Boo Hoo for British Pensions or Any Other Investors in BP

You Have Got to Be Kidding

1. How ridiculous is it to hear British politicians and the PR about how we should go easy on BP because of all the pensions that are invested in BP and all the people they employ.

Here is where we can see true capitalism at work and can see how that is different from a free market system.  No matter what else you may have heard or seen defining capitalism in a positive free market light – capitalism is not the same as a free market.  Capitalism is the idea that money or capital rules.   It has the concept that you can accumulate money and then once you have it you can then put it in a bank or some other investment and get a return for being nice enough to give your money to someone else.  Your money will “work for you”. 

The sad and unfortunate truth is that money has never done a days work for anyone.  I invite you to lay a stack of 20’s on your kitchen sink and see if it will do the dishes for you.  True that you can take your stack of 20’s, go find someone who knows how to wash dishes and probably get them to do the dishes for you.  This is not the same as your money working for you – this is using your money to increase the amount of work that you can get done in a given period of time.  That is the correct use of capital and it involves responsibility on your end: You have to find the right person, ensure the job is done correctly etc.

British pensioners should have known that prior to this tragedy BP had over 700 safety violations at other facilities (vs Exxon that only had 1 in the same time period).  I am sure there were other signs of gross incompetence and negligence that the pensioners, their representatives and BP employees should have been on top of.

But they weren’'t and now they should suffer the consequences just like the banks and their investors should have.  In a truly free market, where those with capital are treated the same under the law as anyone else, there would be no caps or other legal protections on the damage claims against BP.  As a matter of fact if this were true the lawsuits from this could be enough to put BP out of business or cause enough serious harm that would be enough to deter any oil company from failing to take the proper steps to ensure something like this does not happen again.