🚀 go-pugleaf

jls wrote:
> On Feb 12, 6:47 pm, Melanie Rocky Ford
> <spoofeddatnos...@RockyForda.nat> wrote:
>> BDK <B...@twilight-express.com>  wrote :
>  [...]
>> Is everything that happens to us, someone else's fault, that they should
>> be sued for?
> 
> Behold.  A wacky strawman argument from a loonytarian.

Spot on analysis.  It *is* a straw man.

The unfortunate thing is, Melody is doing a piss-poor 
job of presenting a libertarian perspective.  There is 
nothing incompatible about a market economy and strict 
tort laws.  In fact, I contend that an aggressive tort 
system is an intrinsic part of a market economy:  you 
can make and sell whatever you want, but you bear the 
consequences - all of them.  The alternative is a 
heavy-handed regulatory scheme like that in most of 
western Europe, in which you sometimes are simply 
forbidden from selling some risky something, even 
though there's a demand for it.

The problem in our country is imaginary liability, in 
an attempt to go after the guy with the deepest 
pockets.  Randy Cassingham's "True Stella Awards" 
website, http://www.stellaawards.com/, spotlights a lot 
of these.  One that he showcased not long ago was about 
the husband of a daycare center operator running his 
riding lawnmower over a kid and killing him.  It was 
clearly negligence on the part of the operator, but the 
jury awarded millions in damages against the lawnmower 
manufacturer, despite the fact that the mower was 18 
years old and the industry had *never* seen fit to add 
any kind of "shut-off" switch in the intervening 18 
years.  It was clearly a case of going after someone 
with deep pockets, under a theory of fabricated 
liability.  It stunk.

But McDonald's was *directly* liable for the 
temperature of their coffee.  They had been warned by 
their own internal consultants that they risked 
injuring customers.


>> If we spill hot coffee in our own lap in the car, should we sue the
>> coffee growers?
> 
> Only McD's was sued.  There was evidence showing the coffee cup was
> defective and dangerous for the purpose for which it was intended, i.
> e., to hold scalding hot coffee.  After this lawsuit McD's coffee cups
> were redesigned.   The law sometimes works.  In this case it worked to
> force McD's to do that which it should have done-- cool their coffee
> and redesign their cups -- before Stella Liebeck had her crotch
> scorched.

Technically, scalded; scorching is a dry heat, while 
scalding is with liquid or steam.  A minor quibble.

The point is well taken.

>> The coffee sellers? The restaurant? The car company who
>> sold us the car? It's absurd and is caused by the new socialism.
> 
> Such incoherent babble, not even fit to reply to.  Some people are
> incapable of rational thought because, well, they're just intellectual
> slackards.  I suspect your problem, however, is a pea-brain.
> Loonytarianism is a sanctuary for hopeless pea-brains so you're in
> good company.

Small-"l" libertarianism is perfectly respectable, but 
Melody's problem is she doesn't really understand it.