Massy Mining Needs ?

[Riverwind (imported)]

OK,

Next find the president of that company and make it a real heavy fine like 30 million or so and an additional million for each family that suffered a loss.

Sometimes CEO's are like mules, you must hit them with a two by four to get there attention.

River

[Dave (imported)]

OK,

Next find the president of that company and make it a real heavy fine like 30 million or so and an additional million for each family that suffered a loss.

Sometimes CEO's are like mules, you must hit them with a two by four to get there attention.

River

I do appreciate the thought of your post but the problem is, no amount of money makes up for the loss of a husband or father or brother or son. I'm not chastising you, River, I'm pointing out one of the sad facts about the Safety efforts.

For many people, safety is a side thought. the safety man, the OSHA man, sometimes even the boss demands "safety first" but we all know we don't have to do that. We all take shortcuts. We all cut corners.

Until the day something happens to us or a loved one. Then, it's too late. I learned that lesson the hard way.

I used to work with high pressure and combustible gasses. There is no room for mistake there because the resulting explosion and fire kills and maims.

The same goes for machinists who work with drills and lathes and all sorts of neat equipment.

Think of working in a steel mill where they haul fifteen crushed cars overhead and pour out furnaces of molten steel. It's safety first.

Sadly. money never replaces the loss. It serves to punish the people who didn't foster safety. It assuages our anger. It soothes. It satisfies justice and justice is coldhearted and blind to emotion.

I would love to see this man in jail for 25 lifetimes. It would serve him right. Strip it all from him, leave him nothing, and still there will be nothing to replace the good men lost.

[Riverwind (imported)]

Dave, I agree with you on the loss of life, that was not in question. What is in question is that this company has been cited hundreds of times for safety violation and the company and its CEO should see some jail time and heavy fines, will it bring back the people lost, no but it will send a message that ignoring safety by the company will not be worth the risk.

This CEO fights the fines leveled on his company, its all about the bottom line, make it so expensive that it taps that bottom line to the point that change will be a better way to go. I will no longer be worth it to get any fine.

River

[MacTheWolf (imported)]

OK,

Next find the president of that company and make it a real heavy fine like 30 million or so and an additional million for each family that suffered a loss.

Sometimes CEO's are like mules, you must hit them with a two by four to get there attention.

River

Or in Massey's case, a 4 x 8.

$30 million? I'd say $300 million. Make em hurt.

[Kortpeel (imported)]

But McAteer said on CNN's "American Morning" that "some companies, and this appears to be one, take the approach that these violations are simply a cost of doing business -- "it's cheaper for us to mine in an unsafe way or in a way that risks people's lives than it is for us to comply with the statutes, comply with the laws."

Well, if that really is the case, the problem lies in enforcement which is what I said in my previous post. Make it more cost effective to obey the law. Keep the CEO in gaol until the fines are paid. Change the law so that fines have to be paid on verdict and can be refunded if an appeal is successful. No appeal to be heard until the fines are paid.

It seems to me that there is a high tolerance of immoral mangement in the states. The first big one was Enron, then Arthur Anderson followed by the banking crisis - people knowingly flogging worthless investments. Now we have Massy actually killing people, not just robbing them. This is management by the Mob.

I am not very religious but I prefer the doctrines of Jesus Christ to those of Gordon Gekko.

[Riverwind (imported)]

I have it, A real heavy fine and close the mine down until its paid and in the mean time you must continue to pay your employees full pay as if they were working. So go ahead tie it up for years in the courts.

Make the fines hurt, put the CEO in jail tell the fines are paid,

Life goes on.

River

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

Interesting points made by all, but it seems to me that most of the proposed solutions will backfire. Heavy fines, imprisoned CEO's, stiffer enforcement, sorry to say this, but it sounds to me like after something really bad happens, everyone is ready to "stone the harlot!" and/or "burn the witch!" etc. etc.

WHERE WAS THE PUBLIC OUTRAGE BEFORE THIS DISASTER? Indeed, where even was public awareness and concern? Public awareness and concern was all too wrapt up in Tiger Woods and American Idol, nobody gave a damn about some mine operating on the edge of catastrophe. Before the Exxon Valdez, nobody cared one whit about a drunken ship captain and a woefully inadequate ship hull design.

It was only AFTER the Katrina disaster than most of the public cared one whit about the gross incompetence at FEMA, before the Katrina hurricane most people could not have cared less.

It is only AFTER a mining disaster that the average American is even vaguely aware of what goes on in mining. Sadly, the worst part is that the vast majority of us did not care at all before it happend, and worst still, in six months time most of us won't even remember this.

I do not want to digress into yet another pollitical rant, so I won't. Maybe I will start my own thread to address this incident and others in the pollitical forum.

[OneBallBoi (imported)]

Stop for a moment and think about what you have all said. You give too much punitive damages to this man and you put him out of businesss and you add another 100 or more to the unemployment roles when we already have an unemplyment rate that is excediently high. Chill out guys.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Why would anyone, including the government, want to do something that couldn't add value to society? If some activity produces less value than is consumed to perform it, that activity is destructive. The purpose of work is to create value, for a net gain to society. Society's gain is what we call profit, no matter how it's measured. I understand that the liberal establishment has taught many of you to believe the profit motive is immoral, but it's just the opposite. The profit motive is an assertion of our responsibility to produce, rather than consume; of our responsibility to add, rather than subtract; of our responsibility to meet the needs and desires of our fellows. "Waste not, want not" expresses the profit motive. So running a mine at a loss, whether the loss is born by investors or taxpayers, invites a question - why?

As to today's disaster - the post hoc finger pointing has begun, and there's plenty of blame to share. Where were the workers and their union? Surely, they knew the mine was operated unsafely. Where were the complaints, the protests, the strikes, the law suits, the motions to regulators, the campaigns to write and call politicians, the calls to sympathetic journalists, etc.? Where were the press exposes, the TV coverage of accidents? Where were the politicians and community leaders? The press and politicians are eager to display their indignation and concern after the fact, but not before. And what about regulators? Yes, they're woefully under-staffed, but the safety record at this mine was so egregious, so conspicuously bad, wouldn't that command greater than routine interest?

Have the mine's managers helped their careers? It doesn't look like it. The upshot will be a storm of penalties, bad press, and losses that will erase whatever profit they thought they were making. Just as business, their policies seem stupid and reckless, the very opposite of what savvy, profit-oriented businessmen do. People who want to make a profit don't walk into the shit-storm these guys have. Yes, I know that's not what they expected, and that's why they're incompetent boobs, far from the ruthless profiteers they probably consider themselves.

So who looks good here? Union, journalists, politicians, regulators, and even the workers all failed to do what they should have. The workers probably thought they were securing their jobs by agreeing to cut corners. It's only after a catastrophe that everyone postures for the cameras.

Every time there's a catastrophe of any sort - 9/11, a mine tragedy, etc. - politicians and journalists start looking for "mistakes" and for people to blame. The assumption is that nothing bad would ever happen, if people had done what they should. In theory, that may be so, but the resources don't exist - ever - to do everything in the best, most careful, way. That would multiply the cost of everything we do many times. The people, the money, the infrastructure, the analytic methods don't exist to manage, inspect, and control every aspect of life to perfection. Life is heuristic. People make guesses, and allocate resources according to the apparent mix of risk and reward. If the government allocated unlimited resources to running this mine, the mine would be much safer, but it's impossible for the government to run everything that way. The cost of such regulation would far exceed the value of the regulated activities. Yet whenever something bad happens, we hear the opportunistic complaints - "if only they doubled our budget, we could have prevented this." That may be true, but society must ultimately produce more value than it consumes, or it will perish. The automatic resort to government intervention only increases the cost of things, to the point of futility and abandonment.

So this mine disaster has been a bonanza for a lot of people. Union bosses, journalists, politicians, regulators are all reminding us how much we need them. The only losers are the dead miners and their families. Funny how it always seems to work out that way.

[Dave (imported)]

Why would anyone, including the government, want to do something that couldn't add value to society? ...

Like saving the lives of the miners who died in this tragedy? Why wouldn't a company want to save lives instead of making more profit?