# Personal responsibility, or avoiding responsibility? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 24, 2019, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550 "2019-07-24T16:29:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/142 "2019-07-26T23:13:18Z")
WS, I have stayed within the context of the OP - “Personal responsibility or avoiding personal responsibility” - the purpose of the corporate form is to avoid personal responsibility. ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/143 "2019-07-26T23:33:24Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > The problem here is that I agree with your sentiment. I really do. It **should** work this way. Who would disagree with the basic concept of an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay? If someone goes out busts their ass for 8 hours doing a job, they should be earning enough to put food on the table, and a roof over their head. That is fair and just. > > I mean that. Saying “well tough shit, the world is not fair, life is not fair, deal with it!” Is callous, insensitive and most damning… it is easy. > > But it’s not. Sometimes an honest and full day’s work is just not worth much. Maybe it’s only worth $6/hr. If the minimum wage is $15, that work may not get done and nobody gets anything. Maybe $6 would have helped somebody who now gets nothing. You have taken away his choice, his chance. > > The fact is that some people, especially at the level of very basic unskilled labor come with issues and baggage that lower their $worth/hr. > > I know a landscaper who mows lawns near here, and he pays an hourly wage on a sliding scale based on how many days in a row somebody manages to show up and work a full day, because some of his employees are hungover and sleep in the truck all morning if they show up at all. Others work a couple of days and make enough money to make it through the rest of the week and don’t show up. He basically needs to stock his crew at 150% to count for no shows, and if they all show up he has to pay them all. He has other problems, too that lower the value of the workers who take his jobs. When he finds reliable people he usually gives them a crew and a truck and pays them very well. Even at this level he can’t find enough people who are capable of driving a truck, and responsibly running a crew of 3 other people and 4 lawnmowers to mow lawns on their own. Such a man, when he does find one gets an hourly wage AND a percentage of the earnings generated. He has been running this business the 25 years and he has two of four trucks going, because he can’t find anyone responsible to run the others, and we are talking around $1,000 week such a person could earn. > > Then too, business carries risk, and can run on temporary hard times where the choice might be to close or pay less. > > A farmer can break his back planting a field, but there is no guarantee that locusts won’t eat his crop generating a huge loss in which case his labor had a negative value, or that his crop will recoup his investment. It’s unfair, but it’s true. It’s difficult but not impossible to pass these risk on to one’s labor. The trade off is that if I work that farmer, I get paid regardless of his outcome. If he can’t meet minimum wage and can’t plant his crop, his crop, and my labor and the goods that they could provide are removed from the economy. > > So… it has very real negative consequences. Since I’ve pledged to avoid a minimum wage hijack, I’ve started a related thread in IMHO. [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21772560&postcount=1](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21772560&postcount=1) If you’re uninterested in this side thread, I have no objection to the moderators closing it. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2019, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/144 "2019-07-26T23:45:50Z")
The issue posed by the OP is: “…“personal responsibility” as a value cannot be disconnected from the racist history of a society. It’s very clear that a moral wrong was committed;… and that many residents who benefited and continue to benefit from that moral wrong feel that they didn’t inherit any responsibility in correcting that moral wrong under the guise of personal responsibility.” So, the OP asks if the term ‘personal responsibility’ as used by conservatives is just a trope to avoid a civic responsibility to an underclass that was created by a racist history that benefits us all? Yes - in my view avoiding personal responsibility is basic to the Conservative political philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/145 "2019-07-27T00:31:00Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > WS, > > I have stayed within the context of the OP - “Personal responsibility or avoiding personal responsibility” - **the purpose of the corporate form is to avoid personal responsibility**. Yes, that’s true, but please explain why in terms of funding ship voyages, or any other economic enterprise that involves distribution of risk, how the positives of limiting risk and encouraging investment is a negative. Also, note that if you’re requiring personal liability for an investment, you’re acting as a huge brake on investment. I might be happy to invest £1000 in a ship’s voyage, knowing that if the voyage fails, I’ve lost my £1000. However, if I have to ensure I’m covered for voyage failure, crew injuries, etc., I’m going to be much less likely to take that risk. Under the corporate model, the responsibility for risky decisions hits the people actually making the decisions - in other words the people who have actual personal liability. Granted, they may not actually be able to pay for their bad decisions. But if I’m facing unlimited liabilities for my £1000 investment, then me and every other investor are having to assess the risk of unlimited liability, and there’s a very reduced amount of investment going on. Again, 400+ years of history has shown the value of being able to make investments where the investors liability is limited to the value of the investment. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/146 "2019-07-27T02:46:51Z")
Incorporation is perfectly in line with personal responsibility. When an individual transacts with a corporation, the liability status of individuals in the corporation is implicit in the transaction. Nobody expects Colonel Sanders to hand them the chicken. When Colonel Sanders pays someone to cook a chicken, he is transferring much of that responsibility to the worker, just as I could transfer the responsibility to mow my grass to someone else without violating the principle of personal responsibility. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/147 "2019-07-27T02:54:59Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > OK - my definition of personal responsibility is that one is accountable for all acts personal, physical, legal and financial over which one has authority. > > Show me yours. “Accountable” to whom? Stockholders are not held accountable for investing in bad companies? ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/148 "2019-07-27T04:51:43Z")
WS, you keep arguing that shielding individuals from liability is a good and even necessary thing in some circumstances but you haven’t explained why it isn’t contrary to the idea of personal responsibility. Is your argument that personal responsibility is still a conservative value despite this exception that’s made for good cause, or are you trying to say corporations are somehow still about personal responsibility? ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/149 "2019-07-27T04:54:18Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > “Accountable” to whom? Stockholders are not held accountable for investing in bad companies? Financially unsuccessful companies, to some extent yes. Morally bad companies? Can you give an example of stockholders being held accountable for that? ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/150 "2019-07-27T09:05:02Z")
> [@Esprise\_Me](#): > > WS, you keep arguing that shielding individuals from liability is a good and even necessary thing in some circumstances but you haven’t explained why it isn’t contrary to the idea of personal responsibility. Is your argument that personal responsibility is still a conservative value despite this exception that’s made for good cause, or are you trying to say corporations are somehow still about personal responsibility? With regards to ownership, corporations are not about personal responsibility. The owners are at risk of losing their investment, but unless they are involved in the decision making of the corporation, they aren’t liable for the bad actions of the corporation. I think this is a necessary feature of capitalism. It’s definitely a structure that protects the wealthy. But society as a whole benefits when investment is enabled. However, limiting the risk of owners is different from protecting decision makers within a corporation, which includes the board of directors. Those people should be personally responsible for their actions, and shouldn’t be allowed to blame the corporation or society for their bad acts. For a recent example, look at the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Volkswagen shareholders shouldn’t be subject to lawsuit because Volkswagen engineers and leadership rigged their cars’ exhaust systems. If shareholders were liable, you’d have fewer people investing in car companies. Maybe that’s not so bad for diesel, electric cars aren’t risk free either. I want there to be investment in the next generation of electrical cars. If a collection of executives knowingly release a battery with a hazardous flaw, then absolutely hold each of them responsible, both civilly and criminally. If the consequences cause the company to go bankrupt, then the investors lose the money they put into the corporation, which isn’t a small thing. ---
**Author:** ![fedman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@fedman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/151 "2019-07-27T09:33:50Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I think both liberals and conservatives favor personal responsibility, even if liberals are far less likely to use the phrase; but I don’t think they mean quite the same thing by it. > > I get the impression that what conservatives mean by “personal responsibility” is a combination of two things: > > 1. each person is responsible for their own actions, and the socially-expected results of those actions. > > 2. each adult is financially responsible for paying their own bills, and those of any minor children they have. > > What liberals mean by it is more like: > > 1. each person is responsible for the effects of their own actions. Doing something that accidentally causes harm doesn’t make you a bad person necessarily, and avoiding it entirely may be impossible; but that doesn’t remove the responsibility, and the person who causes accidental harm should do their reasonable best to ameliorate it. > > 2. each person is responsible for pulling their own weight. This may be done in financial or in non-financial forms; ‘their own weight’ is a variable measure both between people and at different points in any one person’s life; and nobody is pulling, or can pull, the whole load. > > Both of these can be hard on people in different ways. The conservative attitude seems to lead to results such as: if you did poorly in school, it’s because you didn’t study hard enough, and you deserve not to be able to get a good job. If, whether or not you did well in school, you don’t have enough money to pay your bills as an adult, this is because you made some wrong choice along the way; you’ve done something wrong, and whether or not you get some form of grudging help you deserve to be denigrated for it. If you took a gamble in your life that didn’t work out (and conservatives seem to be all for encouraging people to ‘take risks’), that’s your own fault, and you deserve to be poor and to be denigrated for it. > > But the conservative sense means that, if you did manage to be doing well financially, and you’re not doing anything obviously considered socially evil such as bashing your neighbor’s head in, you’re off the hook. You can keep all your money, except what you owe for services directly rendered to you, and you don’t have to spend any time or energy or money worrying about anybody else. (The hook may get you unexpectedly at any moment. But that’s usually not allowed for in such thinking, or is handwaved as something that won’t happen if you just keep Doing Everything Right.) > > The liberal sense means that you’re responsible for a whole lot of other people, some of whom you know next to nothing about. If you say something innocently that damages somebody else, you ought to apologize and quit saying it, even if that means that you have trouble thinking of an alternate wording. If you discover that tuna fish caught in Thailand was very likely caught by slave labor, you’re not a bad person for having bought such tuna before you knew about it; but now that you know you ought to be looking at cans of tuna to see where they’re from, and pay extra for the ones that say they were caught and processed somewhere else, and worry that the somewhere else may not be any better. No fair deliberately refusing to look at the news so you won’t find out. And you shouldn’t complain about, and should support directly and/or vote for, money and/or time to be spent to help people who aren’t doing as well as you are; at least as long as the money and/or time to be spent won’t do you serious harm. > > But when you need help yourself, you’re off the hook. Because nobody can be expected to pull the whole load, and at any given time some people can pull less than others; and that doesn’t mean they’re bad people who ought to be denigrated. As long as you’re doing your best to pull what you reasonably can, that’s enough. but the same conservatives do not apply “personal responsibility” when banks default due to their bad decisions, then it’s okay for “welfare” for businesses ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/152 "2019-07-27T12:57:30Z")
> [@fedman](#): > > but the same conservatives do not apply “personal responsibility” when banks default due to their bad decisions, then it’s okay for “welfare” for businesses You’re referencing the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis, correct? You are aware that many banks did go bankrupt, and many others were partially taken over by governments in exchange for funds to provide liquidity? That thousands of people lost their jobs and millions of investors lost their investment? Pretty much everyone that was involved with the troubled banks suffered financial consequences. On top of that, the US government fined banks $150 billion. ([Ten years on: The financial crisis in numbers | The Week](https://www.theweek.co.uk/87574/ten-years-on-the-financial-crisis-in-numbers)) What do you want - blood? Your “welfare for businesses” was worldwide government interventions to save the banking systems that are a lynchpin of the modern economy. Those interventions, and the actions necessary to restore liquidity, cost the banks and their owners huge amounts. You can make the argument that banks were inadequately regulated before the crash and should have had tighter lending policies. Of course if that had happened, you’d be complaining about conservative-led banks refusing to lend to the poor. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/153 "2019-07-27T16:23:33Z")
WS, Of course there is an argument in favor of the financial benefits of the corporate form. But, that is not the issue under discussion. Can you argue that incorporation does not shield participants from personal responsibility? ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/154 "2019-07-27T16:26:01Z")
Scylla, If personal responsibility is limited to supporting ones self and family then is the society obligated to provide an environment in which it can be done? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/155 "2019-07-27T19:06:57Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > Those who make a net positive contribution to our society. How do you determine this? Are you looking only for people that can hit the ground running and help SpaceX get its next rocket into orbit, or are we talking about people with potential? Do children make a net positive contribution? I would say that the overwhelming majority of those who want to come here and make a better life for themselves and their families will be net positive contributors, and in fact, immigrants tend to contribute to the economy more than native born. So, if your only desire is to get people in here who will be contributors, than your best bet is to outlaw reproduction of citizens and get as many immigrants here as you can. > [@](#): > > I may be wrong, but I think he is fine with legal immigration. That’s up in the air, but any legal immigration that he wants is based on racist ideals, not based on who would make a net positive contribution to our society. > [@](#): > > I don’t think I’ve made such a complaint. It doesn’t make sense to extend benefits to non citizens, when our society does not fully meet the needs of all of its less fortunate ones though. So, I am not a fan of benefits to illegals. This addresses nothing that I have said. I talked about helping those less fortunate, which includes, and in my statement was only referring to, your fellow citizens. I have no idea why you chose to throw in your stuff about non-citizens, and then without missing a beat, then conflate non-citizens with the soft slur of “illegals”. > [@](#): > > Yes. Economically the country needs more. Yep, unfortunately, those we need are currently sitting in a detention center wondering if they will ever see their children again. > [@](#): > > This may surprise you, but not all jobs can or should provide a living wage. This may surprise you, but people need a living wage in order to you know, live. Sure, I agree that not all jobs can or should, but jobs should be available that do. If there are no jobs that one can obtain that pay a living wage, then the job market has failed at its job. > [@](#): > > What do you mean make plans for? This whole market economy thing works because people respond to incentives. They are capable of determining their market value, making plans and decisions for themselves as individuals better than we are. If they have access to the resources to fully understand and implement their decisions, which they do not, which is why your theory here utterly fails in the real world. > [@](#): > > Why not. Labor is a service like any other good or service. What is the nature of your objection to suggest that it is invalid? Labor is not a service like any other good or service. In fact, labor is not considered by economists to be a good or a service, but rather, an input into goods and services. Do you also consider rent and capital to also be no different than other goods and services? Tell you what, you said you had economics friends, you ask them your question of “People own their own labor and can sell it as they see fit. If it was not a living wage, wouldn’t they go elsewhere, thus limiting supply and driving up price?”. After the congratulate you on making a good joke, then explain that no, you are serious, and you do not understand why they do not go elsewhere in order to drive up the price. They will start off by trying to explain terms like “fungibility” and “elasticity” to you, but if you then tell them that they need a refresher because they don’t agree with you that the labor market can be accurately modeled by a simple curve on a supply demand graph, they will use terms amongst themselves like “opportunity cost” and “dead loss”, then they will go out to lunch without inviting you along. > [@](#): > > I’m not insulting. To speak intelligently about this topic you either have to know certain things, or be cognizant of your ignorance. That is, to know that you don’t know. You are demonstrating neither. That’s not an insult. It’s an observation. It is observed by the fact that I called you out on your simplistic notion that you can model the labor market with a single curve on a supply demand graph? That’s a pretty poor observation on your part. Your post demonstrated a massive ignorance of the nuance of economics, and your followup posts have done nothing to show otherwise. As your only basis for thinking that I need a refresher was in my pointing out of your simplistic post, it is you that everyone can observe to be severely lacking in this subject. > [@](#): > > Yes. Why is that a problem? Okay, so how bad do you want to let things get? Keep in mind that whole food riots are one of the least efficient way of distributing resources, they are an inevitable effect of seeing how bad things can get. > [@](#): > > Yes. The unemployment rate should be higher. Overall the fact that is not means that we are not doing as well as we could. Actually, as an employer, I kinda agree. It is hard to attract and retain good talent in the current labor market. Unfortunately, I cannot raise my pay much without raising my prices, and I can’t raise my prices unless there are more customers that are able to afford them. > [@](#): > > Unfortunately, that’s just a fact. I disagree. There were times in history that that was true. There were times when there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone, so there were those who went without. Now there is. Now we have houses sitting empty with homeless in the street. We have food being wasted with people suffering from malnourishment. These are not a lack of resources needed to take care of people and alleviate their suffering, these are artificially created scarcities that serve only to enrich the already wealthy at the expense of others. > [@](#): > > Not right now. Why should the government pay to train workers and move them for corporations? Especially when those corporations are desperate for workers. Why would we subsidize the Fortune 500 any more than we already are? Believe it or not, the Fortune 500 is actually not the only employers out there. There are many more smaller companies that are trying to grow, and need edcuated workers to do so. I ask, since you are against retraining, are you also against training, as in publicly funded school systems? Do you complain that we spend public monies in order to train workers for the Fortune 500? > [@Shodan](#): > > You misunderstand. I wasn’t pointing out that Romney was wrong, because he wasn’t. I was pointing out that you were wrong, because you are. That is, your claim that Romney’s wealthy peers do not pay taxes for the government services they receive is amusingly bizarre, but not otherwise worthwhile. In order for me to be wrong, then there would be no high net worth person who payed no federal income tax. In order for Romney to be wrong, there only needs to be one high net worth person who didn’t pay federal income tax. Is that the hill you are willing to die on here, that not a single one of Romney’s peers managed to avoid paying federal income tax? > [@](#): > > Also, your notion that property taxes are regressive. Can you explain how a person with a million-dollar home pays less in property taxes than a person living in an apartment? Rhetorical question, obviously, because you can’t. Your question makes no sense, as a regressive tax does not mean that the wealthy pay less, but that they pay less proportionally to their income. Please rephrase your question into something that resembles reality and try again. > [@](#): > > I am not strawmanning you. You are strawmanning yourself, and not doing a very good job. You straight up admitted that you were strawmanning in that last post. Are you taking that back? > [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > Maybe it’s because I live abroad, but with the possible exception of relocation assistance which I haven’t heard about as a government program, I consider every one of the things you’ve listed to be a conservative value. My starting point is that I want a government that’s effective and that operates under a reasonable tax burden. That requires that the vast majority of people meet most of their own needs. It also involves trade-offs. At their worst, liberals have a very broad list of the needs government should meet, far more than your basic list, and think that all those needs can be met if the rich are taxed sufficiently. And their definition of rich is someone making more money than they are. You may consider them to be conservative values, but, when talking about the US, the party that claims to be conservative considers them to be an anathema. > [@](#): > > By the way, in a thread about personal responsibility, if we want to talk about a proposed US federal program that liberals favour and traditional conservatives should disagree with, can we talk about the Student Loan Debt Relief Act? If you want evidence liberals don’t believe in personal responsibility, there you go: > [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/23/elizabeth-warrens-student-debt-bill-would-help-45-million-students.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/23/elizabeth-warrens-student-debt-bill-would-help-45-million-students.html) Student loan debt is a problem for more than just the student. It is a problem for the economy, the job market, well for everyone. I personally have a bit of SLD, meaning that I give about $400 a month to some loan companies, rather than spending it in the economy. Now, if you understand debt, then you know that when you create debt, you create money, you grow the economy. When you retire debt, you destroy money, you shrink the economy. There is 1.5 trillion in student debt, and that is 1.5 trillion dollars that will not be contributing to the economy. It’s a double sided problem. Not only does the debt hold back students from becoming productive members of society, but the apprehension of taking on the debt will dissuade many from pursuing a degree. The ability to take on debt to finance education is one of the factors that allowed tuition costs to explode as they have. So, student loan debt makes students less able and/or willing to go to college, it burdens those students and prevents them from moving on with their life, and it drains money out of the economy that all these 20-30 college graduates should be spending. [quote] > [@Bone](#): > > I’m not quite sure because it’s difficult and tedious to read the fisking style you seem to like, but this sounds like both a personal insult, and an accusation of lying. Dial back the hostility, or go play in the Pit where it’s appropriate. > > [/moderating] I apologize, at the time, I thought that Shodan was admitting that that line was an example of a strawman, and so I was responding to the fictional poster that would hypothetically make such a bad faith statement. Now that he has changed his mind, and claimed the statement as one of his own, I can see how my comments would be seen as directed at him. Quick question, was your observation of my posting style an actual mod instruction, or just a chance to get a dig in while wearing the mod hat? I’ll admit to the fisking(even though it makes it sound dirty), as that is not an inaccurate description of how I make sure that I respond to the things that other posters say, but I find the style of declaring “So, you’re wrong” in response to any question you can’t answer or point you cannot refute to be far more tedious. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/156 "2019-07-27T19:19:30Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > With regards to ownership, corporations are not about personal responsibility. The owners are at risk of losing their investment, but unless they are involved in the decision making of the corporation, they aren’t liable for the bad actions of the corporation. I think this is a necessary feature of capitalism. It’s definitely a structure that protects the wealthy. But society as a whole benefits when investment is enabled. However, limiting the risk of owners is different from protecting decision makers within a corporation, which includes the board of directors. Those people should be personally responsible for their actions, and shouldn’t be allowed to blame the corporation or society for their bad acts. > > For a recent example, look at the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Volkswagen shareholders shouldn’t be subject to lawsuit because Volkswagen engineers and leadership rigged their cars’ exhaust systems. If shareholders were liable, you’d have fewer people investing in car companies. Maybe that’s not so bad for diesel, electric cars aren’t risk free either. I want there to be investment in the next generation of electrical cars. If a collection of executives knowingly release a battery with a hazardous flaw, then absolutely hold each of them responsible, both civilly and criminally. If the consequences cause the company to go bankrupt, then the investors lose the money they put into the corporation, which isn’t a small thing. I’ll agree that shareholders shouldn’t be liable for the actions of a company that they invested in, but directors and CEO’s absolutely should be. I see corporations as sociopaths with superhuman powers\*. You can tell a superhuman sociopath to make widgets, to provide customer services, or to rob a bank. It has no morals or conscience, and so will do anything within its power with equally lacking sense of pride or guilt. Their CEO’s and directors are the guardians of this entity, and should be wholly responsible for the harms caused. I have rarely seen the people in charge of a corporation to be held to nearly the same account as if a average citizen had caused the same amount of damage. People do sometimes claim that it is not fair to the investors that their investment itself is at risk if the company is held liable for the damage it causes. I’d also like to point out that an LLC does not entirely absolve the owner from liability of debts. Landlords and banks are not stupid, and will require an actual person to sign a personal guarantee on the debt, meaning that if the LLC goes belly up, the owner may well be stuck with debts incurred by it. \*superhuman, not supernatural. They can do things that individual humans cannot. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/157 "2019-07-27T19:39:43Z")
> [@Esprise\_Me](#): > > Financially unsuccessful companies, to some extent yes. Morally bad companies? Can you give an example of stockholders being held accountable for that? Morally bad companies become financially unsuccessful. It may take awhile. In any case, to suggest someone should be held directly responsible for someone they didn’t personally hire, don’t know, and do not supervise or manage is not what most people would consider personal responsibility. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/158 "2019-07-27T19:47:49Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > You know, after I posted last night I thought "I bet that bit about such jobs being meant for teenagers whose families are well able to support them is going to show up’. > > And if that were really what was going on, there’d be something in that argument. But for there to be anything in that argument, then it would have to be in the ordinary course of events for nearly everyone to work such jobs as teenagers – and probably for a while afterwards, because there’s massively more poorly paid work than could possibly be done by teenagers, especially if they’re supposed to have any chance to go to school; and then it would need to be in the ordinary course of events for nearly everyone, by the time they were old enough to start raising kids, to start being paid enough to support themselves and to support those kids. > > But that’s not what happens. What happens is that yes, some teenagers who don’t really need the money take such jobs for a while and then move on to much better paid work; some other people never do the poorly paid work at all; and a whole lot of others wind up in such work as adults, because most of it is, after all, the basic work that needs to be done to keep the society going, so we need a whole lot of people to do it. I mentioned several different part-timers besides teenagers. You know there is data on this? About 1 in 5 workers is a part time worker? Contrary to your opinion, the part time labor force is pretty big. Do you know that we have a whole government agency that does nothing but complete labor statistics? If you can’t get into statists, you might check out [bus.gov](http://bus.gov) and take a look at some actual data. > [@](#): > > I’m 68. During my life ever since I became old enough to notice, every time that there have been proposals to raise the minimum wage I’ve seen those same arguments. And every time, sooner or later, the minimum wage gets raised; generally not enough, but far more than those people making the arguments want it raised. And every time so far the roof has not fallen in and society has not collapsed. Big whoop. It’s not going to. You are just going to some businesses suffer, others close, and a bunch of workers who need the job getting fired.’ > [@](#): > > Alternatively, of course, we could leave wages where they are, but provide benefits to the people in those jobs so that they can still live decent lives – and do so without giving them a hard time about qualifying, without making them worry every month that they won’t have enough to manage, and in particular without complaining that they’re not being personally responsible and therefore don’t really deserve any help. Maybe you could do that. I don’t have that kind of cash laying around. > [@](#): > > Theoretically, property taxes aren’t regressive, because they’re generally based on the value of the property, and rich people do indeed buy or rent more expensive houses than poor people do (though as there are multiple factors involved that’s not a perfect match.) > > But they are indeed often regressive in practice, because current value of a home is often drastically disconnected from both current income and overall wealth of its owner(s). > > People don’t pack up and move every year to a house or apartment commensurate with their current income. (If they did, not only would this be massively disruptive both of community ties and of individual lives, but it would be horrendously expensive.) It’s quite common, in many areas, for people to still be living in property they purchased twenty or fifty years ago, or that their parents or grandparents purchased even longer ago. Many places that were cheap when they were bought have become horrendously expensive due to accidents of location – lakefront property even if liable to flooding, for instance, is now often priced extremely high. And the tax assessments are based on what somebody – almost anybody, including someone from a densely populated area on the far side of the country – would pay for it. So people with almost no financial resources can wind up stuck with the same property tax the millionaire is paying. Oh my fucking God, what a disaster!!! You mean they bought a house for 60k a long time ago and now it’s Worth millions? Those poor bastards! > [@](#): > > A lack of incentives means that people don’t see any likely chance that changing what they’re doing will produce any improvement. That doesn’t mean that they’re satisfied. It only means that they don’t want to go through a lot of extra trouble and disruption in order to wind up no better off, and considering the costs of said trouble and disruption quite possibly worse off. Quantitatively, that is exactly what I said, only pessimistically phrasesd. No, that’s not the unfortunate reality we must recognize. You’ve entirely missed possibility 4: > [@](#): > > We as a society invest in plants manufacturing solar panels, windmills and windmill equipment, and whatever else actually is currently needed; site these plants in areas where coal mines and other obsolete or otherwise unfavored jobs are dying; and provide training and work in the area where the people losing their jobs are already living, so they don’t need to move away from the places they’ve lived their whole lives, their friends and family, and not so incidentally the support structure provided by those friends and family, which is probably all that’s keeping them going right now. So, you want the government to compete with private industry? You are aware that these types of industries already exist, yes? What are you going to do with all the workers you’ve displaced by training miners to do their jobs? Invest in retraining build new plants and destroy another industry? What if good locations for solar and wind aren’t near where the miners are? > [@](#): > > But the whole point being made here is that they’re not supporting themselves at a low paying job; because those jobs don’t pay enough for people to support themselves on. Yes. You said this beforehand and I explained to you that not everybody who is working needs or is willing to commit to a job that provides a living wage, and that forcing all jobs to pay a certain amount tends to make jobs below that threshold of value disappear, removing the marginal utility that those jobs and paychecks and services provide to the economy. You are just doing damage. Good intentions combined with ignorance tend to do that. > [@](#): > > So you do need to be aware of the consequences, and are responsible for them, if the pesticide used to grow your grapes is killing children in the country in which the grapes are grown but you buy those grapes even though you could afford to buy ones grown without doing such damage? No. I gave that to you as an example to show how flawed that kind of thinking was. Virtually all the shit you buy and everything you do causes harm. > [@](#): > > I thought in post 88 that you were giving being aware of the consequences of which food you choose to buy as an example of something you thought was absurd to bother with. Maybe I was wrong. No. > [@](#): > > And we are all a burden on each other. It’s unavoidable. We should all do our best to carry our share of the burden; but claiming you can be entirely self sufficient requires a very narrow and temporary definition of “self sufficient.” You are dependent, among other things, on the work being done by the people in those jobs which don’t pay enough to live on. I’d that’s your response, you completely don’t understand what I am talking about. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/159 "2019-07-27T19:54:51Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > WS, > > Of course there is an argument in favor of the financial benefits of the corporate form. But, that is not the issue under discussion. Can you argue that incorporation does not shield participants from personal responsibility? It does, but that is the point. That it is abused is the problem, not that it exists. That those in power push to increase the loopholes in which i is abused is also a problem, but once again, this is not a disparagement against the basic idea limiting the potential losses of an investor to that of the investment. To your example of the home builders, I am having trouble finding any particular cited research on the topic, but I will agree that it is a very common complaint among home buyers that their less than 5 year old home is falling apart, and the contractor that built it has flown the coop. The way that that works out exactly, I do not know, but I do personally know several homeowners stuck with tens of thousands of dollars in repairs that should have been taken care of by the original builder. Yes, there is (or at least was) absolutely a loophole that allowed these home builders to escape the responsibility of building a sound home and standing behind their work. > [@Crane](#): > > Scylla, > > If personal responsibility is limited to supporting ones self and family then is the society obligated to provide an environment in which it can be done? Of course not. The truly responsible family builds its own cabin, builds its own road, educated its own children and those who work for them, produces its own safe water, disposes of its own sewage… They owe nothing back to society. [Here’s a brief documentary on the subject.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo) ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/160 "2019-07-27T20:20:56Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > I’d that’s your response, you completely don’t understand what I am talking about. As the post that line’s from is your response, you completely don’t understand what I am talking about. Just got back from doing a market on four hours’ sleep. I may go into more detail tomorrow or the next day, if I decide that it might be worth it if only for other readers. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2019, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550/161 "2019-07-27T22:44:46Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Scylla, > > If personal responsibility is limited to supporting ones self and family then is the society obligated to provide an environment in which it can be done? You know, people can have other responsibilities and ethics besides Personal responsibility, right? Your second question is nonsensical. Society can’t give or take away the ability. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/personal-responsibility-or-avoiding-responsibility/837550.md?page=9)