Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by eropple 781 days ago
> Liability still exists in a free market

Only if a wronged party has the resources (time, money, political capital) to pursue it.

Which is but one reason why it is deeply silly to rely on it to make a society go.

3 comments

And putting resources towards lowering that barrier would go significantly further than any regulation.

Regulation is by nature slow and highly susceptible to corruption or stagnation. Whereas the courts, as onerous as they may be, essentially achieve the same thing through liability but it is more dynamic, more responsive, and more likely to error correct than the former.

Don't forget the resources and money required to bring X to the limited attention of the regulators and to ensure the regulation is sufficiently up to date and not subject to capture. I would argue it is orders of magnitude more than exploring the same through liability.
> Only if a wronged party has the resources (time, money, political capital) to pursue it.

In a free market, if there is a market need for more efficient achievement of redress for wronged parties, the market will produce it.

> Which is but one reason why it is deeply silly to rely on it to make a society go.

But of course relying on governments to achieve redress for wronged parties works just great. Not.

> In a free market, if there is a market need for more efficient achievement of redress for wronged parties, the market will produce it.

In our current market, many companies have worked around redress of wronged parties by mandating arbitration in various contracts.

Free markets are not a panacea, nor do ideal free markets ever exist anyway. Also, free markets require regulation to prevent powerful actors from making them non-free.

> the market will produce it.

Only if it's profitable. Feeding poor people, caring for the indigent, etc. isn't profitable.

> Only if it's profitable.

Are you confusing markets with business?

To profit means that you accepted a debt instead of getting something in return for your efforts. Business seeks profit because the expectation is that it will pass the debt on to the stakeholders who will then call the debt and get something in return for their efforts.

But it is people who participate in the market. If they demand profit continually, therefore not getting anything in return, that just means they're working for free. People won't feed the poor unless they can do it for free? Methinks that's not what you meant.