Quote:
Originally Posted by spooky69
I'm okay with imposing financial penalties against for-profit organizations under the following conditions:
-The damages are scaled to the size of the company (big enough to affect change, small enough to be payable without sending them into bankruptcy)
-Awarded only if there was some sort of demonstrable negligence/maliciousness that "needs" to be punished (failure to do proper safety testing, targeting cigarettes at children)
I know this isn't the issue, but in the class of people who hates the lasseiz faire model of business specifically because history has proven that there needs to be a financial (or otherwise) motivation for getting people to do "beneficial" things that they wouldn't otherwise do. That usually takes the form of rewards for following the rules or penalties for not doing so. I'm sure that many aspects of liability law in America are out of control and need to be fixed, but getting your ass sued off is a pretty good motivator for not doing a bunch of lazy/greedy/evil stuff.
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Well... One of the ways that American liability law is broken is that application of your conditions is neither guaranteed nor common. The two cases I referred to (can't say 'cited' as I didn't give proper references) both fall in the "they have
GOT to be kidding" camp of judgements.
On the other hand, your closing paragraph touches on the reverse problem. Indeed, for-profit businesses (and individuals, for that matter) often fail to make changes without the threat of either regulation or massive legal liability.
And
that tension is why it's easy to point at problems, and really really hard to suggest solutions that won't make things worse.
Xenophon