On Wed, Sep 13, 2000 at 01:19:38PM -0400, Steven Furlong wrote:
and nonsensical lawsuits. In the other, on page 3 yet, the authors argue that if someone is injured such that he can no longer work, _someone_ should be held financially liable because society has lost the first person's wages [2]. That seems just half a step from saying that the people are the property of the state.
David Friedman argues that if someone is injured, "someone" should be held financially liable - not because society has lost something, but because of economic efficiency. Here's an excerpt from his book Law's Order: I take actions that may impose costs on others-drive a car, shoot a rifle, blow up rocks with dynamite. The size and likelihood of those costs depend on what precautions I take. How can we use tort law to give me an incentive to take those precautions that are worth taking, and only those? Our objective is not to eliminate the risks entirely-we could do that by banning cars, rifles, and dynamite. Our objective is to get the efficient level of precautions, and thus the efficient level of risk. We want a world where I get my brakes checked one more time if, and only if, doing so reduces expected accident costs by at least as much as it costs. We want a world where I break up rock with dynamite instead of a sledge hammer if and only if the savings in cost to me at least makes up for the increased risk to my neighbors. What we want is not a world of no accidents-that costs more than it is worth-but a world with only efficient accidents, only those accidents that cost more to prevent than preventing them is worth. We want the world we would have if everyone took all and only cost-justified precautions. To simplify things, I start with the simplest case-unicausal accidents. I am engaged in an activity, flying a small airplane, which has some chance of injuring other people's persons and property. The probability of such injury depends on what precautions I take but not on what precautions they take. There is nothing other people can do, short of armoring their roofs with several feet of reinforced concrete, a precaution we are confident is not worth the cost, to protect themselves against the risk that I might crash my plane into their houses. [...] http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Laws_Order_draft/laws_order_ToC.htm