One of the most frequent criticisms of class action lawsuits is that they are often meritless. This is an important component of the campaign against class actions. If most class actions are meritless, then many of the virtues about private enforcement become moot: even if private lawyers are more effective than government bureaucrats at enforcing the law, if most of the enforcement efforts are misguided, why would we want them to be effective? The profit motive would simply be giving us more of something we don’t want. Better to have someone ineffectual than someone effectual when it comes to delivering bad stuff.