nrh@inmet.UUCP (08/23/84)
#R:pyuxss:-36900:inmet:7800121:000:3787 inmet!nrh Aug 8 10:23:00 1984 >***** inmet:net.politics / dciem!mmt / 3:30 pm Aug 4, 1984 >******* > Libertarianism is based on personal responsibility. In >that way it is very existential. Most people cannot understand >personal responsibility and certainly do not live by it. Greed >and money are the motivating force today. I want to make that >buck and I don't care what happens to you. This kind of logic >is not a corporate problem, but an individual problem. People >make decisions, not corporations. Take Hooker Chemical, for >instance. Hooker is responsible for Love Canal in Western NY. >As far as I'm concerned the people who made the decision to >dump the chemicals there are at fault. We cannot blame 'big >business' for it. Hang the creeps who decided to dump those >chemicals there!(Better yet, make THEM live there!) > >sharon badian >********* >Sometimes (often) corporations will do things deliberately and knowingly >that hurt innocent people. But not all damaging behaviours are done >deliberately. I thought that Hooker originally dumped stuff in the Love >Canal because it was thought to be a safe method of disposal. They made >a serious mistake, if so, but does that make them creeps who should be >punished? > As for blaming individuals rather than corporate entities, there is >a conundrum involving the actual individuality of persons involved in >common activities (such as corporate decision making). To what degree >is an individual ABLE to make a personal decision on a corporate matter, >where that decision goes counter to the general advice and wisdom in >the community? I don't mean that the individual may not think differently >from the others, or even that there may not be argument. But the prevailing >climate of thought tends to bias individual ideas. Also, there may not >be A decision, but an action that depends on a multitude of decisions >both technical and policy, made by different individuals. No one >individual has made any choice that by itself leads to the bad result. >For both these reasons, there is some sense in which the corporation >itself is the individual that made the decision and acted, rather than >any human individual. How do the libertarians handle that problem? Somebody brought up Love Canal in fa.poli-sci, and JOSH (the moderator of poli-sci, and a libertarian himself reported extensively about Love Canal. His report (and I'm working from memory now) was that the chemical dump at Love Canal *MET ALL FEDERAL STANDARDS FOR SUCH A DUMP*, and that there were no problems UNTIL THE STATE GOVERNMENT TOOK THE LAND, AND OVER THE PROTESTS OF HOOKER, BUILT A SCHOOL ON TOP OF THE DUMP. JoSH quotes "Reason" magazine (a libertarian journal) as his source. The best explanation I've heard about how a libertarian society handles "corporate responsibility" is to not have any method of limiting liability for corporations. One is thus thrown on the mercies of A) insurance companies, and B) people with the guts and the certainty needed to risk their entire fortunes on business decisions. You can guess from this that corporations would not be as popular as they are now, and that risky business decisions would tend to be made by individuals in a joint-stock company. As an example, I've heard it argued that a libertarian society would have very few nuclear power plants, because of the difficulty of insuring them for THE MAXIMUM TOTAL DAMAGES, rather than the maximum worth of the company, or the (rather low) maximum liability that nukes can incur under law. As for how libertarians handle the problem of corporate action not matching individual decisions, that's a problem for libertarian court systems. I suspect that whichever individuals caused the danger (by voting for it, or whatever) would be taken to task for it.