall MNCization of human needs. one just has to look at the
the per-capita non-renewable energy consumption which is almost completely
supplied by MNCs. it is getting to be the same with energy-consumption. if we
include global brandname companies (GBCs), most of our consumption
is now aided by devices and appliances (cars, aeroplanes) made by GBCs in
locations served and created by GBCs (shopping malls, resorts). just see the
‘creative class/city’ of richard florida. industries outside the energy extraction/consumption sectors, such as finance and mining are also dominated by GBCs.
so it should be no surprise that the best jobs are in GBCs. then there are the
oyster catchers, philharmonic musicians, organic growers, sierra nevada
environmentalists, university researchers, where again either direct GBC
support or of the wealth created by GBCs, is essential.
i think the modern GBC is doing a wonderful job of creation and distribution of
wealth (energy) to its patrons/clients/employees/owners and the communities
where these live. compare this with the earlier GBCs such as the East India
Company, or e.g., the mongol invaders.
the real question is whether there is or can be a ‘sustainable’ GBC society.
in other words, a GBC society which dishes out huge amounts of per-capita
energy cleanly and economically and employs all its members.
that brings us to BP, Exxon and so on who have largely been doing an excellent
job for its patrons, the west. now a spill (i.e., a slow oxidation) of the
size per day of what texas burns (i.e., fast oxidation) in 20 minutes has to
be kept in perspective of the great wealths that the GBCs have given. also
compare with what these GBCs have been doing to their non-patrons. unless
of course the americans are so exceptional that it is only now that
“poor oversight, greed and corruption” has crept into the american society.
Yes, that’s right you Americans. Don’t forget who made you wealthy in your jobs as movie stars, directors of philanthropic organizations, and surf magazine photographers!
So be sure to buy those brand name products, and please show your support for BP at the pumps, whereever you see the BP logo, or AMPM convenience stores, the “Wild Bean Cafe”, Castrol Motor Oil (“It’s more than just oil. It’s liquid engineering.”), and all the other very fine BP products and projects all over the world!
The author wrote:
“instead, BP risked a wider disaster, in order to save the oil field by drilling a “relief well”. BP’s reasoning was simple: By implementing an immediate top-kill, BP would have sacrificed the oil field (and lost its investment) in order to save the environment.”
I agree with most of the article, but every time someone writes such utter nonsense without having any understanding how deep off-shore wells work, it really takes away from the credibility of the rest of the arguments.
Drilling the relief wells is by far the most expensive of the attempts to permanently cap the well. In fact, it’s one of the most effective and proven methods — but it takes a lot of time and money. In this regard, BP is *only* drilling 2 relief wells rather than the 3 or 4 it should probably be drilling just to be extra sure that at least one will be viable.
As for the “top-kill”. Had it been successful, it wouldn’t have sacrificed the oil field at all. It would have been a temporary cap until the relief wells could cement the well shut permanently.
The only way to permanently seal this well is either to cause it to implode with some sort of explosive/small-nuke (not exactly a high probability outcome nor one that is likely to be good for the environment), or use the relief wells to cement the well.
To learn more, check out theoildrum.com, and start reading all the good posts on this starting a month ago. That’s probably several thousand pages worth from people who know a lot more about this topic than this author.
Mr Lira:
Although I agree that the US is on the downside of its power, strength, days of glory, is there a safe haven anywhere in the world? As the saying goes, when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. A recent post here referenced Holland, Dozier, Holland’s “Nowhere to Run.” It seems apropos. Our pseudo-mystical belief in free market fundamentalism and selfish individualism is tainting every corner of the globe. How much is the question.
No thanks for giving anarchy such a bad name.
Anarchy as a political movement is NOT doing what one wants when one wants to do it.
It is the belief that submitting to the rules JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE THE RULES.., and because the rules are dictated by authority is not necessarily a good thing. Our current understanding of the word “democracy” is wreaking havoc with authority, and hierarchy, at all levels… LOGICAL.
If we are at the critical point we are at currently, it is because we are seeing and testing how far WE can go at believing that money can buy EVERYTHING, and that all our problems will be solved by throwing $$$$, €€€ at them, whatever. And WE are reasoning this way. Here. Make no mistake about it.
And obviously… it is NOT logical or rational to be reasoning this way, is it ?
Evidence ? The quote :
“President Obama missed what the oil spill disaster is REALLY about. Though unquestionably an environmental disaster, the BP oil spill is MUCH MUCH MORE.”
That quote inverses priorities, in my opinion.
WE should be capable of recognizing at this point that our symbolic systems TAKE SECOND PLACE to our natural world, and DO NOT COME FIRST.
Our civilization is SECONDARY, not primary.
Maintaining the contrary is truly… irrational, now, isn’t it ?? Folly ?
In traditional human fashion, we have been upping the ante to see how far we can go before the bottom comes out.
Interestingly enough, I just remembered that the tower of Babel incident ends, not with the tower falling down, but with the MEN being dispersed, and their pseudo totalitarian “unity” being broken into myriad fragments, and languages. Diversity restored, once again.
Tower of Babel times for us here.
I once said to a friend that it is best to remember that in human society there is NO outside the system.
If those corporations are behaving in a certain way, it is interconnected to a way that WE are behaving (even if we don’t like that thought…), and finds its justification THERE, precisely where WE don’t want to see it.
Us and them is simplistic. It is… projection on a massiveand collective scale, if you like.
Now, we could say, as the man remarked above that THE MORE WE FEEL powerless and shit upon at an individual level, THE MORE we will need to pin our desire to be powerful on outside entities that we will invest (!!!) as powerful.
And we will feel powerful THROUGH them. By identification with them.
I feel that the massification of our world is certainly a good part of the problem. (Did the industrial revolution bring this about ? It certainly has been responsible for a great deal in the creation of the masses. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to believe here, the Middle age (a very long period, by the way) individual was not the bottom of the heap, and people actually FOUGHT to be serfs… it was not the dunghill status we seem to think it was.)
Personally, I don’t think that we can constantly clamor for MORE regulation all the time, at the corporate level, and not have that regulation backfire against us.
But I may be wrong. Maybe it simply is a question of directing regulation towards a different area. Maybe this will work.
But I have warned elsewhere about the illusion that regulation will solve our problems. This is… wishful thinking, I fear…
Better to change the paradigm completely.
IF we TRULY take the measure of the fact that our symbolic systems are secondary to our natural world, and TRIBUTARY to that world, THAT would be a paradigm shift.
Here here!
But:
“Interestingly enough, I just remembered that the tower of Babel incident ends, not with the tower falling down, but with the MEN being dispersed, and their pseudo totalitarian “unity” being broken into myriad fragments, and languages. Diversity restored, once again.”
and:
“Us and them is simplistic. It is… projection on a massiveand collective scale, if you like.”
seem at first read to contradict one another. I think this apparent ‘clash’ of oneness and diversity is part of the intellectual challenge we face. We have come to see wrongly individual identity as American or European or Texan or Berliner or whatever, and resit encroaching ‘oneness’ as it seems to come at us from monolith entities like corporations and mighty leviathan states. We defend bitterly our groupthink ‘uniqueness’ or ‘liberty’ but fail to notice we have already given it up.
I’m for deregulation and the transcendence of the nation state but my goodness the path that leads that way looks very long indeed, and very few want to give it a second thought. So much has to happen to ‘prepare the way’ that the task seems nigh on undoable. Besides, the glitter and bling of what we have created is just too bewitching. We are meekly and childishly in love with ourselves, terribly afraid of the change we think we call for.
hi, just read your article , bp anarchy article , i read it out live on my live show. i run the FreeTruth show throughout the week on livevideo.com and on TNS radio.com on thursday nights. would you like to go on air as my guest next thursday, July 2nd. I t may be a great way to get coverage for your books. let me know what you think? all the best , patrick lynch