Entrepreneurialism, Risk and Necessity in Classical Negligence Law
Year: 2012
Type: preprint
Abstract: This Article explores the relationship between framing, necessitarian discourse and risk entrepreneurialism. The most important characteristic typically attributed to entrepreneurs is that they are not afraid to take risks, even during crisis situations, but the risks that they take depend on the legal, situational and political environments in which they find themselves. Entrepreneurs pursue risk-taking when the likelihood of harm to themselves is quite high if they don’t take the risk, but they also pursue risks either because they mistakenly assume that the likelihood of harm to others is quite low, or because they assume that the benefits of their reckless choices will easily outweigh any harm to others. Entrepreneurs, in other words, tend to pursue risks to avoid losses in high probability environments, and pursue risks to secure gains in low probability environments.This pattern of behavior not only mirrors the choice architecture of prospect theory, but it also illuminates how law can encourage or discourage reckless decision-making. All of these issues collided during the classical era when the entrepreneurial ethos reached its zenith in the railroad and transportation industries, and accidents caused by persistent entrepreneurial neglect and extreme risk-taking dramatically increased. During this period, both liberal and conservative decision-makers used fault, foreseeability and contributory liability to construct specific gain or loss frames for entrepreneurs determined to pursue risks regardless of the circumstances.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: A. Jean Thomas
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2287336342