Excellent post GPS and on the money in many aspects. Indeed, part of my brief is to entertain. But it's with a purpose. The problem with most things is that they are too complex for easy understanding, and facile simplistic answers are often grasped but not necessarily a good idea.
Net Neutrality for example - seems a great idea but I don't think so.
Climate Warming - seems terrible but climate doesn't work as they say.
Safety is an excellent idea but analyzing who is safer than whom is not so simple.
Tradable citizenship seems a great idea but it's not necessarily simple though it fits into a few words.
Same with my brand new prototype international currency.
Many a true word spoken in jest.
By taking various points of view, I hope other people find faults in my thinking which might save me from losing a fortune on a bung idea, or stop me backing a bad idea, or failing to think of a good idea.
Only comprehends half what I read? Maybe doesn't believe the half which is bunkum. There is little around these parts which is even a slight stretch.
Luck versus skill is an old favourite of mine and you can find posts about the worlds best investing monkey back in the early SI days [it seemed odd to me that so many thought they could outwit other people, in the zero sum game of share trading - a bit like 80% of people think they are above average drivers].
It's quite obvious that BP is not saving money on safety. It doesn't take much in the way of thinking to figure out that having a platform fall over and sink after exploding is not great for the bottom line. You can be sure that BP knows about the costs of blunders and tries to get the balance right.
<Let me ask you a question: How bad is getting a speeding ticket compared to being poisoned at work through company negligence, or immolated at an offshore rig due to corporate greed?>
One of my concerns with petrol was the volatility which tended to be as high as it could be made without vapour lock. No account was taken of the propensity of petrol to immolate people involved in car crashes which result from speeding.
A speeding ticket represents excess risk in driving and an increased risk of immolation. More people have died from immolation in cars than from BP's accidents. By cutting volatility, the number of deaths would reduce. If it was cut to the volatility of diesel fuel, immolation deaths would go to near zero. Do you think petrol should be banned as passenger vehicle fuel.
Motorcycles should of course be illegal.
Apart from volatility, the number of deaths due to speeding, of innocent victims particularly, are very very high compared with the number of deaths due to anything BP is doing. Lead in petrol was far far worse in damage to people, albeit of a not immediately fatal type.
I have always objected to pile on bullying and tend to take the side of the people being attacked because mob attack is so mindless and nasty, rarely involving intelligent analysis. So while I had disputes with BP about various things, the Obama boot on throat thinking is irrational and vicious for the sake of being nasty.
<I’d like to believe that my mindset is open and flexible.>
No doubt. Many of us like to think that we respond to new ideas but in fact, nearly everyone is very very slow to adopt new ideas and normally they are very resistant to them and will only adopt them when all else fails and most other people are already doing it.
Some of the most intelligent people are the worst because they are so imbued with the importance of their own thinking compared with others and therefore find it difficult to believe their almighty mind is less than perfect. Ego and the need to feel dominant is quite a drive. No doubt you aren't subject to such processes.
No, I don't have data on the relative safety of BP. My brief was downstream marketing so I had zero impact on upstream exploration and production and knew nothing about their processes other than during the 1980s they went hog wild on safety compared with previously as part of the general trend, and also became far more environmentally aware though had moved like a glacier, in my opinion, by the time I quit. My last conversation with Hans den Ouden [my manager's manager] was him saying that they were moving the way I had been saying. I laughed because the movement, to me, was glacial. I like high speed improvements. But corporations and governments and electorates move very slowly, unless they get into disaster, and then they rapidly do the wrong thing.
You getting a speeding ticket is prima facie evidence of a careless attitude to other people. Having accidents is confirmation. Whether you are any more risky than BP is hard to say from this distance.
Mqurice |
