some people died but i got rich. sue me.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Sues you and wins but it only costs the company 5% of their normal monthly profits
And then the company never pays and you have to sue again but you are now too broke and tired.
Alex Jones has entered the chat
Some of you may die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take!
And the US "Supreme" Court: looks great, let's do more of that!
... we regulate ourselves too and nothing has gone wrong with that!
You should see the lines go up though!
The problem with using the Love Canal was that it was the local government that really fucked up.
For the time, Hooker Chemical Company disposed of the chemical waste in a somewhat responsible way; a clay lined canal that they later topped with clay to prevent water infiltration. If the town wasn't dead set in developing the land, we likely would have never heard of Love Canal.
Yeah that's immediately what I thought whem reading it. The company did the right thing, it's the government who wouldn't listen to reason.
The company did the dumping and then sold it off for $1 for a school to be built upon it. They were held liable. They also created other environmental disasters elsewhere. White Lake Michigan, for instance.
Hooker Chemical Company gave no fucks, and should not be given tacit approval or any credit.
Hooker Chemical sold for $1 and a list of conditions because the local government was threatening eminent domain after the company gave several warnings.
And I'm not going to defend Hooker in other locations.
They were forced to sell under threat of eminent domain. That's why they tried to sell it for $1 along with a list of conditions on what it could be used for to highlight the danger. The Government then rejected this offer. Rather than trying to blame some random company just because you think all companies are evil, maybe go and read the history instead.
More importantly it was the 1950s before the Clean Water Act. Where both entities involved existed under the framework of industry self-regulation that is being directly criticized here.
The issue isn't a company or government is responsible: it is that the system of self regulation results in failures with significant collateral damage.
Regulation also binds government, believe it or not.
Sure it does, but you were directly trying to blame the company, and not the government that screwed it up. Stop shifting goalposts.
I established they were held legally liable, which they were, in response to a comment that stated the government was the one who fucked up.
Ain't no zero-sum binary brained scenario.
Second picture should be Bhopal.
Americans would shrug it off as a foreign problem. We're idiots like that.
I actually grew up next to the Cuyahoga in the '70s, and it's mind-boggling how disgusting that river was. Used tires and rusted steel chemical barrels everywhere, and the surface covered with a sheen of oil or who knows what the fuck it was. The concept of a beautiful rivers edge was laughable back then, as the river was lined with various plants and factories with big drainage pipes jutting out over the water discharging ... stuff. And this was about 30 miles from the part that actually caught fire (which was in Cleveland). I really don't understand why that river wasn't just on fire all the time.
My parents founded an organization that cleaned the river up (at least the part of it in our town) and turned it into a beautiful park and walking trail. I'm so proud of them for that, but sadly these victories are never permanent.
I work in aerospace regulation and the latest media coverage has been quite upsetting for me. There is a huge difference between delegation (how the aerospace regulator gives approval power to people in companies) and self-regulation, but I'm not clever enough to summarise them in this format. So instead I'd like to share two facts that can summarize the outcome instead.
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An airliner is a chunk of metal full of people 30,000 ft in sky propelled to near the speed of sound by burning kerosene in a tube. With all of that is safer than driving in your car or going for a swim. That's aerospace regulation at work, and it has always included delegation. It's almost the safest industry there is even when you include Boeing's criminal fraud and attempts to abuse the system.
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Boeing had to ground their fleet for years and now is being charged with criminal fraud for deceiving the FAA (the aerospace regulatory body in the USA). Self regulated industries rarely face consequences.
I'm not saying it's perfect, and I wish I could explain the process better but I think it's very effective and has a proven track record across the world. Almost all modern countries use the same regulatory framework because it delivers incredible safety at a reasonable (by aerospace standards) cost to the government.
I hope more industries transition to a similar framework. If we had an FAA for finance and environmental protection, I think we could end scam shell companies and illegal pollution in a decade. But it would probably be "big government socialism" so there isn't much hope.
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