As a nomad, airfordable is the best of the bunch to me. It almost balances out the karma of Legalist.
If Legalist were launching from, say, Canada or the EU I'm not so sure it would be so negatively received; and I would certainly want it to exist if I were a poor person with mercury poisoning.
The timing seems to be an opportunistic response to the Gawker lawsuit. Thiel has validated this sort of a marketplace, and being who he is, it's caught the attention of our opportunistic, objectivist start-up community.Of course the next step is to make this sort of market opportunity accessible to less wealthy investors. Version 2 will be crowdsourced for-profit lawsuits. 5,000 people each invest $2k in a lawsuit against Facebook and see a 1400% return in two years.
I feel that this is a direct result of Thiel validating this marketplace, so let me respond to your "If" argument with my own.
If Peter Thiel weren't a cult of personality type associated with our community, but rather he were the CEO of Fox News, Donald Trump, or Martin Shkreli, he would have been absolutely demonized in the HN! community.
We are going down a slippery slope that can use "might is right" to destroy competition, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. You should see what this same mentality has done to the business world and to the press here in Türkiye.
Class-action lawsuits are already the protection of the poor against mercury poisoning, done on contingency by lawyers who stand to reap huge profits. Now this takes the risk away from the lawyers and turns that risk into a high profit opportunity for a smaller subset of investors.
So, we can work together with a diverse array of stakeholders (even the ones we deem less 'x') to effect societal change, or we can focus on myopic, circular debates that defend our comfort level. Our choice.
Shrkeli was defending the economic justification for the EpiPen price increase. He is probably the last person you want to align yourself with unless you concede to being nothing more than a market vulture - not sensible for the maker of the EpiPen. Yesterday/today, the maker is proposing greater efforts to ease the financial burden for those who can't afford it.
Greater access to resources within the legal system, i.e. SimpleCitizen.com, or Legalist, is better for society. If you think of society as an algorithm, it is beneficial to test the variety of available perspectives to determine which provides the greatest societal benefit (not just profit). I think this should be a priority as individuals and enterprises.
What if you had a parent, sibling, spouse suffer a serious injury, would you not help them financially if you could and they needed it? Would you refuse to be paid back out of their settlement, because that would be parasitic? You do realize it is against Legalist's, Thiel's or anyone else interest to support bad or worse false claims, because they can and will actually lose money right? I think for whatever reason, people like to believe the legal system is a a lot more dysfunctional than it truly is, example, that Thiel conjured up Hogan's lawsuit, that but for Thiel's money being involved there would be no damages, when the truth is Thiel provided financing and likely got an economic interest in the final judgment/settlement but he still had zero influence on the case itself.
It is on par with taking an extremist approach to doctors and medicine..."nothing more American than saving a life, as long as you have good insurance or can pay cash up front."
Zero influence? Wasn't his $10m incredibly influential?
Alternatively, besides speculation Thiel had influence, in the face of Rules of Professional Responsibility that would result in the disbarrment of "Hogan's" lawyers, explain the exact influence Thiel had that interfered with "Hogan's" attorney-client relationship. Specifically, how would the case have been any different if Thiel did not finance some or part of the litigation and how would it have been different if a bank, with no history with Gawker, financed some or all of the litigation?
That is exactly what is wrong with this whole line of thinking. Whether an unbiased bank or likely biased Thiel (in that case) neither would legally be allowed to dictate any of this, it is all between the litigant (Hogan) and his lawyer. Further, there would be no incentive to listen to either Thiel or a bank before ones own lawyer, $10M financing or not, one will not cut their nose of despite their face. In fact this is a fine example, if Hogan were to have accepted a quick settlement, instead of listening to his lawyers, it would have been the wrong choice as he received more at trial.
You are. Why not own it? Not all businesses need to smell like a bed of roses.
Exactly. I know a guy that literally runs a business that smells like shit. They pump septic tanks and he's doing great. There's a natural apprehension for competitors to enter a market like that, must be similar for things that figuratively smell like shit too (like this).