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lupire

Article links to a 2013 article about a similar event.

Mining company blows stuff up, pays a small fee, and profits handsomely.

What would happen if someone blew up the mining company office due to a "paperwork oversight"?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23527303

Dec 2020 update: RT ordered to rebuild the cave:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55250137.amp

Mar 2021 update: Execs fired, given golden parachutes. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56261514.amp

May 2021 update: Shareholders vote 60%-40% to symbolic protest of golden parachutes

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/05/06/business/rio-tinto-shareh...

I'm impressed by the followup reporting. Usually it's hard to find updates on things.

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Only thing that comes to mind is South Park's "We're sooorrry" clip. This sentence in the Dec 2020 article says it all, doesn't it?

"They were seen as one of Australia's most significant archaeological research sites, but they also had more than eight million tonnes of high-grade iron ore, with an estimated value of £75m (A$132m; $96m)."

Rio Tinto's official page on this is also worth a read.

https://www.riotinto.com/en/news/inquiry-into-juukan-gorge

Fascinating where they choose to use passive vs active voice.

- "Our relationship with the PKKP people extends over more than 17 years"

- "We are engaging with the PKKP people"

- "In partnership with the PKKP people, we are focusing on understanding"

- "We can re-establish a sense of place"

Contrast with:

- "The decision to destroy the rock shelters was taken nearly eight years ago"

- "the site was reclassified as ‘cleared’ for mining"

- "knowledge and awareness of the location and significance of the site was progressively lost"

- "the Juukan 2 rock shelter is likely to be irreparably damaged"

is £75m even really that much money anymore? Why sacrifice a historic site for some rocks in the ground worth only £75m???

Exactly my thoughts, but then again, commodity gatherers have to do everything and anything - including blowing up archeological sites - to make living money these days due to extremely low commodity prices. Not that I sympathize with those guys, but rather that I can smell the desperation on them.

https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/AU/XASX/RIO/financial...

it looks like they're just scraping by.

They could have made way way more than that with the prices of 2010 though. Especially for a company of Rio Tinto's scale.

Sociopathy?

Or capitalism. No test exists that tells one from the other.

I'm glad that non-capitalist entities (in other words, non-privately own means of production) do not engage in that sort of behavior. Oh wait: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/03/americas/gulf-of-mexico-fire-...

No, this is not any paritcular individuals fault but the system itself since the incentives and legal system are set up this way. If one wasn't like a sociopath then they either wouldn't be hired or would be fired for not doing their job. Due to the environment that the company ooerates in (which we have created), this is exactly what it'd be predicted to do regardless of the individuals involved.

Making your target, getting a bonus

My favorite part about bloodsucking corporations like this and Verizon/AT&T is that the actual stock value of these corporations has barely moved in the last two decades. I thought this kind of unfettered profiteering and capitalism would be good for long term value?

All this suffering and destruction to meekly underperform the stock market. Why do these executives have jobs?

Ah, but the bloodsucking and profiteering is predictable, so it was already priced in. If they stopped and acted like responsible global citizens instead, now that would be a surprise, and their stock price would drop precipitously.

T and VZ pay substantial dividends.

>My favorite part about bloodsucking corporations like this and Verizon/AT&T is that the actual stock value of these corporations has barely moved in the last two decades

Maybe because they're paying out profits in dividends?

I actually didn't know this. Does Rio Tinto also fall into this category of 'objectively terrible for the human race, but pays wonderful dividends to the stakeholders'?

The point is that the stock value remains in the same place because they distribute part of their earnings to shareholders. On the day of a dividend, the stock gets discounted by the amount of the dividend. So if you pay out a large dividend and the share price is static over the long term, that’s actually quite good for investors.

(In other words, your earlier comment about bloodsucking profiteers misses the mark a little bit.)

> I thought this kind of unfettered profiteering and capitalism would be good for long term value?

No, it's only good for short term value. Long-term the regulatory and social environment evolves to punish these kind of companies.

May I offer you an egg in this trying time?

Why are two different users quoting IASIF? Am I missing something?

Can I offer you a nice egg in this trying time?

What egg?

It's a reference to Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which has become a meme about impotently trying to soften tragedy.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/can-i-offer-you-a-nice-egg-in...

I Google and post a comment with the answer. I think you are wasting others time with a too simple question: https://www.google.com/search?q=offer+you+an+egg+in+this+try...

I suggest you do the same for acronyms that you don’t know.

A beaver egg.

https://churchofthought.org/blog/2020/06/25/busy-beaver-is-t...

This is a fantastic catch. I'm sure there's a great case study for business classes to be made from this.

Fascinating catch on their usage of active vs. passive language.

The Hero, Villain, Victim triangle plays out beautifully there.

In the Active, you have the company positioning itself as the Hero helping the Victim.

In the Passive, you find them pointing to some unidentified character from the company’s past (8 years ago) who stands as the Villain responsible for this.

They’ve positioned it as if the company is merely the Hero currently trying to help the Victims.

This is what it must mean when a corporation is "sorry", because no other sense can be made of such a statement.

Anthropomorphism has taken an evolutionary leapfrog past people.

>What would happen if someone blew up the mining company office due to a "paperwork oversight"?

It happens. eg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...

allegedly due to an "outdated map". They eventually settled for several million dollars.

That I think has more to do with the downing of F117 a month prior. I'm thinking the Chinese bought some secret parts, and the Americans made a last ditch attempt to prevent the Chinese from obtaining some tech.

How was the embassy involved as a target of consequence?

The F-117 was shot down in Yugoslavia. China acquired quite a few parts from it, ran into difficulties getting them out of the country, and stored them temporarily at the embassy in Belgrade as their base of operations. Chinese papers have published that part. The US denies the bombing was on purpose, but admitted in a Congressional hearing that it was the only bombing in the campaign directed by the CIA. The "wrong map" reasoning seems a little thin at that point.

Well maybe CIA intentionally provided the wrong map...

How could they possibly rebuild a prehistorical archaeology site that they exploded?

Just wait another 46,000 years and it will rebuild itself in a certain sense.

I volunteer to make the replacement human hair belt.

With the removal of monuments and vacations to historic sites, I think I’m settling on this idea.

Things made by humans are temporary. If not miners, then flood, earthquake, or other human pursuit would eventually wipe the slate clean.

From a more local perspective, imagine moving away from an area for whatever reason and then a thousand years later someone finds your dirty dishes and Twisted Sister poster and wants to preserve it for posterity.

Assuming that was the only visual trace of Twisted Sister remaining it'd be pretty neat. Also I'm sure that anthropologists would have a field day inspecting the chemical makeup of those hotpocket crumbs and announce that they're "Just as edible today as they were all those thousands of years ago!"

Hot pockets were never edible. ;-)

Source: https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2021/...

I wonder if the exec in question would be fine with an “oh sorry about that” if someone blew up the cemetery where his grandparents are buried?

Yet another case where the fine needs to be a percentage of revenue.

Every time this brought up the person doing so doesn't seem to realize that some companies have lower margins than others (eg. walmart vs microsoft), so you end up those companies more.

I understand margin quite well. The whole point of the penalty is to make it painful enough they don't do it again. You can hide profit, you can't hide revenue.

>You can hide profit, you can't hide revenue.

You can't hide revenue, but you can hide assets. You might get your $100M judgement, but it's pointless when you can't collect it because the company you fined is a pass-through entity with no assets.

A pass-through entity with no assets should not be allowed to conduct any business where they might incur long-term liabilities.

I’ve thought about a system where a company has to purchase liability insurance when they dump assets.

So if a plant has a chemical leak, the company can’t sell every other plant, pay a huge dividend, and then declare bankruptcy to avoid paying damages. The plant would have to be insured for up to the total dividend payout. The insurance company would charge a huge fee based on what they think the plant will end up costing after a court battle, etc.

What would happen if someone blew up the mining company office due to a "paperwork oversight"?

You would probably kill a few janitors, and the executives would come out unscathed, again.

If you're going to go as far as engaging in violence, it's much better to go after the executives directly, as they're the ones who deserve it, not the guys making minimum wage to clean out the trash cans.

With the extreme levels of government impotence and apathy towards prosecuting corporations and their leaders for crimes against humanity, I worry vigilante assassinations are going to become increasingly common over the next decade as justice is not otherwise being served.

"What would happen if someone blew up the mining company office due to a "paperwork oversight"?"

46,000 years from the company's last use, right? I mean, just to make the comparison complete.

The caves were used by archaeologists more recently than that.

46,000 years ago was the first habitation, not the last.

They have been used for 40,000 years. Not 40,000 ago. People live around there, have done for a very long time, and they still do.

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