Responsibility in ORIA is proportional. It scales with knowledge, foreseeability, capacity, role, power, benefit, and how one responds after harm — and it is never assigned without limit to those who have least.
Proportional, and upward
The more power, knowledge, and capacity a person or institution has, the more responsibility they carry. The proportionality runs upward: assigning system-scale burdens to person-scale agents is itself an evasion — it lets the powerful hide behind everyone’s guilt.
Responsibility without blame
One can owe repair-work toward a system one benefits from but did not create. Responsibility of that kind is real, and it is not the same as personal blame — repair is not confession. ORIA keeps causal, moral, legal, role, collective, inherited, and repair responsibilities distinct rather than collapsing them.
Discomfort is not harm
Truth told with care, a boundary held, or accountability applied may cause distress without being wrongful; a framework that cannot say this becomes a comfort-protection racket. The reverse error is also named: “it’s just discomfort” is a standard move for dismissing real harm. Telling the two apart is part of the work.