Humanists believe in personal responsibility. Realizing that you need to think before you act because anything and everything you do has consequences and you should therefore take care to make sure those consequences are good is a central tenet of the philosophy. Obviously, some behaviors and actions are more risky then others. But from the Humanist perspective, if you aren't willing to pay the price of the consequences of your risky behavior, you should not engage in it. If you do, then you own it. In other words, if you break it, you should fix it.

Now, we have a massive oil spill caused by the negligence of BP. I live in Florida so this affects me personally. There are libertarians trying to tell us that not only should the government ease regulations of the oil industry, they should make sure that the fiscal liability of the companies that cause problems be capped. They are trying to be probusiness. The problem is that this approach, which is to give companies the right to take risks, also indemnifies those companies against the consequences of those risks.

As a Humanist, this approach offends me. BP took a lot of risks. They were fined by OSHA for problems 760 times. In contrast, Exxon was only fined once. In other words, BP was taking a lot of risks. It is not hard to understand why they had such a major disaster occur as they clearly negligent in managing their risks. As a result, I have no sympathy for them. From a Humanist perspective, they are responsible for the consequences of their negligence. If they aren't willing to pay the cost of failure, then they should not be taking those risks. It is not the government's responsibility to save big companies from the consequences of the risks they take. All the government is responsible for is to make sure the if a company has a major failure as a result of the risks they take, is to make sure if the company cannot financially survive their self created disaster, that they are dissolved in a way that is fair to the people to whom the company being dissolved owes money.

In the case of the BP oil disaster, the government also has a responsibility to make sure that the one company is not capable of destroying the economy of say, 5 states, which is why regulation is actually ethical and a proper use of government. Because some risks aren't just going to negatively affect the company that takes them. Some risks will impact everyone else, and in that case, everyone else has a right to protect themselves from those risks by requiring minimum safety requirements be followed to try and minimize those risks and the government is the only organization that can manage and enforce those requirements.

Finally, in the case of a major disaster that is a consequence of one company's negligence, the government also has a responsibility to make sure that the company in question doesn't shirk it's responsibilities in relationship to the problems they caused by taking the risks they did. And again, only the government can do that.

So to recap: yup, there are consequences to your actions. Companies are responsible for their actions and the consequences of their actions to and should make sure that they manage their risks properly. If they don't, the government should make sure that they are held responsible for the consequences of their actions.