CDR: Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?

[Ulf Möller]

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