It is just bad luck

On 10th of May Socialism Or Your Money Back offered its observations on the BP oil-well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico . We posted this comment:
"Capitalism, with its emphasis on profit and short-term considerations, provides fertile ground for accidents and disasters of various kinds. It also means that any accidents which do happen are likely to be more serious and harmful than would otherwise be the case. Cutting corners and ignoring safety matters is part and parcel of a profit-oriented system."

Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the head of its investigation into the oil spill released confidential e-mails written in the days before the catastrophic explosion in the Gulf of Mexico show that serious concerns, raised within the company and by contractors, were disregarded for financial reasons.

He said “We found a pattern.Every time they had a decision to make they decided to cut corners; to do things faster than they otherwise should have been done; to do it less expensively and the consequence of this, as one independent expert told us, was horribly negligent...Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense...BP chose the more risky casing option, apparently because the liner option would have cost $7 to $10 million more and taken longer...BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure."

SOYMB takes little pleasure out of saying we told you so. Under the profit system profits always come first.This is why in industry we suffer speed-ups and accidents.Capitalism means the lust for profits. Governmental regulation can affect the level of accidents, but the desire for profits favours the cutting of corners, so the possibility always remain.Capitalists must remain flexible enough to take risks that may brings greater rewards in the interest of profit.This competitive aspect of capitalism nullifies any real prospect of solving the problem through the law.

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico at the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig was just "an unfortunate accident" arising from the normal functioning of the system. And although one might think that it would therefore be natural to challenge the system that accepts this lunacy as an unfortunate accident, nothing could be further from the minds of the media coverage that has ensued.The profit system must go, to be replaced by non-market socialism, and that this can be the only solution to the problem.