Not Having Written - Oil Spill

Oh, it's a sad, sad world where the failure of one becomes the bane of many. I am referring to the failure of one business becoming the bane of many. To be truthful, there are several companies involved in the original disaster. There is Halliburton, Transocean, Cameron and BP (check the article at the Wall Street Journal). The companies will continue to make money, and I don't have an issue with that. What I have an issue with is this: the millions of people, through no fault of their own who has had their livelihood curtailed or destroyed.

Reality says that any time anything happens it affects more than we realize. A car accident affects the first responders, the passers-by, the families of those in the accident, possibly the doctors and nurses at the hospital, the insurance companies, lawyers (yes, even if you don't do anything but make an insurance claim, there's often a lawyer involved), and goodness knows who else. Simply, one awful accident is affecting millions of people.

I'm often a proponent of the free market. I have crazy thoughts that run the gamut of libertarian thought. However, I see this as failure of regulation. I dislike regulation. I often think that regulations are there to keep the idiots from hurting themselves, which makes us utterly beholden to the lowest common denominator. But, the industry wasn't regulating itself, obviously, and there were preposterous failures on the part of the regulators.

The rig was built by a South Korean company, the blow-out preventer (see the above WSJ article) was built by an American company, and the melange of corporations ended up failing miserably. The regulators failed miserably, and now, the gulf is dealing with the failure.

I am not a litigious person, I believe lawsuits often fail to do what is needed or desired. I think that there needs to be a rational deal between the companies (and I think there is too much emphasis on BP) and the people who were affected. Simply put, get the government involved. Find out how much money they have made for the last 10 years, average that, build in a Katrina clause (those affected by Katrina do not average in the years of Katrina's effect), and that amount of money gets paid to the people. The lawsuits would be more costly and lawyers would make money.... And the non-litigious people would muddle along.

It's not a solution to the Oil Spill. I am aggravated and yet have utterly no solution. I am just trying to solve one of the problems caused by the spill.