Shameful!

[The Grand Nudger]

Pretty sure they didn't store their profits in a vault on site. The owner and operators at fault have property right? They have salaries, savings, etc.?

If the company made no profits at all, then unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done money wise. The people responsible can rot in jail, and we can hope that the charity of others can help rebuild homes that were destroyed.

The owners assets and the company assets are a different entity. That's the whole point of incorporating here under any classification. There is no vault, onsite or off, and any "profits" are likely to be a floating column in accounting and not any real asset (if there were any real assets laying around that would be wasted capital-bad business).

Corporations here, are people - remember this. So what you are saying, essentially, is that we should prosecute and fine one person for the crimes of another (ostensibly because they won't show up in court - not having any body to incarcerate - and there wasn't anything in the cookie jar when we dug in looking for reimbursement). The owners and operators become patsies because we screwed the pooch with our business friendly laws.

Fucked up, isn't it..lol.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

And this would be a good example of why I think there should be more government regulation of business, not less.

Regulation is fine but then politicians start addressing every real and imagined problem with more regulations. And then the industries being regulated have to get into lobbying and we discover the regulations are being written by the lobbyists which defeats the purpose.

The way the article is written the response would be to require more insurance. Frankly I would rather see no accidents and more insurance and thus improvements is safety. As to the damage the company should be in bankruptcy protection as soon as the lawsuits get filed. Eventually the company is sold off to cover the damages.

A rather simple solution is that of China where the response to accidents like this is to execute the owners or senior executives for murder.

A few years ago people died of under-cooked burgers at Jack in the Box. I do not see how that is not negligent homicide.

[festive1]

I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I don't trust the average person.

Well, you kinda do disagree with what I'm saying then. Please, don't feel like you need to say you agree with me to be polite. You clearly disagree, and that's fine.

But I don't disagree with you in all circumstances... which is why I said this. For instance, here in Maryland it is illegal to sell or buy unpasteurized milk. Our local farmer's market has a stall from Pennsylvania that advertises if you want unpasteurized milk, you can drive to their dairy across the state line. I think this is ridiculous. The government shouldn't stop small farms from producing something people want. Even if I don't want to drink unpasteurized milk myself, and yes, unpasteurized milk can pose a threat to a person's health, but that's for the consumer to decide, not the government.

I want government officials to ok that bakery that opened down the street to ensure they don't have pests or potentially hazardous conditions for their customers or employees.

You realize that government officials are, for the most part, average people right? What makes you trust them, but not anyone else? Why trust the regulators?

You're right, government regulators tend to be average people, and there are certain industries where knowledge of the field itself is more helpful in determining regulation than common sense. This is a two fold problem, how to determine what regulations are necessary and ensuring those doing the regulating know what the hell they are doing. Not to mention the issue of if you hire an industry insider who knows the best practices for a given field, they very well could be a lackey for the industry and overlook potential dangers because it's common practice.
I don't want to take my kids to a restaurant where there has been no inspections or regulations met, because I don't want them to become ill from badly kept meat or something of the like. There is a point where the regulation gets to be too much, but basic things like having hot running water, working refrigerators, clean food prep areas, etc. are good things to check for. As I can't go in the back and check this out for myself, I'll rely on someone whose job it is to do so. It's an imperfect system, but it's better than no system at all.

Besides, I'm not entirely sure you know what think a government visit is going to prove. All it shows is that at that time, on that specific day, the place was seemingly legit. I say seemingly because there are plenty of ways to distract investigators from the facts. My point is, if you go to any store, anywhere, even if they have a lovely pretty certificate saying they are government approved, it is not a guarantee that they are, at that particular point in time, following regulations.

Again, you're correct. A one time inspection can easily miss violations. However, if I were to become ill from eating at a restaurant or injured from unsafe conditions, I can report it and it will be re-inspected (not instantly, it depends on the number and severity of these kinds of reports). I think it's important to have an agency in charge of fielding possible violation reports, which is also something these agencies do. I think a store with a good rating is more likely to be in compliance than a store that has never been rated. Not in all cases, certainly, but, as I said, it's an imperfect system.

I don't want unregulated daycares that don't have to worry about a random government person coming by.

I'd imagine there are plenty of these, usually because they don't advertise themselves to the government in the first place.

This is done on a state level here in the US. Daycares that have over a certain number of kids have to be inspected. Sure there are people who fly under the radar, but I would never leave my kids at such a place. And when these places are brought to light it's often in conjunction with a child being harmed in some way, showing that basic rules and regulations are helpful in ensuring safety.

And I certainly don't want some random person purchasing the chemicals necessary to make fertilizer without some form of oversight.

Erm...you realize it's pretty easy to do this anyway right?

Not in the quantities necessary to do your own start up fertilizer company. The government generally flags purchases of a certain amount or above.

I totally agree with you though, what happened at that plant is criminal negligence. But my money's on not one person being held criminally responsible.

Right, and that in my opinion is the main thing wrong here. Not a lack of regulation, but the fact that the people responsible aren't going to be held responsible. I'm honestly not sure what more regulation could have done in this scenario; it's a plant that deals with chemicals, and it's run by infallible humans. Mistakes are bound to happen at some points; that has been shown through human history.

The plant could have been shut down. The officials in charge of it's oversight could have done a follow up visit to ensure the plant had complied with correcting their cited violations. It's an imperfect system, but I think it could be improved to the benefit of all. No system is ever going to prevent all disasters like this, but we should at least try.

[Tonus]

I agree there are times when the regulation gets too much to allow for competition, but on the whole I like that industries are regulated.

I suspect that this happens when businesses have a hand in writing the regulations in question. I think that government's relationship with business should almost be adversarial. Otherwise we wind up with regulatory bodies that are influenced (and sometimes staffed or even managed) by the very industry they are supposed to regulate. The results of this is that when disasters occur, a lot of anger is thrown at the companies responsible (BP, AIG, etc) but little is done to the people responsible and almost nothing is done to make whole those hurt by what happened (Enron).

I think we need regulations that protect people from incompetent or even malicious actions by businesses. But drowning businesses in ineffective regulation is worse; it makes us think that the government is protecting us until something terrible happens and suddenly it's "golly... how that loophole get there?"