According to the Houston Chronicle, BP saved $5 million by taking shortcuts while drilling the Macondo well in the Gulf.
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by @heymistermix.com| 23 Comments
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything
by @heymistermix.com| 23 Comments
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything
According to the Houston Chronicle, BP saved $5 million by taking shortcuts while drilling the Macondo well in the Gulf.
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Napoleon
ROI baby, ROI.
4tehlulz
Hey that $5 mil turned into decades of free advertising.
PeakVT
Check out this video of shark behavior in the GoM.
Persia
No one could have anticipated….
frankdawg
yeah! these are the business geniuses that would never do anything to put their company at risk. We don’t need no stinkin’ oversight or regulations because the free market will take care of it all bay-bee!
The free market is like a 17 YO boy. All it thinks about is how good it feels to be screwing. It needs to be told to use a rubber but won’t because it thinks with its little head, not its big head. It screws every chance it gets & enjoys every minute of it.
And then when the obvious happens – hoocuddanode? BTW – the government better help pay for this or nobody will be willing to have children any more.
Linda Featheringill
That is sad. Just sad.
It looks like the whole thing was run on the Titanic principle. We are unsinkable.
Slow learners.
vtr
Like the guy who was hit by a bus when he stepped into the street to pick up a dime…
Mnemosyne
This is, unfortunately, the way corporations have trained themselves to think over the past decade or so: how does it affect this quarter’s earnings? No thought about, say, next quarter, much less next year or the next five years. As long as it saves money for this quarter, nothing else matters.
Case in point: G’s job, where they’ve decided to spend massive amounts of money on overtime rather than hire an extra (and desperately needed) person even though hiring that extra person would actually save money because paying that person’s salary and benefits would cost less than the overtime they’re paying out now. Doesn’t matter — the important thing is the headcount, not the actual budget, so as long as they can show that the headcount is properly low, they can spend as much as they want on overtime.
Insanity.
Shalimar
So they would have had to take those same shortcuts on 1000+ wells without mishap to come out in the black on their mistakes? Unless they get the government to pay for most of the damages, which is very possible.
Karen
That seems to be commonplace, unfortunately. In order to remain “profitable” and make the stockbrokers happy, they cut corners. And nothing is ever done. Even when that corner cutting costs lives.
And…I love the Femmes! You might want to warn people the song is NSFW….
Bill Murray
@Mnemosyne: surely they are also trying to reclassify the people getting overtime into exempt employees
Tom Hilton
@Mnemosyne:
Exactly. Even if everyone in the Federal government were looking no further ahead than the next election, at least that’s a 2-year span–8 times as long as the corporate vision. Reason #1,379 why CEOs (*cough*megwhitman*cough*, *cough*carlyfiorina*cough*) should never be allowed anywhere near positions of power in the government.
Martin
@Mnemosyne: But this is also why the companies looking at the long haul are destroying the ones just focused on the next quarter now.
That short-term view works okay in a strong economy. You almost can’t help but make money then (just as it’s easy to run a country when everyone is employed and tax receipts are high). When things are tough and you *really* need to compete, not having made investments in new products, training, modernizing, what have you, over the previous 3-5 years could spell the end of you.
Mnemosyne
@Bill Murray:
They would love to, but this is California and we do still have some fairly strong labor laws. Unless the company can somehow reclassify them as sheepherders, they’re on the hook for the overtime.
ellaesther
I’m sorry. All I got is: Wow, the Violent Femmes used to be so young!
Bill Murray
@Mnemosyne: for about $250 a sheep (plus feed) they can make that happen. Plus the break room can be turned into a shearing enterprise to make even more money
Bill Murray
@ellaesther: I still had some hair left when I saw them in concert and that hasn’t been true for a long long time
geg6
OT, but damn this is funny:
(warning: pdf file)
http://usabudgetdiscussion.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/June-26th-release-FINAL.pdf
So Pete Petersen funds townhall meetings in 19 cities so that he can get the great unwashed hordes to give their approval to his libertard agenda for when his GOPer pals like Rand Paul take over the Senate and Congress and all he gets for his money and effort is a bunch of the little people telling him to pay more taxes.
Too fucking funny. They must have twisted themselves in such knots when they compiled the results and had to write this report that they all have hernias today.
PaulW
So for $5 million in shortcuts they caused 20-plus deaths (the missing are most likely dead by now) meaning millions more in settlement with grieving families, caused a massive oil spill that already cost $20 billion in a “shakedown” deal with Obama to ensure money is there to pay off the hundreds of thousands affected by the eco-disaster along the Gulf Coast, and left at least one major corporation footing a bill worth millions if not billions more in an ongoing cleanup and cap effort that for now looks to be never-ending.
Wonder if they will ever teach this in MBA classes this fall. You know, schedule a class between “How to Embezzle 8101” and “How to Hire Lobbyists to Buy Off Congress 1102”
Business Ethics? That’s like Bigfoot. There ain’t no such beast.
Mnemosyne
@Bill Murray:
Two words: miniature sheep.
I think it’s a go.
asiangrrlMN
Love the Femmes! Fuck, yeah! Hate BP! Fuck ’em with a rusty pitchfork eleven-billionty ways of Sunday. They can take the pittance they saved (in terms of how much they made) and shove it up their asses!
@Mnemosyne: Awww! They are soooo cute! I’d make an exemption for them!
Delia
Well, BP certainly got their money’s worth on that $5 million. Remember this email four days before the spill started from one BP official who was concerned about taking too much time with the well.
who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine
That should be made into a bronze plaque and nailed on the front door of every BP building everywhere in the world.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I tried to get my mom to get some sheep so Jack could spend his days herding them to his desire. I got the stare. You know the one I’m talking about. Then a ten minute lecture on the stupidity and uselessness of sheep. I couldn’t even convince her to raise them for lamb. Poor Jack-Jack.