It means you can sue for product liability under common law. Negligence, breach of warranty, or strict liability, depending on jurisdiction. Court decides after harm.
And pray tell, who comes up with common law? And who enforces the judgment of the court? And what gives the court the authority to judge on the matter of glass shards in your tomato paste?
Fun fact about the common law in fact is that it came into existence because the English government after the Norman conquest needed a unified theory of law for the king's courts that was distinct from manorial and canon laws. 1154 Henry 2 the Plantagenet ascended the throne and wanted a code of law that would apply everywhere in the realm as opposed to local laws, the aforementioned manorial laws, as well as being secular, unlike canon law.
So without the government, you wouldn't have this common law your legal theory relies on.
Right, this typically works very well after you spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars getting all the stuff to court in the first place to have a trial drag on for years in discovery all the while the hospital is sending out debt collectors.
Oh, that's if it wasn't actually a shell company in the first place that has no assets.
A good portion of the things you mention existed before we had food regulations, you could sue the business if you had issues with them. The problem is the vast portion of the population is far too poor to do that. Regulations stop the harm before it happens.
My claim is narrower: the principle of retaliatory force is practicable. That is, a society can function using only courts, class actions, and government-as-plaintiff, without preemptive editcs on screw sizes or battery compartments.
As I said earlier in this thread:
> Determining the best means of applying the principle of suing corporations in practice is an very complex question that belongs to the philosophy of law.
You’re assuming that without preemptive permits, nothing stops a company from spewing uranium. But liability, if properly enforced, is a powerful deterrent. The threat of paying full cleanup costs, compensating victims, and facing criminal charges for negligence doesn’t require an official to approve one’s pipe size in advance.
Further, the principle doesn’t deny retaliating in advance when violence can be objectively anticipated.
This does not and cannot exist when the corporate veil exists. Make a corporate shell and throw it away like a used condom.
Add to that a company can cause a trillion dollars of damage while having only a billion dollars on hand. Criminal charges don't fix things, if they did there wouldn't be murderers in jail.
Courts, police, and the army are proper. That's government. The difference is what kind of government. A proper government holds a monopoly on retaliatory force, it acts after someone initiates force or fraud. It doesn't dictate your screw size, battery compartment, or production method before you've harmed anyone.
Yes, to settle disputes. The purpose of these laws is the protection of individual rights, not consumer “rights” or any other special “rights” that belong exclusively to one group or race and no other.
It's not arbitrary. It's called the distinction between retaliatory and preemptive force. Retaliatory force requires a victim and evidence of causation. Preemptive force has no objective anchor, hence arbitrary by definition. You can't jail a man for a crime he might commit tomorrow.
What im saying is that this distinction is arbitrary. Running a society isn't all about punishing crimes. That's just one minor aspect of a states responsibilities. Standardization is another, arguably more important one.