When you become critical national infrastructure, the calculus changes. For any company in that position, their NUMBER ONE priority is to keep operating and providing their deemed essential service.

Colonial obviously have done well in certain ways: their business side and operational side are decoupled. Business side got hit with a major IT problem - and the damage was contained. Pipelines kept working as intended. That's good operational planning, and they deserve credit for it. They were perfectly capable of, quite literally, keeping the lights on for 100M people.

> It’s a privately financed, constructed and operated pipeline. I don’t see why they should be obligated to operate without getting paid.

Because they are critical infrastructure. Colonial are entitled to their profits as long as they keep their side of the bargain: supply oil and fuel for those 100M people who critically depend on them.

This is where role of a regulation comes in. Make it the critical supplier's responsibility to ensure that they supply. If they lose their billing capability, that's their problem. Not their customers'.

The real villain was capitalism all along?!

Who's been messin' up everything...