Cyreenik Says
In this 26 May 10 WSJ editorial, Of Politics and Oil, there are some key phrases that indicate a blunder is brewing. "The government doesn't have everything we need to solve this problem.", "unprecedented and anomalous event" and "exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak." This is a novel and scary event... fertile ground for a blunder. Let's look in more detail.
First, this is an eco-scary situation -- there's a big mess being made, and that's pulling at a lot of contemporary emotional heartstrings. Second, a traditional emotional bad-guy, Big Oil, is involved... add some more emotional push. And finally, add the traditional scary component of science fiction -- high technology. Umm... this is not being call "Obama's Katrina" for no reason!
But, will all this concern lead to a good solution?
All the emotion involved is quite likely going to lead to some very expensive, emotionally satisfying, solutions that does not have much to do with fixing the problem -- a blunder. The straight forward blunder in this case is to heavily restrict deep-water drilling. That will be a mistake because an accident such as this one can be learned from. Even if the government takes no action at all, the next accident similar to this one will be contained much more quickly -- we will have learned.
So the likely blunder will be to not permit us to learn from our lessons.
Update: This 4 Jun 10 NY Times editorial, Oil Spills We Don't Hear About, by Anene Ejikeme gives some perspective to the Deepwater spill. It points out that the Nigerians living in the Niger River delta oil fields have been living with a whole lot of spill and other pollution for the last 50 years. "Imagine an Exxon Valdez happening every year for 50 years."
Update: The Blunder starts. This 10 Jun 10 WSJ editorial, Drilling Bits of Fiction, talks about how Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reinterpreted a report by eight engineers into support for a six-month blanket deep water drilling moratorium. The engineers cited were not happy about this twisting of their work, and made their views public. This is a good example of panic thinking blinding decision-makers to harsh reality, and leading to very expensive choices -- blunders.
The Healthcare bill was hard fought. Those in favor and those opposed were both vigorous. In most cases, such vigor produces a well-thought out measure and the results work well. In this case, I'm not so sure.
This bill seemed too big and too complex at the time of passage. It should have been broken into a dozen smaller parts that were more easily understood and more easily digestible. But that didn't happen, so now we get to live with the interesting consequences as the community adapts to this dramatic change in the employment scenery.
One of those interesting consequences appears to be a massive change in the best way to organize companies. The symptom of that is the rise of the PEO -- the Professional Employment Organization.
It now appears that it is best if company workers are split into two categories -- those that work for the company proper, and those who work for some other company that will handle dealing with benefit cost reduction -- the PEO.
If this PEO concept catches on, then the company workers have two leadership structures to deal with, and the PEO part could easily become a new form of workers union.
My opinion: I am truly impressed, and truly saddened, by how deeply The Curse of Being Important continues to afflict employer-employee relations. This should be a simple and direct relation, but it's not.
The word is now officially out that a North Korean torpedo took down the South Korean ship, Cheonan, in its March 26 sinking. The South Koreans found hard evidence in the form of North Korean torpedo parts in the salvaged wreck and have presented this evidence to the world.
Now, what comes next?
This looks like saber rattling with an "Oops!"... just what your mother always warned you about when she saw you playing rough.
North Korea has successfully played Rattle Sabers For Dollars for decades. Kim Il Sung was doing it from the end of Korean War fighting until the Cold War faded -- collecting money from Russia for the unease he caused the West -- and his successor son, Kim Jong-Il, successfully transformed it into a routine ritual for collecting money from the US, China and South Korea.
But underground nuke testing and over Japan Sea missiles are one thing. Now a whole warship has been sunk and 46 sailors killed. Whoa! This feels like an oops!
A side note: One of the interesting things about this situation is it shows how hard it is to start a war when neither side is ready to launch one. In spite of North Korea's current bellicose talk, and in spite of the US's massive reaction to 9-11, there isn't much talk yet of fixing bayonets by either South Korea or its allies. In this case, no party looks upon war as solving much, so even though this is the perfect provocation, war is not the likely outcome of this crisis.
But, this is a big change. I'm pretty sure Kim has cut off his saber rattling gravy train for many years. Just like 9-11 changed the relation between passengers and hijackers (passengers could no longer trust hijackers to land the plane), this has changed the saber rattling relation between Kim and the South Koreans. He can't go back.
I see this as part of a blunder chain as the North Korean community gets increasingly worried by its poverty and Kim's ill health. What comes after Kim looks strange and scary, very scary, so Panic and Blunder Time is hard upon the North Koreans. The previous link in this blunder chain was the messing-with-the-money that took place at the beginning of this year. That went poorly for the government, and it needed to do something to make up for that mistake. This ship sinking could have been a badly thought-out attempt at saber rattling, and if so, it indicates that the chaos in North Korean leadership is now so strong and deep that they have lost their saber rattling touch.
But what comes next... that's not so clear. North Korea and Blunders are both always full of surprises. ...But I see a big, public eruption of discontent as now quite possible. I also see the North Korean government as looking desperately for a distracting foreign adventure -- that's a common fix for this kind of crisis. But sadly for the North Korean leadership, that looks very difficult to arrange.
It's May and the Greece Sovereign Bond Crisis is now the crying beggar child who won't stay away. There are editorial opinions in the WSJ that handling this has become a blunder, and the start of a blunder chain. This 19 May 10 WSJ Heard on the Street German Short-Selling Ban May Backfire by Richard Barley is an example. This explains that the German ban on naked short-selling of euro-based bonds may not add stability to this volatile situation. And this week even the US stock market is taking a big hit due to uncertainty in Europe, US, and all over the world.
The foundation for serious social change is still growing this month. The conventional solutions enacted by the conventional leaders have not saved Europe from this fiscally painful moment, and now the pain is spreading worldwide. That means that more and more people will be receptive to what have previously been too-wacky ideas promoted by too-wacky people.
The interesting times are getting more interesting.
-- The End --