I’ve been frankly too depressed this past week to blog with the anger and earnest of Jeffrey and Greg. I could offer some platitude like the older you get, the more tired you are. But, that’s not it. I rage more than ever over what’s going on in the Gulf and educate myself with every new piece of information that gets out about it, but it just hasn’t felt like the young, energetic fire in me after Katrina. At 30, I was convinced America and Louisiana would help a flooded American city get back on its feet appropriately. At 35, I know very few care but for themselves. And enough self-centered people with money and power form a constituency very difficult to overcome, never mind your age.
You know what? Screw them. This is my world, too. Welcome to it, assholes. The moment a free market you have shown you cannot regulate, thanks to your own short-sighted, corner-cutting, back-stabbing greed, begins to mess with the right to live and be of people and places that don’t belong to you, you’re damned right we will fight to regulate you after pulling public servants (yes, the ones you purport are keeping you down) out of your pockets and putting them back in their place.
We all have the right to create and make money, but not to screw others over in the process. Regulation by free market with little public oversight is for people mature enough to do honest business in that envisioned utopia, not the real greedy world in which we live. Fix this, grow up and then you can move to Olympus or whatever Romanticist wet dream you pretend to inhabit.
Again, it’s easy for me to say this. How do I, we, all of us who care live it?
* Yahoo | Emerging oil rig evidence shows lack of regulation
* Deepwater Horizon Interactive Timeline @ WSJ
* Disaster Unfolds Slowly In The Gulf of Mexico | boston.com’s The Big Picture
[Source: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images and Gerald Herbert/AP Photo]
* Video gives first look at oil gushing from the bigger of the two holes in the damaged riser that still lies on the sea floor. More videos at the Deepwater Horizon Joint Information Center’s YouTube channel.
* NOAA outlook maps and wind forecasts for May 13th: “The winds remain from the southeast to push more oil and tar balls on shore.”
Look, just because bad things happen, it is not always a clarion call for a cause celebre.
You’re right, a pure, perfectly working capitalist system exists only in theory; much like a pure communist system. The underlying theoretical constructs are based on rational individuals operating in a rational environment.
And regulations are necessary but should only exist in any form so as to temper irrational decisions–usually in the form of exploitation–and their results.
Unfortunately (and as I mention in my post “Danger, Will Robinson!” (http://bit.ly/cbDGku), sometimes shit just happens and the alarmist reactions of slapping new restrictions and laws to make sure bad things never ever ever happen again is just as irrational. Yes, sometimes greedy scumfucks stick their dicks in the mashed potatoes, but sometimes shit just happens, despite every best measure and precaution–reality answers to no one. The key is to work on regulating the former while understanding and accepting the latter and exercising discerning judgment differentiating the two.
Trying to stranglehold on Murphy’s Law will only result in Mr. Murphy finding new and improved ways to fuck up your day.
Greetings, The Corwyn, and thanks for writing in!
A number of oil spill posts ago, I argued what you do: that shit just happens and that no completely-adopted safety philosophy can stop it, especially in a complex system so big and run at different levels by people. Where I was going there is if bad things can and will happen, is a society willing to do an honest cost-benefit analysis and live with the negative outcomes, call the whole thing off or something in between? (Of course, it also matter what society you question – folks in Ohio will say benefits of drilling outweigh costs because the spill isn’t coating their corn, while Gulf Coast residents will probably slap you.)
In this particular case, however, you have companies flouting _existing_ regulations, with the help of the people who are supposed to be regulating them. What seems to be emerging here is a pattern of irrational decisions blown off by all parties involved. Furthermore, a $75 million cap on damages is spitting in the faces of the people of the Louisiana coast whose lives and livelihoods have been irreparably damaged.
So, what I propose is throwing all existing regulations and testing requirements at the greedy scumfucks to begin with (and not removing them or adding newer regulations), in which case the shit may never have happened at all.