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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries

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To: GPS Info who wrote (73395)	5/7/2010 9:59:52 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) of 74559

That's good: <Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well> Most of us don't think "Government needs to stay out of protecting the commons". Government should leave people alone to run their own affairs without a nosy bossy kleptocrat telling them how to do it. That doesn't mean the government should not punish people who harm other people's property including public spaces and assets. Nor does it mean governments shouldn't punish theft, assault, fraud and other crimes. Saving the individual from themselves and telling individuals how they have to deal with each other, are quite a different matters from protecting the public from individuals [and their companies and other legal entities]. I used to warn BP Oil about the risk to the company of having become an American oil company - liabilities are essentially unlimited. In English common law and New Zealand law, liabilities are far more circumscribed. Companies and individuals can even kill people here with negligence with little penalty and no personal injury lawsuit - under the government-owned Accident Compensation Corporation scheme. One of my concerns was the potential liability from the harm to people's brains from lead in petrol and the demonstrable harm that was done to people depending on how much exposure they suffered. I became an anti-lead exponent when I knew of the harm it did. If class action lawyers understood the harm that was done, it would make Native American claims and the current BP spill look insignificantly minuscule. Asbestos harm wouldn't be a blip on the radar. Lead in petrol was one of the great blunders of the 20th century - though it seemed like a good idea at the time, like thalidomide for pregnant women. Mqurice

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