Risk Management
Risk Management
“Risk comes from not knowing what you`re doing.”
“What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.”
Warren Buffett
“Risk is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled it will rise up and destroy you.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late.”
Lee Iacocca
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
Robert A Heinlein
The one great weakness of Modern Capitalism is that it isn't about the Long Game, and it isn't set up to clean up it's own messes. There are penalties for failure, but they are not carefully balanced with even the most likely consequences of failure.
I've always reckoned that was the purpose of government; to force brash, impatient entrepreneurs to go slower and spend resources on hazard mitigation. To try as hard as possible to prevent damage, force damaging entities to cease and desist and mitigate, and to step in to mitigate when entities can't be forced to.
That annoys the heck out of people who want to take the brakes off of capital P Progress. Too bad.
Our collective history has more examples of acute catastrophic incidents than you can shake a stick at. The EXXON Valdese, BP's Deep Horizon, Union Carbide's Bhopal, and 35 years of assorted SuperFund activities...
And Boomer infrastructure gets shakier, every day.
And, of course, that doesn't count the harder to measure and mitigate problems that come from smaller, more diffuse sources that contribute to pollution and climate change.
We can't live in a world that denies Progress. We might not be able to live in a world that puts no controls on Progress.
“Risk comes from not knowing what you`re doing.”
“What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.”
Warren Buffett
“Risk is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled it will rise up and destroy you.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late.”
Lee Iacocca
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
Robert A Heinlein
The one great weakness of Modern Capitalism is that it isn't about the Long Game, and it isn't set up to clean up it's own messes. There are penalties for failure, but they are not carefully balanced with even the most likely consequences of failure.
I've always reckoned that was the purpose of government; to force brash, impatient entrepreneurs to go slower and spend resources on hazard mitigation. To try as hard as possible to prevent damage, force damaging entities to cease and desist and mitigate, and to step in to mitigate when entities can't be forced to.
That annoys the heck out of people who want to take the brakes off of capital P Progress. Too bad.
Our collective history has more examples of acute catastrophic incidents than you can shake a stick at. The EXXON Valdese, BP's Deep Horizon, Union Carbide's Bhopal, and 35 years of assorted SuperFund activities...
And Boomer infrastructure gets shakier, every day.
And, of course, that doesn't count the harder to measure and mitigate problems that come from smaller, more diffuse sources that contribute to pollution and climate change.
We can't live in a world that denies Progress. We might not be able to live in a world that puts no controls on Progress.
I'm standing with the Sioux.
ReplyDeleteexcellent article! We're very lucky here not to be downstream of the greed-heads.
ReplyDelete