Comment by piekvorst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by piekvorst | Hacker News Reader

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> why market participants are being given special treatment here. There are laws, and they must be followed.

Laws are contextual, they depend on more fundamental principles. A regulation that says "you must use this specific screw size" isn't a law in the same sense as "you shall not murder." When a "law" violates the principle of non-initiation of force, when it tells a manufacturer how to exercise his property rights under threat of imprisonment, it's not really a law but edict.

The issue is who decides and when. A court decides after harm occurs, based on evidence of actual negligence or fraud. A regulatory agency decides before anyone does anything, based on hypothetical risks, and compels compliance under threat of force.

> Which problem is personal and which isn't?

A personal problem is one that doesn't involve the infringement of rights against another person. Most problems are personal. One's homelessness doesn't give one a right to another's property. The moment you say "your need obligates me," you've crossed the line into compulsion.

> in your worldview, there is no morality at all. . . . People like you behave toward the state like moody teenagers toward their parents.

That tells me enough about the depth of your study on this subject. Morality is a science of identifying the principles by which a rational being sustains his life. You're not discussing that science, you're reaching for a metaphor.

> But I read what you write and interpret it.

"Cognitive dissonance" is an accusation about the state of my mind, not an interpretation. You don't get to call me internally contradictory and then say "I'm just interpreting."

Yeah, that guy got unnecessarily personal. Let me try.

You're right that civil judgements (and, though you haven't mentioned it yet, reputational brand damage through public exposure) are important checks on harm, but they break down in particular circumstances. In the first place, they're not a fair fight: corporations are able to limit, or even prevent, access to the court system by forced arbitration, jurisdiction changes, or intentionally running up attorney fees beyond what any plaintiffs can afford to risk. They also have ($£€¥, again) larger megaphones than any individual can reliably command.

The toy example of glass in a soup can makes for a perfect case, but civil suits are impossible to pursue where harms are long-term, diffuse, cumulative, or simply too difficult for a jury of lay-people to understand. For instance, we all know that lead is harmful, but when multiple sources of lead exist it's impossible to prove (to the standard correctly required by the courts) that this company's lead caused your particular illness. It's similarly impossible to prove that any particular cancer-causing agent caused any particular cancer, even when we know statistically that it has raised the cancer risk profile of millions of people, and therefore been a causative factor in many deaths.

If we insist that the only mechanism for redress be individual companies held to account in individual cases, we either give up on the idea that corporate behavior can be aligned with the public interest, or (worse?) we make sure that politically-disfavored companies will be scapegoated by the media or the courts, while better-connected players get away with anything at all.

Please allow me to forestall one possible counter-argument: if you, as my Libertarian-ish relatives do, reject outright the idea of "public interest", then we won't have much to say to each other: our world-views are simply too different. Otherwise, I'm interested in what you have to say.

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?

Here is “that guy.” You won't convince them with practical examples, because this is a matter of principle. Freedom and independence from the state are more important to these people than a few people suffering from lead poisoning. From their perspective, living a free life and then dying of lead poisoning is still better than being subjugated by the Leviathan.

> your second paragraph is at odds with your third

Well, well. That didn’t take long.

The teenager was a carefully chosen comparison. The state’s authority over the citizen is similar to a parent’s authority over their child. This is quite humiliating and emasculating. And I agree with libertarians on one point: if the state is against you, you don’t stand a chance. A healthy approach to this has two components. (1) You make sure that the authority is benevolent or at least allows enough leeway for a good life. (2) You create enclaves of freedom. The teenager hides his weed and smokes it secretly, or smokes his cigarettes on the way to school. The citizen leaves some income untaxed and runs a red light now and then. What does the teenager who categorically rejects parental authority do? Run away and become homeless? The difference between them and an adult is that the latter should have enough sense to realize that the romantic notion of a life free from the burden of authority ultimately leads to sadness, coldness, loneliness, and misery—or, if it succeeds at all, merely re-establishes structures in which forms of authority are entrenched. Libertarians feel most oppressed by the state every time they have to wait at a red light or obey a speed limit. They fail to see that, in doing so, they are submitting to a principle of order that is necessary for road traffic to function at all.

> Is that a semantic difference, or do you think there's something substantive to it?

That is a very important point! Philosophers distinguish between the particular and the universal. Libertarians recognize only the particular and reject any notion of the universal, because it negates all particularities. For them, a group is always just an accumulation of individuals. A genuine community—which consists precisely in the participating individuals restricting themselves to some extent for the sake of the community—is inconceivable to them as something positive. Hence the infamous Thatcher quote: “... and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families ...” That is an ideological divide that cannot be bridged through discussion. I’ve gone over this enough times already.

> You won't convince them with practical examples, because this is a matter of principle. . . . Libertarians recognize only the particular and reject any notion of the universal, because it negates all particularities.

You describe people who advocate freedom as both mystics indifferent to reality and pragmatists without principle. Which is it?

Where do I claim that libertarians are pragmatists? They do have principles—just the wrong ones. Incidentally, I don’t think they’re really concerned with freedom, at least not in the Kantian sense.

I don’t think that either libertarians or Kant are genuinely concerned with freedom. My position is closest to classical liberalism, with different philosophical foundations.

I've argued (mostly offline, for my sins) with far more libertarian-ish people than I care to have, and I think piekvorst has a) been a more congenial conversational partner than you gave him credit, and b) approached the subject from a slightly different angle than I'd expected, so I'm still enjoying the interchange. In particular (read our latest replies to each other, if you care), he's in favor of regulating lead pollution, so he's miles ahead of certain of my relatives in both principles and practicalities!

But... Yeah. I'm in much more agreement with your point of view, and he's still Wrong On The Internet, so here we are. :-)

> Is that a semantic difference, or do you think there’s something substantive to it?

"Public interest" today implies a conflict with private interests: a new sports arena, "affordable" housing, protecting domestic jobs. So no, government-as-plaintiff doesn't count.

Personally, I'd define the public interest as interests common to all men: freedom, not sacrifices of some to others. But that's not the modern meaning of it.

> Does the government have to wait until there’s demonstrable harm

Anticipating harm is proper when the decision is irreversible. Example: nobody has a right to physically block a public entrance. That's a right violation you can prohibit in advance. Same with pollution: objective laws ("you may not emit substance X beyond concentration Y") set a clear boundary without dictatign production methods.

But there's no harm to anticipate in, say, Lightning vs. USB-C.

> your premise that The Courts are separate from The State

If you got it from the way I contrasted courts with regulatory agencies, I actually contrasted the way the state can wield force: retaliatory (proper) vs initiatory (improper). Other than that, the courts and state aren't separated.

Yeah, I think our difference on "public interest" is semantic. I wouldn't even quibble with your "interests common to all" definition, so the next step would be to draw lines about what, in practice, that means. Frankly, I think we'd agree about a lot of it: sports arenas and (at least in the abstract) "protecting jobs" don't count for me, either!

You are correct about where I (over) interpreted your view of the court system. Apologies for that, and thanks for the clarification. However, I still don't think I understand the distinction you draw between "retaliatory (proper) vs initiatory (improper)". Would you then say that there shouldn't be a permitting / approval system (because that's anticipatory), so enforcement should be limited to taking pollution readings and acting (in retaliation, natch) after a facility is built? Even if you can sustain that position in principle, I think it would be impractical, across a number of dimensions, in reality. But, it's possible that I misunderstood that point, so please explain further.

I also note a segment from one of your earlier comments, where you advocated for "total separation of state and economics". In my view this is utterly impossible. Regulating pollutants is an intervention that (properly, we agree!) works to the economic disadvantage of pollutors. Even more fundamentally, a (functional, large scale) market economy depends entirely on the state's ability to adjudicate and enforce (at least) contractual terms. I don't think your view can be sustained.

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