Here's the real outrage: In the wake of the BP spill, essentially no laws have been changed -- not even a ridiculously low cap on damages private parties can collect from oil companies. Senate Republican leaders said Wednesday they wouldn't support a bill retroactively removing the liability cap; and not even Democrats Mary Landrieu (D-La) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) will support it.
But more than providing a scathing recap of Congress's (read: the Senate's) utter incompetence and gridlock, Reich paints the BP fiasco in the broader portrait of corporate malfeasance:
Corporations aren't people. They have no brains, no consciousness, no capacity for intent or guilt. Every one of their moveable parts can be replaced, just like BP's former CEO Tony Hayward was replaced. Corporate accountability and corporate responsibility are meaningless concept. Corporations exist for only one purpose: to make money.
It would do well for us to remember this lesson. Without downplaying the tragedy of the Gulf oil spill, nor vindicating the irresponsible parties, we have to make sure that our response, you know, makes sense. The last 100 days of activism have been directed at a not-quite-strawman "BP," as though massive oil companies hatched a plan to poison the Gulf and destroy livelihoods. In the wake of outrage directed at BP, actual scumbags like Tony Hayward get let off the hook. Anyone celebrating his expulsion from BP is mostly fooling themselves, if you ask me. Immediate $900,000 pension and a reprieve from the scandal-ridden spotlight? Yes please.
No, the real cause of this disaster was not evil, nor was it really MMS, or Tony Hayward's or any other underlings at BP's fault. What's to blame is not a person, persons or "BP." Instead, we should be pointing our fingers at the system we've set up. Reich:
If we want corporations to act differently, we have to force them to do so through laws that are fully-enforced and through penalties that are higher than the economic benefits of thwarting the laws.
Reich parallels the BP story with that of the Citizens United Case and the recently defeated DISCLOSE Act. Our representatives are selling the system to lobbyists and corporate money, confusing the tasks of government with the tasks of contributors. The era of big government being over and all, we have come to accept that any regulation or limit on corporate activity stifles innovation and is generally the enemy of freedom. But what we've created instead are the biggest Principle Agent problems our society has recently encountered. Companies like BP and Goldman Sachs operate within the constraints of (fully enforced) laws to make a buck. The risks associated with their activities -- oil spills, derivatives exploding, etc -- can be mostly ignored in the costs of doing business, as we've seen with the Crash of 2008 and the Spill. The federal government (AKA, you and me) will pick up the tab. Teabaggers horrified at the bailouts probably don't realize the spill is the exact same problem: people playing with fire in an open range, and then walking away when it burns everything down.
...but it's a little ironic to see that Republicans are basically proposing a socialized insurance system for oil companies, while Democrats want to leave them to the not-so-tender mercies of the free market. Funny how that works.
Brad has it spot on. With health care, Republicans (and plenty of Democrats) are vehemently against government footing the bill, but not so with oil companies. Why? Because that's the way the health insurance and oil companies want it. Without liability, and without regulation, corporations will do what they are designed to do: make money. BP is not in the interest of providing much-needed energy to society; they do so because there's good money in it. And there's nothing wrong with that. Until there is.
Or, we could just start the clean tech revolution already. After all, when's the last time you heard of a wind spill?
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