The puzzle of vulnerability is heightened when one considers the form that the vulnerability of civil liability takes. Classical liberals and libertarians, for example, are willing to tolerate far more economic vulnerability than are high liberals, who believe that the state should create a generous system of social benefits to buffer the individual against the effects of bad fortune or bad decisions.78 Libertarian and classical liberal toleration for vulnerability, however, does not flow from the fact that such vulnerability is seen as a goal. Rather, the vulnerability of individuals to the vagaries of the market, for example, is seen as a necessary (if perhaps regrettable) result of a proper respect for individual rights. Alternatively, one might support a dynamic and largely unregulated market not because it leaves some people vulnerable, but because such a market is seen, in the aggregate, as providing greater social welfare or greater opportunities for upward social
mobility.79 Again, the vulnerability is an unfortunate side effect rather than a goal. The nature of this vulnerability also differs from that created by civil liability. It is not the vulnerability of persons to particular other persons. Rather, it is the toleration of a social system that leaves people vulnerable to what are conceptualized as essentially random accidents. This is true even if the vulnerability is justified by some notion of personal responsibility.80 Hence, for example, one might believe that one should leave the lazy or the shiftless to the economic consequences of their decisions, precisely because
they are lazy and shiftless—in other words, because the vulnerability is deserved. Even this kind of vulnerability, however, is not vulnerability to any particular person.