[Confusion]

I'm sure the managers at BP that choose to forego certain safety measures completely recognize themselves in this line of reasoning. Which immediately illustrates how dangerously false it is.

Companies are amoral (not to be confused with immoral) entities that will not necessarily act in the people's best behavior. If companies act in a morally acceptable way, it is because of the individual employees that together make morally acceptable choices. Every business question is a question of morality, because you can always choose to commit fraud, cheat someone or act in an otherwise immoral fashion. Sometimes you won't do that for fear of customer or supplier retribution. Often you won't do that for fear of the law. But sometimes, you just shouldn't do it, because it has possible consequences you should never risk.

No one at BP is individually responsible for the current calamity. The more responsibility is spread over multiple layers of decision making, the less responsible individuals feel and the less moral their behavior will be. Not because they are immoral, but because the pressure to act as is best for the company is strong enough to suppress moral qualms. No 'evil' individual made the immoral decision that lead to the accident. It was a large number of people that each made slightly immoral decisions, the cumulative result of which is now the largest ecological disaster in US history.

This is the essence of the problem of libertarianism and complete free market capitalism. This is why we need a government to regulate capitalism.

[by]

I think it is unlikely it is the "largest ecological disaster in US history". We could compare it to the Dust Bowl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl , or the logging of old growth forest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_growth_forest#Logging or the draining of the Everglades http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draining_and_development_of_the... and it might not be as large. Consider also the introduction of invasive species such as Chestnut blight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight or red fire ants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Ecologica... to put it into perspective. It seems too convenient, a collective self-deception, to point at a non-US company and say they have caused the worst ecological destruction in the US.

[count]

None of those happened within the last 2 years, so they don't count.

[earnubs]

In general I agree, but I struggle with a moral/immoral distinction being so black and white. BP weren't drilling for kicks, there /were/ safety measures in place, there's a balance between safety and cost - no rig in the world is 100% safe and nor could it be without the cost of oil going up. The effect of oil prices going up is people losing their jobs and even lives.

Accidents happen, maybe because we veered too far towards profit, maybe because we encountered a black swan, but we learn from them and do our best to mitigate them, then we go back to treading the fine line of cost and safety.

That being said, the US Gov should have learned from disasters like Piper Alpha and separated it's own safety and cost structures in respect of the oil industry long ago. Not having done so before now is, to me, inexcusable.

[liedra]

This is one of the reasons why you have to start talking about governance in these situations. Businesses should have governance strategies. They probably mostly do for finance, or safety, or similar, but they should also have governance strategies in place for ethical/social/cultural impact as well. Things like risk assessment or technology assessment can help here, but they're just part of a wider strategy needed to really nut out all the potential problems and benefits associated with the decision being made.

Of course this is quite tricky, but I think in Europe they're starting to move towards the right idea: they have the precautionary principle, EU commission-funded technical research projects need to follow strict ethical and social governance programs, and the commission is directly funding more research into how to more effectively govern these sorts of endeavours (rather than simply relying on "ethical codes" or "ethics checklists"). It's only a few steps up from that to regulating more widely across Europe (but obviously they need a playground to test in first! and the billion+ euro research Framework Programmes are a pretty good one for that).

I can't really see the US going for this sort of thing though, to be honest, even though it'd most likely prevent things like the BP catastrophe :(

[anamax]

> Of course this is quite tricky, but I think in Europe they're starting to move towards the right idea: they have the precautionary principle

The precautionary principle can't be satisfied. Also, its application is extremely political. For example, it should applied to folks who might become parents.

Note that the precautionary principle is typically invoked by folks who don't don't have much skin in the game and don't understand what their costs and benefits are.

Note that regulation is the best example of systemic risk not to mention the inevitable corruption.

This is not to say that "ethics codes" are good and effective.

There is no silver bullet.

[liedra]

Yeah, but you missed the second half of my sentence :) It's not the only thing they do, and it's certainly not the whole of a good governance mechanism. I do agree with you about the PP, but it's a move in the right direction, at least they have awareness of the issues that need to be addressed. There is no silver bullet, but they can (hopefully) work toward something that works most of the time.

[billswift]

On the other hand there is a quote: "Once you have to write your code of ethics down, you have already lost." Unfortunately, I not only don't remember the source, I can't even remember the context.

[Tycho]

On the other hand: Chernobyl

[hga]

Chernobyl is an example of people violating very clear safety rules, "Do not pull out the control rods past this point!"

(It's a lot more complicated than that, but it is most certainly not a "normal accident" like the BP one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster .)

[nostrademons]

BP was too. The blowout preventer was damaged in a previous accident. The Transocean contractors wished to stop and get the well under control, but they were overruled by the BP manager at the site. Is it any wonder that when you continue drilling while the blowout preventer is damaged, there's a blowout?