Libertarians and Oil Spills

I received a note from my friend Hanad today: "I'm curious, what would the libertarian solution to the BP oil spill be? Trying to figure out how problems like this would be solved."

My response:

It is a very fair question. Here is the “short” answer.

The easiest way to "figure out" the libertarian response to any question is by starting with a couple of the core tenants of libertarianism: 1.) personal responsibility, which includes the acceptance of the concepts of self-ownership and personal property rights and, 2.) the concept that government’s sole purpose is to protect the individual rights and properties of it’s citizens (notice I did not say “organizations” or “groups” -- which is whom the Republicans and Democrats represent -- but I digress...).

Considering these concepts, let us apply them to the facts. The owner of the oil rig, Transocean and BP, who leases it, are responsible for all damage that their actions have caused. So what is the libertarian position on this? Simply put, anyone who can prove that they or their property has been harmed should be compensated by the perpetrators.

Will that happen? No.

Why? Because our government is going to “protect” Transocean and BP.

According to the New York Times, the companies will have to compensate people and businesses for things like property damage and lost business revenue, but that there is a law that currently caps BP’s liability to $75 million and Transocean’s liability to about $65 million.

Why do such caps exist? Essentially, according to the LA Times, government is artificially “stimulating” oil company off-shore drilling by “protecting” them from such damage claims. “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said caps could be an important incentive to keep the private sector exploring for energy resources.”

But what does this government “stimulating” and “protecting” really do? It creates a moral hazard much like what just occured in the mortgage industry when government stimulated and protected that industry with artificial liability limits.

As a blog on the Libertarian Party site states:

“These kinds of artificial liability limits distort the markets, and basically create “moral hazard” by encouraging companies to act in riskier ways than they would otherwise. If BP’s well causes damage to property, then BP should be fully liable for all of the damage. It is BP’s responsibility to “make whole” whoever gets damaged.

If Congress hadn’t limited BP’s liability, it’s likely that BP would have acted differently. Knowing that a spill could cost them billions, BP might have demanded additional safeguards for their well, or tested their safeguards more thoroughly. These choices would have been expensive, but they might have prevented the huge costs that the spill area is now facing.

BP has said that it will pay all “legitimate claims,” even if they go past the liability limit. The problem is that when it comes to property damage, a court should decide what “legitimate claims” are, not the offending company!”

In my view -- and I think this may also be the general libertarian view -- if Transocean’s and BP’s actions caused the damage, they should be held liable, even if it means they are sued out of existence. Ironically, all the Republicans and Democrats can argue about is how much Transocean and BP should dole out in damages, rather than concentrate on the real issue, making whole those common citizen's that have actually been harmed.

On the other hand, let’s consider what would happen if that rig had been “government owned”. How likely would it be that anyone would be able to successfully seek damages if that where the case? Since government's tend to act outside the law, I would argue that no one would have been made whole...or worse yet, they would have been made whole with my money.

Now, an even more interesting question to me is this: Who owns the oceans? Or the moon, for that matter? I tend to lean toward John Lockes’ views on this one, but it sure makes for an interesting thought experiment.

Laurie Anderson is a Virus

...or, at least she is as resilient as one. This video from Laurie Anderson is over twenty-five years old, but her new album Homeland, is due out June 22nd.

New Tools To Help Me Blog More Often

I have blog post ideas. The problem is, I tend to forget them before I have a chance to sit down to write about them. Evernote.com to the rescue. Evernote is a free site that “gathers” your notes, documents, screen captures, pictures, audio files, web clips, online receipts, etc. You can access this service from most any device, making it very handy to compile something while it is freshly in front of you. Then, when you need to reference your ideas, there you be. I just signed up today, so only time will tell how much I use it. I will let you know.

I have blog post ideas. The problem is, I can’t write as fast as I think. MacSpeech Scribe to the rescue. Scribe is a Mac-centric software which allows you to create text documents directly from spoken-word audio files, thus fore-going the arduous task of trying to recapture your thoughts after-the-fact. Besides, I type like a forth grader, which means I usually lose my train of thought long before I make it past the first sentence. Now this software costs about $150 bucks, so I will need to contemplate it’s purchase for awhile, but I will be real surprised if I don’t talk myself into it.

Well, there you have it. Blogging made easier. We will see how it all works out...

Becoming Indispensable

Managers are very important. They tell people what to do (they are babysitters), and they tell people what they want/need to hear (they are politicians).

Business structures built on the manager-run environment are becoming antiquated. Top-down business structures are too slow and anti-dynamic to run efficiently in today’s rapidly changing world. When the economy was based on factories, this was okay. Companies run by baby-sitters and politicians worked in an environment were workers were replaceable, compliant, docile cogs. Now that those jobs have been commoditized and moved into more efficient offshore work places, the modern American company must change or become irrelevant.

Seth Godin makes this point in his latest book, Linchpin. People need to make a choice: try to remain “a faceless cog in the machinery of capitalism” -- the old “factory” mentality, or become a “linchpin”, an emotionally invested owner of “their own means of production, who can make a difference, lead us, and connect us.”

To bring value to American business, today’s worker must become their own leader.

As Godin so aptly puts, “we have gone from two teams (management and labor) to a third team, the linchpins...The death of the factory means that the entire system we have built our lives around is now upside down.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of education. For decades, we have been teaching people to be followers -- cogs in the “old” system. That must change. We need to teach people to become leaders -- people capable of acting independently of “babysitters” and “politicians”.

As Godin puts it, we are teaching kids to: “fit in, follow instructions, use #2 pencils, take good notes, show up every day, cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines, have good handwriting, punctuate, buy the things the other kids are buying, don’t ask questions, don’t challenge authority, do the minimum required so you’ll have time to work on another subject, get into college, have a good resume, don’t fail, don’t say anything that might embarrass you, be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback, participate in a large number of extracurricular activities, be a generalist, try not to have other kids talk about you, once you learn a topic, move on[ ]...Are we building the sort of people our society needs?”

And according to Godin, what they should teach in school: “Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems, 2. Lead.”

As always, Godin has written another book worth reading.

Bad Government Policy? Follow The Money

Money is influence and nowhere is that more true than in politics. In fact, if you want to see where bad policy decisions reign supreme, look no further than this list of influence peddlers. When you can’t compete fairly in the market, buy “regulation” to protect your interests. According to opensecrets.org, the top ten largest lobby groups of the past ten years were:

AT&T Inc
American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees
National Assn of Realtors
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
American Assn for Justice
Goldman Sachs
National Education Assn
Laborers Union
Service Employees International Union
Teamsters Union

Check here for the whole list: www.opensecrets.org

There are some other interesting facts to show up on this list.

One, anyone who tells you that unions have no influence anymore need to see this list. The money says otherwise. Six of the top ten lobby groups are government and private unions. We are turning into Greece.

Two, contrary to popular myth, the political porkers feeding off this cash tend to be Democrats, not “big money” Republicans. The Republicans are virtually split with Democrats on getting cash from AT&T and the National Assn of Realtors, but there isn't a clear pro-Republican lobby group until number 15 on the list, The American Medical Assn.

Now, to be fair, I distrust Republicans every bit as much as Democrats, so we should be every bit as worried about the communication, housing and medical industries as we are about the education and labor sectors. After all, pigs are pigs regardless of what political party trough they feed from.

Third, I find it surprising Goldman Sachs is way down at number six on the list. I guess they don’t have to buy government policy when so many of their former employees are now government hacks. Why buy what you already own?

Too Small To Do A National TV Ad Campaign?

Think again. Google continues to change our world, now by allowing anyone to buy national TV advertising. I grabbed this fascinating Slate video from a post by one of my Facebook friends:

iPad, uPad, we-allPad

Well, I had the privilege of spending the weekend with the Apple iPad. We have a loaner program going on at work, allowing employees to spend some time with the new gadget. Most of the reviews have been pretty good.

I also found it a very enjoyable way to consume content, especially books and magazines.

I do have issues, though. I don’t think it is something I would take to the beach with me or generally want to keep track of when traveling. And after being on a computer for ten hours a day at work, I find my eyes need a break from screen fatigue. So I don’t currently have a dire need for such a device.

I have other misgivings as well. Many of the things I like about the internet are Flash-based and the iPad does not support Flash. Apple may have good reasons for this, but that does not change the fact that Flash is every where. For instance, I went to Hulu.com to check out some movies, but no-could-do since their site is Flash-based.

I also find the whole App Store concept some-what annoying. I went to my Pandora page, but couldn’t use it on the iPad until I loaded the “App” for it. Since this iPad was not mine, I could not do so. Why do we need apps for things that we can easily link to directly through the host’s website? This seems to be more about marketing "apps" on Apple’s part than something built for consumer efficiency-of-use and convenience. (But that just might be me ...and besides, I am all for marketing. That is how I make my living.)

Also, $500? Really? Look, I am an Apple fanboy. I love all things Apple and I expect to pay a premium. But with all the current limitations, no killer app, and first edition sticker price, I will be waiting. Honestly, I find it amazing that over one million of these things have already been sold. I, for one, probably won’t get one until it’s price is way less than half of what it is now, or until it finds a killer app that makes it indispensable. Although I have owned over a dozen Apple products over the last two decades, this one is pretty low on my radar right now. Maybe in a couple of years...

Really my problem may be what I didn’t take home with me this weekend. I left my laptop with the IT guys so they could load the Adobe CS5 Master Suite. The Master Suite contains Adobe Photoshop® CS5 Extended, Illustrator® CS5, InDesign® CS5, Acrobat® 9 Pro, Flash® Catalyst™ CS5, Flash Professional CS5, Flash Builder™ 4, Dreamweaver® CS5, Fireworks® CS5, Contribute® CS5, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS5 (with Adobe OnLocation™ CS5 and Encore® CS5), After Effects® CS5, Soundbooth® CS5, and more. Now those are some killer apps...

I just hope Apple and Adobe can kiss and make up. I would hate to see more of their hardware and software become less compatible.

Bachman Turner Overkill?

Okay, so maybe you haven’t been waiting twenty years for this, but never-the-less, they are back.

Overdriveless, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner are making their return.

Honestly, on first thought, I sometimes wish some of these old guys would just go away, but after listening to a free download of “Rock and Roll Is The Only Way Out,” a song off their upcoming album, I am not really sure what to make of it.

Great stuff? Not.

Fun? Well, yes, actually it kind of is.

I have to admit by thirty seconds into this thing, I couldn’t help but grin. Although, it is the same old predictable sound, there is no doubt they do sound “just like kids when school gets out.”

The upcoming album is due out in September 2010, but some tour dates come first. In fact, according to their website: “Bachman & Turner will be kicking off their world debut in June 2010 at the Sweden Rock Festival alongside some of their contemporaries including Aerosmith, Guns n’ Roses and Billy Idol.”

Debt Is Slavery, Part XXIV

In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb tells the story of the turkey.

The turkey lives every day believing the world is as he sees it. Every day, the turkey wakes up and is greeted by a benevolent leader who graciously cares for him, houses him and feeds him. The benevolent leader goes out of his way to make sure this turkey’s every need is met. Now from the turkey’s perspective, this has been reality for his entire existence. So why would the turkey ever think tomorrow would be any different? But unbeknown to the turkey, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

I can’t help but believe this is how most Americans -- members of the greatest debtor nation in the history of the world -- view debt. And the worst perpetrators of this line of thought is our very government.

I know that about every twenty posts or so, I harp on this idea that debt is slavery, but I see people so blindly excepting debt as “normal” that it disturbs me.

Although I disagree with Stefan Molyneux on many things, his video from Freedomain Radio puts our national debt into an interesting perspective:

The Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever

The new Hold Steady album came out today. On my third listen already.

For a band that likes to call Brooklyn home, they sure do like to sing about hangin’ in Minnesota. In fact, on this one, they start right outta’ the gate on the opening track, The Sweet Part Of The City:

Back when we were living up on Hennepin, she kept threatening to turn us in. At night she mostly liked us... We were living in the sweet part of the city. The parts with the bars and restaurants.

And later on We Can Get Together there is:

She said Hüsker Dü got huge, but they started in St. Paul. Do you remember “Makes No Sense At All”?

Besides making me a little homesick for Minnesota, The Hold Steady are one of the few bands that get my off my butt and out to see live music. The other band capable of doing that is The Whigs, who my girlfriend and I jammed to last month in Scottsdale. I had a chance to chat with Whig’s lead singer Parker Gispert at that show. When I told him about of having met The Hold Steady’s lead singer Craig Finn at a show a couple of years ago, Parker replied the two bands were planning on touring together for awhile this summer.

When I got home, I checked out the tour schedule. No Arizona dates.

I wonder if my girlfriend could be talked into road-trippin’ to Denver and/or Santa Fe the second week in July?