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June 19, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
14:36
1683 True News - The BP Oil Spill - Brought to You by 5,000 Years of SNAFUs...

The grim, lengthy and tragic history behind the terrible Gulf Oil spill...

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Hi everybody, it's Stephen Wallenew from Free Domain Radio.
There's an old story.
Some say it's apocryphal, some say it's not.
Some say it was Bertrand Russell, some people say it was William James, but the story goes that Bertrand Russell, say, was giving a lecture.
On how the moon goes around the earth, the earth goes around the sun, the sun goes around the center of the galaxy, and so on.
And a little old woman, in the back of the room, got up and said, What you're saying, Mr.
Russell, is rubbish! Rubbish, I tell you!
Everybody knows that the earth is a flat disk that rests on top of a giant turtle!
And Bertrand Russell said, Well, that's very interesting.
Could you tell me, please, my fair lady, what the turtle rests on?
And the woman says, no, no, no, no.
Everybody knows. It's turtles all the way down.
This problem of infinite regression is the fundamental problem with statism.
The fundamental problem of statism is this, that there is a recognition of the problems of corruptibility Malfeasance, irresponsibility, and downright corruption and evil within the human personality, which I think any sane individual is going to accept as an axiom of life.
Human beings have the capacity and do actually achieve great feats of irresponsibility and evil in the world.
So there's this idea that there's evil in the world, there's evil in people, Therefore, we need a government to control the people.
But this solves nothing.
Saying that the government solves the problem of evil is like saying that God solves the problem of the origin of the species or of the universe.
Or it's like saying theft solves the problem of your income.
It does kind of in a way, but it actually prevents you from getting a real income.
Just as saying God created the animals prevents you from exploring more rational and scientific approaches to the question.
Saying that we require the government because there are evil people in the world is entirely irrational, and it is a problem of infinite regression.
It's turtles all the way down. So we say, okay, on this side of the screen there are evil people, so we need good people on this side to have power over the evil people.
But everybody knows one of the things that evil people want is power over others.
So the moment you create a government, all the evil people in the universe, at least the smart ones, swarm to the government to use its power to oppress and control others.
You don't solve the problem of evil with the government, because everything that you say about human nature applies equally, if not more so, To the people in the government.
You can't slice and dice and create these magical exceptions to your rules.
It's ridiculous and embarrassing philosophically.
You can't say, there's lots of evil people in the world, so what we need to do is we need to create a government which has massive power over everyone.
Because everything you say about people applies to the government, because the government is just people.
So if people lust for power over others, if people want to avoid the consequences of their own actions, if people want to pillage and exploit the world and people and everything that is under sun and moon, exactly the same is going to occur, although with a monopoly of near-infinite power in the government, as everywhere else.
You have not solved the problem of evil.
By creating a monopoly of force called the government, all you've done is you've given a great map to evil people saying, here's where you need to go to initiate force, to avoid the consequences of your actions, and to rule over others.
You've created evil central when you create a government.
It is the problem of infinite regression.
Evil people need to be controlled, so we'll create a government.
Who controls the evil people in the government?
No one. You don't solve the problem.
But the worst thing is you think you've solved the problem.
That is what is so terrible about a government.
It is the worst answer in the world.
Because the worst answer in the world is a non-answer that stops you from looking for more solutions.
So if you say, where did human beings come from?
Well, God breathed their life into dust.
Then people stop looking.
Why is somebody having a fit?
Well, they're possessed by a demon.
Well, then you stop looking for things like epilepsy.
The illusion of an answer is the worst possible answer because people stop looking.
Using the government to protect the environment is the worst possible answer because people think that it's being taken care of, as in the Gulf.
There is the illusion of an answer which prevents the exploration of additional possible solutions that might actually work.
And humanity is infested with people who create these infinite regression problem non-answers that prevent real solutions from coming into being.
So with that in mind, let's look at some of the facts around what led up to this oil spill, this catastrophic, unbelievably destructive, will take decades to solve oil spill in the Gulf.
So first of all, Obama has Announced a moratorium on drilling which affects less than 1% of the total wells in the Gulf.
There is still over 5,000 oil wells in the Gulf including almost 600 in deep water which are not affected by the moratorium.
The government has allowed British Petroleum to continue deep sea production at its Atlantis rig, one of the world's largest oil platforms, which does 200,000 barrels a day from the sea floor and is 2,000 feet deeper than the one that blew up Deepwater Horizon.
According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90% of its subsea components, a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to, quote, catastrophic errors.
That's all still running, hasn't been solved.
MMS is the government agency supposed to regulate and manage the oil production in the Gulf.
MMS agency staffers were joining in industry employees for coat parties or trips to corporate ski shallies.
They actually had sexual relations with oil company officials.
MMS managers were awarded cash bonuses for pushing through risky offshore leases.
Auditors were ordered not to investigate shady deals, and safety staffers routinely accepted gifts from the industry, allegedly even allowing oil companies to fill in their own inspection reports in pencils before filling them out in pen.
This is the government. There is no solution to the problem of human corruption.
Other than freedom of association, voluntarism, and the non-initiation of force.
I know it sounds counterintuitive.
I know it's tough for people to swallow because we have this thing called the government, which we, you know, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
When you have a government, the solution to everything looks like a law, but it's not.
It is the opposite of a solution to pass a law.
I know it's counterintuitive, but so what?
It's counterintuitive that the world is round, yet still it is.
In the 1990s, industry lobbyists secured a sweetheart subsidy from Congress.
Drillers would pay no royalties on oil extracted in deep water until prices rose above $28 a barrel.
Ah, but this tripwire was conveniently emitted.
In Gulf leases overseas by the administrator at the time, a mistake that will let the oil giant's pocket as much as $53 billion.
So who was responsible for failing to collect $53 billion from the oil companies?
Was he fired?
Was he thrown in jail?
No, of course not. He was promoted.
Of course he was promoted.
In April 2007, an environmental assessment covering the area where BP would drill concluded that blowouts were low probability and low risk, even though a test funded by MMS had found that blowout preventers failed 28% of the time.
Staggering. Staggering, staggering, staggering.
There is exemptions that are granted.
I've worked for many years in the environmental industry.
There are exemptions that are granted for putting an outhouse up at a hiking spot.
You don't have to do an environmental assessment for putting a crapper in where hikers go by.
But it's supposed to be for very small jobs where no danger to wildlife or the environment would be contemplated even from a worst case scenario.
The wind blows the crapper over or whatever.
But the oil companies were routinely excluded from environmental assessment reports from the requirements to have on-site remediation efforts available at all times for worst-case scenarios, for any of these sorts of things.
They were just categorically excluded.
They didn't have to do any of these things.
You try and build a new housing development, like near a forest, you have to do an environmental assessment, but you can drill miles under the earth in deep water and no environmental assessment or requirement for health and safety practices was required.
The government gets tax revenue from drilling.
It's a complete conflict of interest.
The regulating agency, the government, is the one that profits from the drilling that continues and the individuals do not pay.
If the drilling goes badly.
This is true in the corporations, which are a state-created fascistic monster of legal exclusion of liability.
And it also applies to the government regulators.
How many government regulators will lose any money?
They gain all of this money because they get funded.
And these fines are inflicted upon, occasional fines are inflicted on the industry, which go straight into the government's pockets.
And nobody will lose their jobs, let alone any money from this.
In fact, the government funding will be increased because of this screw-up.
And you would never set it up this way in a rational system.
You would never say that the people who profit from the drilling are the ones who approve the drilling.
It won't ever work.
On April the 6th of last year, less than a month after BP submitted its application, MMS gave the oil giant the go-ahead to drill in the Gulf without a comprehensive environmental review.
The one-page approval put no restrictions on BP, issuing only a mild suggestion that would prove prescient, quote, exercise caution when drilling due to indications of shallow gas.
Exercise caution, you see, to drilling.
In March 2006, BP has a horrendous record of safety violations.
It was responsible for an Alaskan pipeline rupture that spilled more than a quarter of a million gallons of crude into Prudhoe Bay.
In Alaska, at the time, a spill second in size only to the Valdez disaster, investigators found that BP had repeatedly ignored internal warnings about corrosion brought about by draconian cost-cutting.
The EPA originally assessed almost $700 million worth of fines.
The Bush administration allowed BP to get away with just $20 million.
Since 2007, BP has received 760 citations for egregious and willful safety violations.
Those committed with plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee safety and health.
So BP has received 760.
The rest of the oil industry combined has received a total of 1.
We could go on and on, but you can see that the trail leading to the disaster in the Gulf operated under the illusion that the problem had been solved.
In other words, because the government has an EPA and an MMS and all these laws and all these regulators and billions of dollars of oversight, that the problem is being solved.
But, as I've repeatedly said for many years, force cannot solve, the initiation of violence cannot solve complex social problems like pollution.
Governments around the world are by far the largest polluters in the world, and There's just no way that you can set up a group of people with a monopoly of force and trillions of dollars of money at their disposal and not have that corrupt them.
The government is not a solution.
to these complex problems.
Voluntarism is the solution to these complex problems.
If you're interested, I have free books on my website that go into more details around environmental protection and roads and security and contract negotiations, how this would work in a truly free society.
But my question to people out there, please, please, please, please understand this.
I'm absolutely begging you, for the sake of the future, for the sake of the world my daughter is going to have to live in, please understand this.
Governments, recorded governments, we can go back to ancient Egypt, are, let's just say, 5,000.
Put the lowest limit on it.
It's 5,000 years old that the governments have been around and have been used as solutions to social problems.
This is a 5,000 year old solution.
If something hasn't been gotten right in 5,000 years, Do you really think, do you really think that 5001 is going to be the magic turning point?
Governments have screwed up the planet For over 5,000 years, governments supported slavery.
Governments support infanticide.
Governments support female genital mutilation.
Governments support circumcision.
Governments support the initiation of wars.
Governments throw people in jail for having particular pieces of vegetation in their pocket.
Governments can only think of passing laws, putting guns in people's faces, stealing money from them, and running up huge national debts and selling off your children to foreigners.
That is the sum total of solutions that governments have.
Governments provide free, quote, free roads for everyone and then wonder how we're going to get independence from foreign oil.
Governments spend billions, hundreds of billions of dollars propping up oil dictatorships around the world and then wonder how we're going to get independence from oil.
Governments invade other countries with oil as somewhat of a motivation and then wonder how we're going to get independence from oil.
Governments have had 5,000 years to get it right and they're all catastrophically in debt and they've all created dependent underclasses of people who will only survive on additional government handouts which are going to end pretty damn soon.
This doesn't work!
5,000 years!
People have been trying to use the guns of the government to create A great world.
And it doesn't work.
5001, 5002, 5003 is not going to make a damn bit of difference.
How many times do we need to wake up in some gutter in Las Vegas with a hooker's panties around our heads?
Don't look away. I know we've all been there.
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