[quote=Eugene][quote=mike92104]The oil companies are regulated, but the regulators were asleep at the wheel, or too busy watching porn and taking speed. How does more of that prevent the oil spill?[/quote]
Are you implying that it’s impossible to regulate oil companies effectively, that disastrous oil spills can’t be prevented, and we shouldn’t even try?
Or is there some counterintuitive mechanism that will make companies like BP regulate themselves if the government regulation goes away?[/quote]
Effective regulation is certainly possible, but not unless and until you divorce the regulators from having any commercial interest in the market they’re regulating.
It goes without saying that we’re now feeling the effects of the very laissez-faire Dubya years. Recently, we’ve had the Tesoro refinery explosion in Washington, the Massey Energy mine explosion in West Virginia and now this Gulf fiasco. There is no doubt in my mind that more effective ENFORCEMENT of EXISTING regulations would have had an effect, but its also fair to look at how regulators within Obama’s own administration have behaved as well.
To claim all of this is a repudiation of “libertarianism” (which I don’t think the OP even understands nor can define) is stupid.
