We increasingly use lawyers to punish companies that do bad things, rather than looking to the government for regulation,
This is not due to any lack of regulation, but rather a lack of willingness on the part of the government to actually do its job from the point of view of the people. We have a ridiculous amount of regulation and bureaucracy, but put "pro business" Replublicans in the political appointee slots and all that regulation and bureaucracy ends up doing is making the system more incomprehensible and perpetuating the bureaucracy without actually protecting the environment, workers, or consumers.
The litigiousness of society, however, is not in my view a product of ineffective government regulation (except within the court system itself). A court culture where lawyers are allowed to bring any action, no matter how ludicrous, before a judge without facing any penalty, and to bring such actions on a contingent fee basis where if they win, even if it's a long shot, they get 30% of an enormous damage award, creates an enormous oversupply of parasitic lawyers who actively encourage clients to file suits in cases that should never have gone to court. And a society that has been trained in the idea that any time something bad happens, it's always somebody else's fault and their responsibility to fix it provides eager customers for said parasites.
When they make me king of the world, I'll fix it by mandating two things. First, adding a fundamental principle to the Constitution: just because something bad happens does not mean you're entitled to blame someone else for it; you must prove the other party actually did something blameworthy before you can claim damages or convict them of an offense. In short, "shit happens." Second, serious penalties for wasting the court's time with frivolous garbage, beginning with full responsibility for the cost of the wasted time and rising to disbarment of the lawyers involved and criminal punishment for repeat offending plaintiffs.
no subject
This is not due to any lack of regulation, but rather a lack of willingness on the part of the government to actually do its job from the point of view of the people. We have a ridiculous amount of regulation and bureaucracy, but put "pro business" Replublicans in the political appointee slots and all that regulation and bureaucracy ends up doing is making the system more incomprehensible and perpetuating the bureaucracy without actually protecting the environment, workers, or consumers.
The litigiousness of society, however, is not in my view a product of ineffective government regulation (except within the court system itself). A court culture where lawyers are allowed to bring any action, no matter how ludicrous, before a judge without facing any penalty, and to bring such actions on a contingent fee basis where if they win, even if it's a long shot, they get 30% of an enormous damage award, creates an enormous oversupply of parasitic lawyers who actively encourage clients to file suits in cases that should never have gone to court. And a society that has been trained in the idea that any time something bad happens, it's always somebody else's fault and their responsibility to fix it provides eager customers for said parasites.
When they make me king of the world, I'll fix it by mandating two things. First, adding a fundamental principle to the Constitution: just because something bad happens does not mean you're entitled to blame someone else for it; you must prove the other party actually did something blameworthy before you can claim damages or convict them of an offense. In short, "shit happens." Second, serious penalties for wasting the court's time with frivolous garbage, beginning with full responsibility for the cost of the wasted time and rising to disbarment of the lawyers involved and criminal punishment for repeat offending plaintiffs.