RussellMc wrote:
>> While I agree in principle with this... How do you get to direct
>> responsibility without regulation and oversight? ...
>
> That part's easy :-).
> You 'simply' establish a body that has liability for any outcomes at
> that site, however caused., and you require it to be backed up by an
> insurer with adequately deep pockets, and you require such insurers to
> be part of a cooperative group which will guarantee their
> underwriting. eg as Lloyds does for shipping and similar liabilities.
> That way there is ALWAYS a path back to a suitably large pool of money.
>
> The HARD part is persuading any insurers to front up at all and any
> group to underwrite them. You may be able to get Nick Leeson to put up
> the better part of the first billion pounds, but getting credible
> guarantees for the required other 10 to 50 billion required would be
> problematic. Unless you can stop the actuaries opening the files
> labelled, Apollo 1, [...]
>
>The human factor alone, let alone Murphy, means that your
> insurers are going to be horrendously twitchy about getting involved
> in an open liability deal where the bill COULD, but almost certainly
> never will, run to tens of billions. And, just conceivably maybe
> closer to a trillion. MAKING it safe against all the things that
> people and Murphy ma do is pretty difficult. But convincing people to
> stump up their own risk money to the levels required, that's the hard
> part.

In a free market, people make decisions based on two opposing forces: greed=
=20
and fear. $10bn or even $100bn may sound like a lot, but last I heard, BP=20
alone paid out $20bn. All human activity has risk, and companies figure out=
=20
ways to quantify it. Some activities _guarantee_ hundreds or even tens of=20
thousands of human fatalities annually, yet we continue to mine coal and=20
drive cars.

The insurance industry is based on math. If the risks are low (as they are)=
,=20
and the rewards are great (a few trillion $s?), you bet that companies will=
=20
"stump up their own risk money". In fact, they will compete for the chance=
=20
to do it.

Vitaliy=20

--=20
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