Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Liability is a devil's bargain between attorneys and insurance companies. Big business is protected from liability through a legal technique called"securitization," where the shell companies exposed to liability have no seizable assets. Mom & Pop businesses are the only ones still liable because they don't make enough to protect themselves through similar means. Everything they built up is taken, or so burdened by insurance that the insurance companies get all the profit.

Libertarians use the excuse that liability is preferable to regulations. Regulations can be captured, they say, but liability is even more open to exploitation, especially by money. With regulations, everyone is playing by the same rules, there is no subjectivity, human emotion, and greed does not dominate the resolution. Conscientious behavior is adequate protection in the objective environment of regulation, whereas liability can strike at any moment, on a whim, a chance, a gamble you didn't intend to make. Of course, those with the financial resources & legal acumen can shield themselves from liability, no matter how egregious. The intricacies of liability offer a way for them to shift responsibility to those less capable of deflection, where a regulation would have prohibited their action in the first place. Liability is another technique for The Rich to get richer at the expense of everyone else.