The Economics of Responsibility

This article elaborates on the implications of the fact that all costs are jointly produced, as suggested by the <a href="http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Coase_World.html">Coase Theorem.

One controversial implication is that a victim often plays some role in their own offense. When a boy riding a bike runs over a rock, falls, and gets hurt, their suffering is in part due to the rock but in part due to their own carelessness.

The cost was jointly produced between the boy's carelessness and the offense of the rock.

More controversially, when a woman dresses provocatively and receives an increased level of negative male attention, it is in part the result of her own choice of dress.

Now consider the same woman dressed very modestly. If she were to receive negative male attention it would likely still be in part explained by the facts of her person rather than the men, although of course the men are responsible as well. We now run into two interesting features of the Coase Theorem.

The first interesting feature is that facts of an agent are not always controllable. A woman is a woman and that fact is generally hard to hide. Even moreso in the case of a racist man and a black person, for example. The second fact is that while the cost is jointly produced with the modest woman, it is clear that she was a minority, not dominant cause.

This suggests 2 ways to solve any problem: The offender can stop offending or the victim can do a better job preventing, preparing, discouraging, defending, mitigating, countering, and so on.

Also: are there exceptional cases such as perfect elasticity but for accounting for the problem: is joint always the case or are there purely causal cases?