Comment by piekvorst
6 days ago
I don't know the precise legal mechanisms for handling diffuse harms like the ones you describe. 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. My task here is only to establish the nature of the principle and to show that it is practicable.
That said, here is my principle: at any time, the government is orders of magnitude more powerful than any corporation. I think it is proper, in some cases, for the government itself to act as a plaintiff, to aggregate evidence, bring suit, and prove causation statistically. I can't delimit that role precisely, but I side with you that in some cases only the government has access to all necessary evidence.
And no, I don't agree with the idea of "public interest." Any claim that "the public interest" supersedes private rights means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests of others.
> the government is orders of magnitude more powerful than any corporation.
As a practical matter, that's untrue in many, many places around the world, and there are no reasons why it couldn't become true in the USA, or any other advanced democracy. Even if you don't think that is yet the case where you live, can you at least agree with me that many leaders of / investors in large corporations want it to be, and are working towards that end?
I think your position in your second paragraph is at odds with your position in the third.
I do agree. In many places, governments are weak, captured, or corrupt. But those are mixed economies, in which state and corporate power fuse into one corrupt swamp: corporations lobby for regulations to crush rivals, officials sell favors. That's not evidence that economic power equals political power, it's evidence that abandoning the principle of a government limited to retaliatory force produces a cold civil war of pressure groups. The solution isn't more regulation, it's total separation of state and economics.
> your second paragraph is at odds with your third
No. The government acting as plaintiff is still retaliatory force: harm occurred, the state helps identify the perpetrator. That's not "public interest" overriding private rights, it's the government protecting individual rights by standing in for many individuals who share a common injury.
And yes, corporate leaders want political power. That's cronyism. They want to use force because they can't win in a free market. It's a road to dictatorship, but the road is laid by the principle of "public interest," not unlimited profit motives.
There's no such thing as "the public," only individuals. When one treats "the public" as a blank check to override private rights, one is really saying: some people get sacrificed to others. The taxi industry lobbying to ban Uber isn't about safety or competition. "Affordable housing" mandates that force landlords to subsidize strangers aren't compassion. This institutionalized cold civil war won't end until the state stops pickign winners.
A government
> standing in for many individuals who share a common injury.
Sounds like a synonym for "public interest" to me! Is that a semantic difference, or do you think there's something substantive to it?
I'd like to know how you'd handle the case of a new industrial plant (let's even say it's a brand new technology) that will exhaust lead into the atmosphere. Does the government have to wait until there's demonstrable harm, and then lodge a suit in court? Isn't it... cleaner (for want of a better word, and no pun intended) to have a law in place that says "No Lead-spewing (as defined by [reasonable technical standard]) Allowed", and prevent it being built altogether? From another angle, under which paradigm would hypothetical investors prefer to operate?
In fact, and this is true, industry often requests regulations be put in place, because they'd like to be certain that their investments won't be subjected to the uncertainty of (private or public) litigation. Yes, this can be malign (in the cases of corruption, or regulatory capture, or incumbents freezing out smaller competitors), but at its most basic the request can be seen as benign: "we'd like to comply with community standards; please write down what they are, and we'll follow them" - no violence required or implied. It's also, and to my way of thinking more importantly, a way to break out of prisoner's dilemma equilibria, where all players can agree the sector as a whole will be better off without defectors, but appeal to an outside, neutral party to keep themselves honest.
I'm also curious about what seems to be your premise that The Courts are separate from The State. That's not how I think of them at all! I mean, aren't they, kind of by definition? After all, if one ignores a judgement - even civil - isn't the ruling ultimately enforced by, well, Force?
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