No one seems to be responsible for anything anymore. To take on a duty seems almost quaint in a world where honor has become a historical oddity. To have responsibility means you have an obligation to do something. And sadly many seem to be saying who wants that?
And yet we can’t substitute liability for responsibility. At best a liability has a specific meaning in financial and legal realms.
To be liable for something means there are repercussions if something bad happens. We’ve got whole professions dedicated to avoiding liability.
Browsing for insight on the difference yields interesting Reddit threads. If you want to get into international law you can really get tied into intellectual and moral knots.
The interplay between the obligation to prevent harm and the prohibition to cause harm, the question of cessation and the procedural treatment at the International Court of Justice of the issues of injury, causality and reparation owed
International Responsibility of Public Institutions
This is on my mind because Norfolk Southern reached a 600 million dollar settlement for the train derailment in East Palestine Ohio.
What we owe each other seems to only ever resolve itself when money changes hands. And perhaps that’s simply not good enough. If we only look to reduce liabilities because duty is simply too much to ask (or too dangerous a commitment) then is it any wonder no one wants to be bond to one another?
