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> Limited liability is almost always irrelevant to megacorps, because they're large enough that any given liability doesn't actually bankrupt them. And that's

• AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > And that's what needs to change, not the concept of limited liability itself. Suppose you go to a drive through and order a coffee. The restaurant is negligent; their coffee is unreasonably hot, the lids they use don't seal well and their employee spills the coffee on you. You get second and third degree burns, sue them and get awarded a million dollars. If it was a mom and pop restaurant, they're bankrupt. Their restaurant isn't worth $1M but now they owe you that much and they don't have it so they go out of business. If it was a national chain, they make $1M less profit this year but none of their locations close. Maybe they fire that employee, start using better fitting lids on their coffee or don't serve it so hot anymore. Their behavior was the same, the liability was the same, the only difference is that they were big enough to pay the money without going bankrupt. That's not necessarily bad. Better that the victim gets the $1M they were awarded instead of something less than that. Better that the other employees who weren't negligent don't lose their jobs too. As long as the liability is enough to get them to fix the problem (or, ideally, to have predicted it and prevented it to begin with).
  • bpt3 7y ago
    Yes, I agree with all of that. I also don't think that allowing companies to externalize their costs (either implicitly or explicitly) is beneficial to society, and that is why I said that the regulatory environment needs to change in scenarios where that's not the case.