Consolidation And Maybe Consolation

My Dear Madame,

I am answering two posts in this one: your previous post on the Yellowed Brick Road and your most recent one.

Your words: “The complexity and sheer size of these multinationals, I think we agree, make it nearly impossible to find out where the actual error, crime, or some combination thereof occurred and at whose feet the blame should be laid. Is it possible that we've created systems so complex and tightly bound in bureaucracy, run by boards and committees instead of individuals, that it is nearly impossible to hold anyone accountable? It seems a very effective tangled web has been woven, making it difficult to even realize when we've been deceived.”

In Tolkien’s words: “But they were all of them deceived.” Evading accountability by claiming all sorts of bureaucratic snafus is fine for run of the mill gum ups, but for the things that matter, there is accountability. The people at the top can make what they want happen when they want to. “No accountability” is a red herring.

They made sure the standards were weak in the first place, and engendered an anti-government dislike of OSHA, which is there to ostensibly protect the safety of the worker. Yet even the slender OSHA standards are usually not enforced, and even when they are, both the “reporting” and the “penalty” are beyond laughable, relying too much on corporate reporting in the first instance, and in the second instance having maximum fines (“serious violations” max fine? $7000) that are so small they are merely a cost (and a minor one at that) of doing business—a cost willingly paid to secure a return many times over. Even if a worker is killed, the maximum criminal penalty is a misdemeanor.

But Deepwater Horizon was not subject to much of even that because, being in international waters, it was conveniently registered to the low-cost, no regulation Marshall Islands. And it just continued a pattern of reckless risks and cutting corners on safety that are a hallmark for the industry and that BP has led. The March 2005 BP refinery explosion in Texas that killed 15 and maimed 170 others? It changed the culture not one bit. Even after the US Chemical Safety Board that investigated said “a combination of cost-cutting, production pressures, and failure to invest caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the refinery,” and a “culture of bad management and failure to recognize and correct problems” were behind it, nothing changed. Recent inspections showed more than 700 safety violations, most of which were the same ones found after the explosion. Even an investigator appointed by BP itself said of top management: “They were very arrogant and proud and in self-denial.” (thanks here goes to the research staff at the Hightower Lowdown, for providing the statistics and excerpts from the reports).

You posted a link to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the credit default swaps that were a part of the aftermath. We forget because we don’t want to see. The dealers of the oil-heroin industry pile on disaster after disaster, but like the addicts we are, we just take the discomfort from the bad effects—and pony up all our money.

They framed the argument, and then they waived the “if we go bankrupt, no one and nothing will get paid” phantom. So the government became (or rather, continued to be) the compliant, accommodative partner. Nothing much was said about personal liability, and what little that was got diverted real quick. And of course, the system, like always, considered what happened to be “an isolated incident.”

BP is well on the way to getting the slap on the wrist that Exxon got, maybe even less. Even many of the “investigators” are so tied to either BP or the industry in general, their impartiality and willingness to be tough-minded are laughable. Combine it with our addict’s have-to-have-it-now obsession with oil, and it will be back to “drill, baby, drill,” in no time.

You mentioned that those responsible should be held personally accountable “instead of skating off to Siberia.” Has Siberia turned into a paradise instead of a place of exile? Those crafty Russians! ;) But yes, we do often see those who regulate and oversee in government go to work for the companies in a revolving door that makes a mockery of “overseeing” (more like “underseeing”). Any “policy change” will almost certainly be evaded in one way or another by the members of the corrupt machine.

Oh, we can gradually change behavior over time, and are some; I just think that the scale of our problems means we won’t get out of pain—deep pain—in this way. We have porked the pooch and gradual business as usual won’t cut it.

I mean cold turkey as facing reality: when the path you are on is insanely unsustainable, then quit trying to smoke and mirror away that fact. Face up to it. Tell the people in hard hitting language that this is how we’ve screwed ourselves and it is going to take “this, this, and this” to deal with it. I think deep down people are ready for the truth, because inside they know “there’s something wrong with the world today.”

I hope that you are right about people waking up to the fragility of the system and what is tied to what. That will go a ways toward helping the situation.

“The exhausting shallowness of what we value as a culture; busyness over rest, incessant noise over the quietness needed for deep thinking, and material accumulation over nearly all else. And those corporations you mention, that are working employees more and more thus leaving them less time to think about exactly how all the pieces might fit together may be doing themselves more of a favor than they realize.” Well said Madame!

And you have well demonstrated that figuring out the sensible balance between collective and individual is one of our keenest imperatives. Avoiding the stifling conformity as well as the submergence and subdual of the individual that can come from groupthink, while also preventing the isolating, disconnected, selfishness of excessive individualism? Ah, there’s the rub!