Libertarian Fantasy versus Reality

In the Libertarian mind, there is no need for regulation of companies-- Companies can be trusted to do the right thing because they want to protect their good reputation. Or so that's what they seem to believe.

In the real world, things are quite different. If a safe working environment costs money, companies will not provide one. If they are required to provide one, they will circumvent the rules. Which sort of works, until enough people die.

Exhibit A: Massey Coal.

Federal investigators said Wednesday that Massey Energy, the owner of the West Virginia mine where 29 men were killed in an explosion last year, misled government inspectors by keeping accounts of hazardous conditions out of official record books where inspectors would see them.

Kevin Stricklin, administrator for coal at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, described a dual accounting system practiced by Massey before the deadly explosion, in which safety problems and efforts to fix them were recorded in an internal set of books, out of sight of state inspectors, and off the official books that the law required them to keep.

That was among the conclusions of a large team of federal investigators, who spent a year sifting through more than 84,000 pages of documents, interviewing 266 people and examining evidence at the Upper Big Branch mine, where the explosion occurred.

Twenty nine men died because Massey Coal had a deliberate policy of refusing to fix dangerous conditions and covering up the existence of those conditions. Massey Coal didn't give a damn about its reputation or its workers. I would have to suspend disbelief in order to accept the concept that the executives of Massey Coal had no idea that this was going on. Their executives pled the Fifth for a reason, I sincerely hope that their reason for doing so lands them down the cellblock from the Two Bernies (Kerik and Madoff).

Republican ideology is more brutal. Republican orthodoxy now is "all regulations bad." In the Republican mind, there would not have been a problem with Massey Coal fibbing on its records because there wouldn't have been any regulation of mine safety to begin with.