Republican Corporatism

My political views are somewhat interesting compared to my peers. I tend to care more about freedom and economic growth than most of my peers, and yet, they are all Republicans and I increasingly despise the GOP.

Paul Krugman gives a good example of why:

"In the wake of last month’s catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is “not where we need to be right now” she said."

The backbone of the free-market response to corporate irresponsibility is that they can be sued by people for damages they caused. In fact, with immunity from these suits or a cap on them, we should expect companies to cut corners and take on a lot of risk. The whole purpose of a firm is to maximize profits, and in a competitive market even if one firm leaves money on the table another will scoop it up.

The effect of any cap on damages at all is that after some point the federal government subsidizes oil spills. We are actually incentivizing oil spills. I haven't seen a more general Republican response to this, so maybe this is a rogue Senator from Alaska under all the pressure of Alaskan oil interests. I just did a search and here are some Republicans offering a bill that appears to greatly increase the liability cap, but I don't know the specifics.