Law is our main system of official blame; it is how we officially blame people for things. So it is a pretty big deal that, over the last few centuries, changes to law have induced big changes in who officially blames who for most things that go wrong. These changes may be having big bad effects.
He argues that institutions have evolved in a way that creates incentives for people to blame businesses rather than other people when bad things happen. This made me think of the opioid crisis being blamed on manufacturers of legal drugs.
Sue the doctor who put you on opioids and did not tell you about the brain damage. Same with adderall and the newest generation of the uptake inhibitors used for depression. Your particular doctor should inform you before reccommenting chemical lobotomy.
Mathew, I’m assuming that you are using hyperbole. When used as prescribed, opioids are one of the great innovations of modern civilization, especially in cancer treatment and palliative care.
The current meme of referring to Fentanyl as “deadly” is causing far more harm than good, in my opinion, even within the high-risk heroin user community.
I agree and it’s disheartening that there’s almost a consensus behind permanently setting back pain management by a few decades. We should be more concerned about the dangers of street drugs if uncertain composition/intensity, for which the best remedy is legal drugs of certain composition and intensity.
This made me think of the opioid crisis being blamed on manufacturers of legal drugs.
Yea, I don’t know if manufacturers of opiods should be sued here but:
Purdue was an extremely successful Pharmaceutical company. You can not convince they knew of dependency risk and especially researchers knew it 100%. Good company know more than the consumer they sell to. (Or doctors that prescribe it.) When deaths were increasing around 10 years ago, they could have promoted better usage of the drug or how to avoid addiction.
Purdue is no matter than say Pay Day Loan companies.
Robin Hanson never ceases to surprise and frustrate me. First, I absolutely love the way he frames problems in novel and insightful ways; thinking about the legal system in terms of blame distribution is a perfect example of this. Once he captures my interest he never fails to frustrate me with an unexpected conclusion/recommendation that leaves me scratching my head wondering if there is something wrong with his brain or mine.
His “voucher system” frustrates me, starting with the confusing use of the word “voucher” to mean “a person who vouches for another” rather than “a coupon/slip/receipt”. Second, it is plausible that his “voucher system” could be a viable alternative to our current legal system in a new/developing society but it makes no sense to promote it within our mature legal/economic system and it would be crazy for a new/developing society to experiment with an untested system rather than adopt a proven system with known warts/tradeoffs.
We should be looking at incremental ways to improve the current system rather than large re-writes. Perhaps I’m just missing the incremental opportunities for his “voucher system”.
I don’t think anybody cares about the blame. Where is the money? An individual doctor being sued by an individual patient is inefficient.
The apportionment of blame to where the money is may be a part of the problem. Can only milk so much out of the guy who hits me with a shovel, so I sue the shovel company and society and even the legal system are happy to rally against Big Shovel.
So why do we have an FDA anyway? Does more harm than good to “approve” a drug creating the misperception that a drug is safe, and then turn around and sue the company because it isn’t. A caveat emptor regime with no legal liabilities or approvals would be superior all the way around.
Ummm well. The question is, who specifically should get the blame for widespread mal usage of opioids — individual doctors giving prescriptions to individuals? the drug company salesmen from Purdue who assured doctors that prescribing their synthetic opiates would be safe for their patients? the middle and upper division marketing types at Purdue who decided to push a profitable product without concern for possible problems? the owners of the company who extracted billions of profits from their sales? The lawyers and financial advisors egging on the owners without concern about low level consumers?
There are so many real or potential villains to blame, with so much varying blame — there were surely salesmen who warned physicians about patients becoming addicted to Fentanyl as well as salesmen who laughed off such imaginary concerns. Without scrutiny of every relevant human interaction, a fair allocation of blame is impossible.
And what is fair, anyhow? Should we hit Dr. John Wouldbegood in Pennsylvania a million dollars for each patient who becomes addicted? Or five dollars, with a 100 thousand dollar fine instead for each of the Sacklers and other Purdue stockholders? Or 25 thousand dollars for Wouldbegood and the drug salesman who visited him and the marketing officers at Purdue and the financing types who estimated what patients might willingly pay for such a beneficial product and … You get the idea. Now imagine a hundred thousand affected patients and their survivors suing for damages — every year. What amount should each of them settle for? A paltry million or for a billion “to teach a lesson” in states which permit such lessons?
And are money damages sufficient restitution? We are talking about deaths here, not something to be set right in an afternoon by delivery of a certified check. Or dozens of checks. What would professsors of philosophy say? What’s the relevant phrase from the Ten Commandments? What would rabbinical commenters say? Or imans? Does it matter if the afflicted persons are of high or low social status?
So what are the alternatives to impossible-to-achieve “fair” allocations of blame? We might place the blame directly on the Sacklers, imposing large enough fines to break them down to poverty, while ignoring other persons with lesser financial interest (and less deep pockets) and thus lesser responsibility. It’s a medieval solution, and I gather also the solution that appeals to most libertarians. Or we can say “We’re modern! Our civilization has evolved corporations!” and blame only the Purdue firm, with a single entity bringing suit for its offenses, reducing it to bankruptcy while ignoring the details of individual damages and the ill behavior of its individual owners and employees and letting them escape financial pain, moral guilt, prison time, and loss of social status.
Or we can do something in between, striking some financial blows against the profitability of Purdue and some cost to the social repute of the Sacklers and some problems for Purdue salesmen seeking new employment and so on… which is happening. I don’t know if this is Good, but it seems Understandable. I’m not sure if we should explain the change from medieval treatment simply as “changes in the law” or the invention of the corporation or the notion that the wealth and social status of affluent people should be preserved despite the immoral actions of their underlings. It’s complicated. I think there are worms in this can that many people would be very reluctant to examine.
+1
It’s all about the deep pockets. Most of the “correct” defendants – individuals who could fairly be assigned culpability – are, in most cases, effectively judgment proof given the expense and duration of lawsuits, limited wherewithal, and the kinds of assets and income that are shielded from attachment. The law of vicarious or corporate liability was gradually stretched and twisted (and tortured) until the link between culpable parties and paying parties became too tenuous to generate the old system’s pro-social incentive structure.
One proposed answer to this is “mandatory auto insurance for everything”, and let the insurance companies impose law-like – but actuarially-based – behavioral controls and incentives on everyone in every context. Most likely criminals and tortfeasors simply wouldn’t be able to afford to pay the premiums that allowed them to act in a way that even got them close to any substantial risk that they might cause harm to anyone else.