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BP Execs Should Face Strict Liability for Oil Spill

The Lighthouse

BP Execs Should Face Strict Liability for Oil Spill

The White House’s moratorium on offshore deepwater oil drilling, struck down June 22 by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, would have harmed consumers and workers and unfairly penalized the safety-conscious competitors of BP. There’s a better way to reduce the risk of oil spills and blowouts, according to William F. Shughart II, senior fellow at the Independent Institute.

“If President Obama truly wanted to supply incentives for trading off risk and reward optimally, he would press for legislation that holds oil companies strictly liable for the economic and environmental damages they cause,” writes Shughart.

Shughart also recommends jail time and fines for the executives of the responsible company because its financial resources may not be sufficient to pay for all the damages to injured parties.

“Moratorium on Offshore Deepwater Oil Drilling Wrong Move,” by William F. Shughart II (Vicksburg Post, 6/21/10)

Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination, edited by William F. Shughart II

When you limit liability, you essentially allow companies to behave recklessly.

RSpec test code extracted from Sinatra Ruby

From: http://www.sinatrarb.com/testing.html#frameworks

In app/hello_world.rb

require 'sinatra'
get '/' do
  "Hello World #{params[:name]}".strip
end

In app/spec/app_spec.rb

require 'hello_world'require 'spec'
require 'rack/test'

set :environment, :test

describe 'The HelloWorldApp' do
  include Rack::Test::Methods

  def app
    Sinatra::Application
  end

  it "says hello" do
    get '/'
    last_response.should be_ok
    last_response.body.should == 'Hello World'
  end
end

To execute:

$ spec spec -c