alt Hacker NewsThe stuff about laws no longer being aligned with shared ethics makes sense. Nowadays, there seems to be a lot of focus on the wording of the law rather than intent or ethical principles. This focus on wording reflects a lack of moral grounding and it is the source of loopholes. I doubt such word 'loophole' would even have existed in medieval times. It's an absurd concept, just like the concept of 'limited liability' or the concept of 'corporate personhood'...
Just try to explain out loud what 'limited liability' actually means... Imagine the damage you inflict on others vs the liability you incur is a pie graph. Who is paying for that slice of damage you did which you did not pay for? Somebody is paying. Limited liability is a corrupt philosophy. There is no excuse. Economies of scale, efficiency, blabla, invalid excuses and impossible to actually prove as beneficial by all definitions, from all perspectives.
The coercive coupling of state and money, the concept of limited liability and the concept of corporate personhood have created a society which is deeply corrupt but which maintains a superficial veneer of civility.
People's happiness and sense of justice in this system depends entirely on their ignorance of the functioning of the system. I suppose this hasn't really changed much since the times of slavery. The slave owners were often religious and often saw themselves and their society as highly moral. It all rested on a small number of self-serving assumptions.
The unjust social order used to be held together by false narratives around racial differences. Nowadays it's held together by false narratives around arbitrary social achievements which any intelligent person would realize aren't worthy of regard once analyzed properly through the lens of justice and ethics. Modern achievements barely even deserve regard from an amoral game theory point of view because the playing field is so extremely asymmetric.
The whole modern system is held together by empty superficial ideas; words not backed by real meaning and numbers not backed by real value. It's a hollow scheme. It's probably why the feeling of 'emptiness' permeates every facet of our existence as individuals in this society, it is its foundation. The taller the pillar, the more hollow it has to be.
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> Who is paying for that slice of damage you did which you did not pay for? Somebody is paying.
Lots of somebodies, possibly - after limit is reached, and company is stripped down and sold into pieces, victims and creditors might still be left with uncompensated damage or debt that cannot be collected. Some of them knew the risks and factored it into their businesses; then there's insurance, and ultimately taxpayers and the state programs.
So, as I understand it, things add up properly in the end. Limiting liability creates additional risk, which is accepted by the parties involved and then mitigated, passed around and distributed the usual way companies do it.1
Maybe I'm just a modern economy apologist, but it kinda makes sense to me. A lot of things in economy started making sense to me once I realized that risk is something that can be priced and managed. Market runs on probabilities, even if regular people rarely see it.