An 
article in today's Washington Post highlights disgusting, disgraceful business practices at BP. The profit-motive places pressure to pivot risk-analysis decisions on the short term bottom line numbers, particularly when the people making the decision are driven by personal gain.
The Post has video of Deepwater chief engineer Michael Williams, an ex-Marine who survived the April 20th explosion and fire, telling a government panel that "warning systems on the drilling rig were inhibited because the crew did not want to be disturbed in the middle of the night."
The profit motive accomplishes certain things very well. It's driven the price of medical equipment in Japan well below what similar products produced in North America costs, for instance, and it obviously drives creative innovation across the business sector.
But the mortgage-lending and Wall Street crises that are still hampering our economy years after they surfaced demonstrate that without regulation and enforcement business owners can, and all too often do, become focused only on money. To balance that greed is one of the ways that governments can, and should, "promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."
Special interest money has entirely too much influence in Washington. It's time that our leaders stopped talking about small businesses while voting to enable big business to ruin our planet, our standard of living, and our future. That's a bankrupt ideology - that's the real threat to our children.
Thomas Hayes is an entrepreneur, Democratic Campaign Manager, journalist, and photographer who contributes regularly to a host of web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.
article in today's Washington Post highlights disgusting, disgraceful business practices at BP. The profit-motive places pressure to pivot risk-analysis decisions on the short term bottom line numbers, particularly when the people making the decision are driven by personal gain.The Post has video of Deepwater chief engineer Michael Williams, an ex-Marine who survived the April 20th explosion and fire, telling a government panel that "warning systems on the drilling rig were inhibited because the crew did not want to be disturbed in the middle of the night."
Williams told the panel that he understood that the rig had been operating with the gas alarm system in "inhibited" mode for a year to prevent false alarms from disturbing the crew.
Washington Post, 22 July 2010
The profit motive accomplishes certain things very well. It's driven the price of medical equipment in Japan well below what similar products produced in North America costs, for instance, and it obviously drives creative innovation across the business sector.But the mortgage-lending and Wall Street crises that are still hampering our economy years after they surfaced demonstrate that without regulation and enforcement business owners can, and all too often do, become focused only on money. To balance that greed is one of the ways that governments can, and should, "promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."
Special interest money has entirely too much influence in Washington. It's time that our leaders stopped talking about small businesses while voting to enable big business to ruin our planet, our standard of living, and our future. That's a bankrupt ideology - that's the real threat to our children.
Thomas Hayes is an entrepreneur, Democratic Campaign Manager, journalist, and photographer who contributes regularly to a host of web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.
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