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>because a normal person will never be on the wrong side of that justice equation. If someone uses a hammer to kill their spouse, the hammer manufacturer defin

>because a normal person will never be on the wrong side of that justice equation. If someone uses a hammer to kill their spouse, the hammer manufacturer definitely is not on the wrong side of the justice equation and the person is.

doctorpangloss 8y ago
The torts system is almost certainly co-opting the criminal justice system, not the other way around. It's precisely because of some law needing to be fair to hammer manufacturers, who literally no one cares about, that gun manufacturers, which pretty much everyone does care about, can do shitty things in this country. You're thinking in terms of law, and I'm talking about a court of public opinion. And even if you litter (pretty much the worst a normal person can do in the court of public opinion re: pollution), we don't need years to litigate that in a court of law. And yet, it took five years to litigate the BP Horizon spill, even though there's camera footage showing oil coming out of their derrick in real time. What was there to litigate there? Who really cares whether it's $18.7 billion, or $187 billion, or $1.8 billion, other than the BP chairman? Who really cares what they think, in the court of public opinion? No normal person is ever going to have $18.7 billion to lose, nor will ever have the capability of doing the kind of environmental damage BP's bad oil platform did. So why allow environmental law to even adjudicate the matter, over years, which has never once, ever, delivered maximum justice to the public? Why compromise on our values and the environment, constantly, to protect some essentially unproven economic logic that BP, or DuPoint, or whoever, generate more value for some community somewhere in "jobs" or whatever than the damage they did by polluting? The primary normative question in that case: Should we just shut down BP? We didn't need 5 years of negotiations to resolve that, we didn't need any more evidence or calculations. Someone in the justice department, in an afternoon, made the determination that BP won't be closed, and then a complex legal strategy was pursued, by both sides, for five years, to generate the illusion of justice to execute on that determination. Pollution cases act like criminal cases, and they shouldn't be! The whole problem is reductive, slow, storied, legalistic reasoning, and reductive, unproven economic aphorisms.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > Should we just shut down BP? By what legal process? What happens to the assets, the investors and staff? Does it matter that the British Petroleum is, in fact, a British company?

doctorpangloss 8y ago

The torts system is almost certainly co-opting the criminal justice system, not the other way around. It's precisely because of some law needing to be fair to hammer manufacturers, who literally no one cares about, that gun manufacturers, which pretty much everyone does care about, can do shitty things in this country. You're thinking in terms of law, and I'm talking about a court of public opinion. And even if you litter (pretty much the worst a normal person can do in the court of public opinion re: pollution), we don't need years to litigate that in a court of law. And yet, it took five years to litigate the BP Horizon spill, even though there's camera footage showing oil coming out of their derrick in real time. What was there to litigate there? Who really cares whether it's $18.7 billion, or $187 billion, or $1.8 billion, other than the BP chairman? Who really cares what they think, in the court of public opinion? No normal person is ever going to have $18.7 billion to lose, nor will ever have the capability of doing the kind of environmental damage BP's bad oil platform did. So why allow environmental law to even adjudicate the matter, over years, which has never once, ever, delivered maximum justice to the public? Why compromise on our values and the environment, constantly, to protect some essentially unproven economic logic that BP, or DuPoint, or whoever, generate more value for some community somewhere in "jobs" or whatever than the damage they did by polluting? The primary normative question in that case: Should we just shut down BP? We didn't need 5 years of negotiations to resolve that, we didn't need any more evidence or calculations. Someone in the justice department, in an afternoon, made the determination that BP won't be closed, and then a complex legal strategy was pursued, by both sides, for five years, to generate the illusion of justice to execute on that determination. Pollution cases act like criminal cases, and they shouldn't be! The whole problem is reductive, slow, storied, legalistic reasoning, and reductive, unproven economic aphorisms.

pjc50 8y ago
> Should we just shut down BP? By what legal process? What happens to the assets, the investors and staff? Does it matter that the British Petroleum is, in fact, a British company?