Greasing the Cloud
If there can be found to be any silver lining to such incipiently disastrous events as BP’s recent and ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it is the reminder that we must be constantly vigilant of the hubris of Humankind and vigourous in demanding that our leaders and policy makers adhere to the wisdom and good leadership protocols embodied in the Precautionary Principle. After all, such man-man catastrophes have always been completely avoidable.
To reprise an earlier blog post:
“The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
–Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, pt. xi, p.10(1776)