David Burman:
"I fear Ed, that you are trying to individualize a systemic problem when you
quote Pogo. Also, you fails to ask "why" the regulatory agencies are
allowing
the oil companies to get away with such low costs. Is it lack of political
will, or is it that free trade agreements and the WTO etc give the oil
companies a huge bargaining advantage - at the very least reguating
govenrments risk huge court challenges to regulatoins that go beyond the
international
norm. Are governments willing to get together and hash out higher regulatory
standards? Well, we've seen what happens when governments try to enforce
even
existing rules (the HPB - Monsanto story again).
So, I submit that it IS the oil companies' fault. .........
It's a bit like blaming the poor for being unemployed. "
Hi David:
Sorry, but I disagree. Many years ago, I was an idealist. I too jumped up
and down and pointed my finger at "those bastards - see what they're trying
to pull now!!!" I've watched a lot of humanity go by since then. During
the sixties, I saw kids in their late teens and early twenties in a state of
high hilarity pointing at the tail fins on gas guzzling cars, and
embarrasing hell out of the cars' owners. Now I see those kids, as aging
Baby Boomers, driving equally ludicrous gas guzzling vans. Many of the kids
who, along with the police, rioted in Chicago or who witnessed the Kent
State murders or did sit-ins in ever so many places have become bureaucrats,
politicians, stock brokers, or businessmen. One of the most bullet-spitting
Marxists I knew at university became an ever-so-successful senior executive
at MacBlo, and a defender of "the system". Another my wife knew at another
university became an insurance salesman.
While I am no longer an idealist, there are some issues that I continue to
hold as very important. One is the separation of government from business
or indeed from undue influence, or infilration, by any special interest
group. I know that government employees jump to business and business
people jump to government. One has to accept that (I have to accept it
because I did it myself). But one can only wish that the jumpers have a
clear understanding of the purposes of the particular organization and
interests they are working for, whichever way they jump. Having witnessed
the
performance of some of them, I recognize this is wishful thinking.
Little by little, as more and more people jump, and as ideas flow back and
forth, government thinks it is business and business thinks it is
government. We are now in a terrible muddle. Government still passes
legislation, but during the past couple of decades it has increasingly
relied on business to provide the data that is needed for enforcement. With
downsizing and government eviseration, we are probably not too far away from
the "self-regulation" that people used to talk about in the oil patch in the
early 1980s. Why has it been allowed to happen? Because not enough noise
has been made about it. Even worse, the free enterprise ethics of "Little
Fritz" (to borrow from a Polish expression) have now become the way to
think, not only for Chambers of Commerce, but for government organizations
and indeed for all of us. We, the whole of us as a body politic, have stood
back, encouraged it, or slept while it happened. Pogo lives!
Oil companies are full of very cagey people. If they need some regulatory
advantage, they will do whatever they can to get it. If it means opening an
office in Ottawa or Washington, so be it. While they cannot directly
influence who gets hired by the public service, they will do everything in
their power to ensure that those who do get hired are sympathic to their
views. "After all, aren't we one big family, working for the same thing?"
The more the public service lets its guard down, the more it identifies with
any special interest group, be it oil companies or the religious right or
anyone else, the less well it serves the citizenry as a whole.
However, one must not fall into the trap of thinking that there is a total
or even major (or perhaps even significant) common interest among oil
companies or any other large enterprises. Their primary interest is
competition among themeselves -- "market advantage" if you will. The
Petroleum Incentive Program of the 1970s and early 1980s was engineered
primarily by one very large oil company. The program shifted an enormous
amount of money from the Alberta oil patch to the high Arctic. The company
that promoted it made a great deal of money by fulfilling the public purpose
it promoted, even though it never produced any Arctic oil. Companies which
would not, or could not, move their operations to the Arctic lost a great
deal of money. So, my point is, we should never make the mistake of
thinking that large corporations want to govern us. What they are really
trying to do is to use government as a competitive tool or lever against
each other. What government must try to learn to do (and here I despair!),
is not to allow itself to be used in this way.
As I said in a former posting, I was once very proud of our public service.
Now I'm not sure of what to think. However, like you and many other
Canadians, I am still proud of public employees like those of the Health
Protection Branch, who continue to recognize that their responsibility to
the public is greater than their own carreer aspirations.
As for your comment on blaming to poor for being unemployed -- well, yes, in
some cases, I do. But that is another issue.
Ed Weick
