The recent oil spill near Refugio State Beach that despoiled some of the most beautiful coastline in California was blamed on the rupture of a badly corroded pipeline.
The pipeline’s owner, Plains All American Pipeline, calls the spill an accident. Oil industry toadies excuse the spill as the unavoidable risk of the energy business — one that a society dependent on oil must accept. (Hopefully, the nuclear energy industry doesn’t share that attitude.)
Yeah, ultimately it’s just all of us consumers who are to blame, and not the captains of industry furiously working to ensure that their company’s earnings don’t disappoint Wall Street and lower stock values upon which so much of their personal wealth derives.
That oil spill was not unavoidable. Thorough inspection of the defective pipeline was successfully obstructed by a legal challenge by Celeron, the company that built the pipeline.
Additionally, existing detection technology that could have caught a pipeline leak before it became a major rupture was not installed by Celeron or by Plains. The expense of additional safety measures might have nibbled a bit of their multibillion-dollar annual profits.
Ultimately, blame belongs to a culture of greed that has transmogrified American capitalism into a cold-blooded, irresponsible, pursuit of profit and personal wealth that fully disregards the harm it inflicts on others.
Capitalism, like fire, is a wonderfully beneficial thing — until it is misused and gets out of control. Economic polices ignited back in the years of President Ronald Reagan, “Reaganomics”, with its Ayn Randian philosophy has made unbridled, narcissistic greed a virtue. Eagerly embraced by the economic elite, and promoted to a credulous public as “trickle down economics, Reaganomics has provided a banquet for corporate gluttons but only table scraps for 90 percent of the nation.
In pursuit of ever greater profits, there has developed a callous disregard for the general welfare by avaricious corporations that consider customers hapless marks — “muppets” as the conniving Wall Street bankers called the victims of their investment frauds.
Such is business as usual among the powerful predators in America’s economic jungle.
The nation’s largest bank, Wells Fargo, is being sued for engaging “in unfair, unlawful and fraudulent conduct.” The lawsuit alleges that bank employees raided customers’ authorized accounts for money to open unauthorized accounts, and then charged the bamboozled customers fees on those bogus accounts. No doubt, Wells Fargo executives would be shocked to discover that the bank’s muppets — er, customers — have been cheated by the bank, and if so, will blame the usual suspects.
Not only can’t greedy corporations be trusted not to cheat us, they can’t be trusted not to endanger us.
For more than a decade, General Motors, then the nation’s largest auto company, watched and did nothing as hundreds of people were killed or injured because of defective ignition switches that the company knew were in its vehicles. Other auto manufacturers have engaged in similar reprehensible behavior.
Duke Energy, the nation’s largest electric utility, was recently found criminally negligent for illegally pumping toxic coal-ash wastewater into rivers upstream from municipal water intakes — continuing to do so even after employees alerted supervisors of it. Maybe Duke Energy, with $1.9 billion in profit last year, decided it was less costly to risk fines than to operate responsibly.
Such incidents of corporate criminal behavior could fill an encyclopedia. More disturbing, however, is the certainty that it continues undetected, endangering all of society. It continues because the consequences of getting caught are insufficient to prevent it.
Devotees of Reaganomics rail against excessive government regulation, but if regulation is excessive how do corporations continue to get away with their criminal depredations? What enables it?
Pathological greed, all around.
By spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying efforts, campaign donations and bribery, big business has effectively privatized big government. They own it, and while they vociferously complain about regulation, they usually ensure that regulations have more bark than bite.
What can deter the insatiable greed that so contemptuously disregards the public welfare?
If corporations are people, who goes to jail when they commit crimes? Virtually no one.
Corporations are legal fictions that not only limit the financial liability of their owners but also, in practice, limit personal liability for corporate criminal behavior. Few corporate decision-makers are ever prosecuted for the criminal acts of the companies they manage. Yet, wrongdoing by a company cannot occur without its employees.
If people rather than legal fictions were punished for corporate crime, there might be less of it. Crime is not a blameless accident. Corporate crime is committed or permitted by greedy management.
But, rather than further overcrowd our prisons by incarcerating these pecuniary pigs, a more appropriate punishment for criminal greed would be the forfeiture of all their personal assets — along with a 10-year prohibition of employment for anything above minimum wage.
Let the conceited, insensate, selfish hogs scramble for table scraps. That might be more rehabilitating than prison and more of a deterrent than regulatory fines.
— Randy Alcorn is a Santa Barbara political observer. Contact him at randyalcorn@cox.net, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.