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As Bruce points out, people who are personally responsible for things when they fail are not insane in being risk averse. From their perspective, they are just

by Fargren 13y ago

As Bruce points out, people who are personally responsible for things when they fail are not insane in being risk averse. From their perspective, they are just playing it safe. Maybe we should be finding a way to make no one personally responsible for failures. But this sounds counter-intuitive, as personal responsibility is acknowledged as an effective mechanism to make people do their work right.

gioele 13y ago
> Maybe we should be finding a way to make no one personally responsible for failures. But this sounds counter-intuitive, as personal responsibility is acknowledged as an effective mechanism to make people do their work right. I think that a good middle-ground is what happens with judges in most of EU. In most systems you cannot directly sue a single judge for some misconduct that happened during a process. What you have to do is to sue "the state". Another judge will then judge the matter but then it is you vs the state, not against a single person; it is the state that takes care of all the legal things and legal costs. This gives the judges the freedom they need to be severe but just. Without this protection they will always be afraid of being sued by the losing party, especially when the losing party is a big, rich corporation. Obviously, to counterbalance this exceptionally high degree of defence enjoyed by the judges, the state usually punish the judge with a fine or a suspension. But the intermediation of the state is able to rebalance the risks: if you do something wrong you risk a big fine, but you will not be dragged personally in a 10-year process that will destroy your career and your finances.
pdonis 13y ago
Maybe we should be finding a way to make no one personally responsible for failures. No, we need to stop making a small group of people, namely, the government, responsible for very large failures, by making them responsible for things that have a very large scope. Instead, a much larger group of people--i.e., everyone--need to each be responsible for a much smaller scope, so that no one person, or small group of people, has to bear by themselves the consequences of a large failure.

by Fargren 13y ago

gioele 13y ago

> Maybe we should be finding a way to make no one personally responsible for failures. But this sounds counter-intuitive, as personal responsibility is acknowledged as an effective mechanism to make people do their work right. I think that a good middle-ground is what happens with judges in most of EU. In most systems you cannot directly sue a single judge for some misconduct that happened during a process. What you have to do is to sue "the state". Another judge will then judge the matter but then it is you vs the state, not against a single person; it is the state that takes care of all the legal things and legal costs. This gives the judges the freedom they need to be severe but just. Without this protection they will always be afraid of being sued by the losing party, especially when the losing party is a big, rich corporation. Obviously, to counterbalance this exceptionally high degree of defence enjoyed by the judges, the state usually punish the judge with a fine or a suspension. But the intermediation of the state is able to rebalance the risks: if you do something wrong you risk a big fine, but you will not be dragged personally in a 10-year process that will destroy your career and your finances.

pdonis 13y ago

Maybe we should be finding a way to make no one personally responsible for failures. No, we need to stop making a small group of people, namely, the government, responsible for very large failures, by making them responsible for things that have a very large scope. Instead, a much larger group of people--i.e., everyone--need to each be responsible for a much smaller scope, so that no one person, or small group of people, has to bear by themselves the consequences of a large failure.