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JeffS

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What is the evidence that food and drug regulation hasn't been effective?

I've had this debate enough with collectivists that I know how it will end before it begins. It typically goes like this (abbreviated because... well, can't everything be?):

Me: Food and drug regulation is not necessary. Regulation dulls the senses of both producers and consumers; it makes consumers insensitive to demanding assurances that the food and drugs they buy are safe, creating no incentive for producers to provide those assurances.

Collectivist: The only reason we have safe food and drugs is because of government intervention.

Me: That's not true. First, we don't have safe food and drugs. Witness the nearly constant stream of people getting sick from both. Furthermore, kosher and halal food has a much better track record of providing safe food entirely through private market solutions.

Collectivist: Well, you just want to go back to the slaughterhouse days of Vonnegut and the days of snake-oil salesmen. How many people died then?

Me: Probably a lot fewer than popular myth would like us to believe.

Collectivist: But the market didn't provide a solution. Tainted food and drugs were commonly sold.

Me: No widespread solutions, that's true. But the market wouldn't have been able to poison people for very long. Vonnegut merely sped the process along.

Collectivist: Isn't that the point?

So, it seems to me, my argument breaks down at the end. If we closed the FDA tomorrow, where's the proof that we wouldn't just go back to tainted food and drugs? I'm interested to hear how others have addressed this debate, so please don't be put off if I rebut your arguments with collectivist rhetoric.

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If we closed the FDA tomorrow, where's the proof that we wouldn't just go back to tainted food and drugs?

I'm afraid there is no such thing. You're asking for proof of a hypothetical situation. Such a situation is hypothetical because - by definition - it doesn't yet exist in reality.

Let me try a few examples to show why such a question doesn't work:

"If we closed the CDC tomorrow, where's the proof that everyone wouldn't die of flu the next year?"

"If everyone became vegetarian, where's the proof that we wouldn't all live to be 100?"

In my understanding, the correct response to such questions is to put the burden of proof on the asker. They are suggesting a possible future; it is up to them to defend it.

"Why do you assume companies will promptly start turning out tainted food? What company would want its name associated with products that poisoned its customers?"

Also, a lot of people stop buying a product when news of contamination is reported. Once the FDA assures people the product is safe again, purchasing resumes. In a free market, companies would not have the fallback of the FDA and would thus have a motive to maintain quality standards, and respond quickly and publicly to any quality issues.

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Wheres the proof that we don't have tainted food and drugs now?

Turn on the news some time. There's usually a story on tainted food of some kind once every few months.

Your key error was in ceding an important point: namely, that the FDA "ensures" that we have "clean" food and drugs, whereas Capitalism does not. The plain fact of the matter is that the FDA does no such thing. Neither does any system in Capitalism; the point is that the FDA does no demonstrable good, and would not have done any good had it existed pre-capitalism (just as labor laws did not "put an end" to child labor, but the productive forces of capitalism which made it *unnecessary* for them to work in order to live, did.) In fact it does a great deal of harm.

If you have a subscription to The Objective Standard, a good article summarizing whats wrong with the FDA is here: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues...ates-rights.asp

Edited by sanjavalen
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I'm afraid there is no such thing. You're asking for proof of a hypothetical situation. Such a situation is hypothetical because - by definition - it doesn't yet exist in reality.

Let me try a few examples to show why such a question doesn't work:

"If we closed the CDC tomorrow, where's the proof that everyone wouldn't die of flu the next year?"

"If everyone became vegetarian, where's the proof that we wouldn't all live to be 100?"

In my understanding, the correct response to such questions is to put the burden of proof on the asker. They are suggesting a possible future; it is up to them to defend it.

"Why do you assume companies will promptly start turning out tainted food? What company would want its name associated with products that poisoned its customers?"

Yes, very good points. I don't really love my first question because it's not usually how this debate begins. It usually begins with me asserting that regulation is not only unnecessary, but also detrimental. All collectivists seems to gravitate toward the food and drug argument though. With my question, I wanted to try and cut to the chase. I didn't do a very good job.

As to your examples, were I to ask them, "If we closed the FDA tomorrow, where's the proof that every food and drug manufacturer would try to kill everyone." I've posed that question (and ones similar) and invariably get, "Because business people are only in it for themselves and will try to screw everyone they can to make a buck. If they can get away with poisoning people, or selling tainted food, they will."

Me: I agree most business people are in it for their own self-interests, but what makes you think they'll "get away with" killing or hurting people? We have laws against these things which have nothing to do with regulating business - they're the same laws that proscribe punishment for you if you punch me in the face.

They: You just want to go back to the days of Vonnegut and snake-oil salesmen.

Me: No, I don't. I want the government to protect its citizens rights and not let people who harm others escape punishment. This is not how it was at the turn of the century.

They: Well, without government intervention, people's rights would have never been protected.

And, we'll go into a long discussion of rights, I'll get them to agree with me on rights, but they'll still cling to the fact that the government wasn't doing anything to punish producers who poisoned and killed their customers. I have to admit that creating the FDA did lead to protecting people's rights not to be poisoned by producers. It seems to boil down to: why didn't the market respond to these issues before the government stepped in?

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Wheres the proof that we don't have tainted food and drugs now?

Turn on the news some time. There's usually a story on tainted food of some kind once every few months.

Your key error was in ceding an important point: namely, that the FDA "ensures" that we have "clean" food and drugs, whereas Capitalism does not. The plain fact of the matter is that the FDA does no such thing. Neither does any system in Capitalism;

I never cede that the FDA ensures anything. However, it can't be denied that before the FDA existed, and with the advent of mass production of food stuffs, one took their chances eating food from a mass producer; and those chances were not good. Certainly it's true that our food is safer than without any regulation. That regulation doesn't need to come from the government, it can be voluntary as with kosher and halal foods. But absent that regulation, things were not so good around the turn of the century. Why didn't the market provide a solution before the government was forced to?

If you have a subscription to The Objective Standard, a good article summarizing whats wrong with the FDA is here: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues...ates-rights.asp

Thanks for the link.

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I'm not a historian, so I can't give the answer on whether or not the market responded before to the problem of poisoned/contaminated food or not.

As to the issue of regulation, one thing that people on the other side (re: un-Objectivist side) of the debate seem to think is that (at least in my experience) when I bring up de-regulation of the food industry, that I intend for there to be a "anything goes" policy.

That's simply not true. I think Yaron Brook said it best when he said that a law against selling poisoned milk is not regulation - it's a law against murder (LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rca5vLcEe8k...re=channel_page ).

In fact, that whole video is a pretty good argument against safety regulations. I try to use those whenever I have that debate. Then, I know what kind of person I'm dealing with: Either a logical person who can see the reason behind the thinking, or the irrational person who simply clings to his feelings that big, bad business men are out to get the rest of us, and it's only the grace of our benevolent government that saves us.

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Did the government stop child labor, by and large, or did capitalism?

Despite the passage of laws against it, children still worked in various jobs (just in out of the way places less likely to provide good work environments) until there was enough prosperity in general that, by and large, children didn't *have* to work to survive.

Similarly, the FDA did not suddenly improve the quality of foodstuffs and drugs. They were still sold - they stopped being sold when there was enough prosperity that people could, generally speaking, pass up on shady dealers and instead focus on ones that took pride in their foodstuffs and drugs.

Prosperity, not regulations, make for pure food and drugs. There are still rotten fruit and snake oil being sold, even today - but only those who can't afford better food or more reliable drug treatments go to them. The same was true before the FDA existed; but by and large people could not afford better drugs/food anyway. The myth that government agencies accomplished much besides making it harder on the people who could not afford to deal with people who followed their regulations.

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Did the government stop child labor, by and large, or did capitalism?

Despite the passage of laws against it, children still worked in various jobs (just in out of the way places less likely to provide good work environments) until there was enough prosperity in general that, by and large, children didn't *have* to work to survive.

I can prove this with statistics, but...

Similarly, the FDA did not suddenly improve the quality of foodstuffs and drugs. They were still sold - they stopped being sold when there was enough prosperity that people could, generally speaking, pass up on shady dealers and instead focus on ones that took pride in their foodstuffs and drugs.

I can't prove this. Do you have any data to support this?

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I never cede that the FDA ensures anything. However, it can't be denied that before the FDA existed, and with the advent of mass production of food stuffs, one took their chances eating food from a mass producer; and those chances were not good. Certainly it's true that our food is safer than without any regulation. That regulation doesn't need to come from the government, it can be voluntary as with kosher and halal foods. But absent that regulation, things were not so good around the turn of the century. Why didn't the market provide a solution before the government was forced to?

Thanks for the link.

Its simply untrue that there was any substantial risk before the FDA. It isn't as if people were taking their lives into their hands every time they bit an apple or ate some chicken.

Small risk then, smaller risk now (because of new technologies). There never was an emergency.

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Its simply untrue that there was any substantial risk before the FDA. It isn't as if people were taking their lives into their hands every time they bit an apple or ate some chicken.

Small risk then, smaller risk now (because of new technologies). There never was an emergency.

Do you have any evidence to support this? Collectivists have "Slaughterhouse Five." What do we have?

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Do you have any evidence to support this? Collectivists have "Slaughterhouse Five." What do we have?

You're loosing me with the Slaughterhouse-Five references. Is there a different Slaughterhouse-Five that has something to do with food?

Why would he need to prove that food wasn't generally dangerous before the FDA? People ate a lot of it and most of them died from other stuff. Do you have some evidence that a lot of people died from tainted food sources (which is different from food of inferior quality, which is clearly an issue of affluence rather than regulation)? And that those deaths would have been prevented by a regulatory agency, rather than through the advance of technology?

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You're loosing me with the Slaughterhouse-Five references. Is there a different Slaughterhouse-Five that has something to do with food?

Dammit! You're absolutely right, bluey! I'm thinking of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Damn, what a huge faux-pas. Mea culpa.

Why would he need to prove that food wasn't generally dangerous before the FDA? People ate a lot of it and most of them died from other stuff. Do you have some evidence that a lot of people died from tainted food sources (which is different from food of inferior quality, which is clearly an issue of affluence rather than regulation)? And that those deaths would have been prevented by a regulatory agency, rather than through the advance of technology?

That's a great point. I'll try my best at the rebuttal:

How do we know they died from other stuff? Perhaps the poisoned food they were eating caused their illnesses? Chemicals in the food could've caused cancer, or any number of fatal diseases. They didn't have very good forensic science back then, medical examiners would've just written off an early death to hard work rather than the rat poison in their meat.

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Dammit! You're absolutely right, bluey! I'm thinking of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Damn, what a huge faux-pas. Mea culpa.

That's a great point. I'll try my best at the rebuttal:

How do we know they died from other stuff? Perhaps the poisoned food they were eating caused their illnesses? Chemicals in the food could've caused cancer, or any number of fatal diseases. They didn't have very good forensic science back then, medical examiners would've just written off an early death to hard work rather than the rat poison in their meat.

Ahh, well I haven't read The Jungle so I can't comment on that. I thought it was a novel, though?

I think we can be pretty sure that most people before the creation of the FDA weren't dropping dead from rat poison in their food. Here are some reasons:

- no evidence of entire families dying around the dinner table (as they would if their food sources were poisoned)

- no sudden drop in cancer or other fatal diseases after 1906

- no subsequent discovery that the symptoms of rat poison are confusingly similar to the symptoms of hard work

- no evidence of a sudden increase in diet-related deaths after the industrialization of food and before the creation of the FDA

I know you were just throwing that out there as an example but it's complete and unfounded speculation and, even if it weren't obviously untrue, it wouldn't be evidence that food was more dangerous before the FDA. Your imaginary opponents keep arguing that business owners are only out for themselves and will do whatever they can to make a buck, but who are they going to make money from if all their customers keep dying? What motive would a businessman have to provide a lower quality product than its customers could afford? In fact if he did that he would soon lose out to a competitor. If his customers can't afford a better product then how could he afford to provide it to them?

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Ahh, well I haven't read The Jungle so I can't comment on that. I thought it was a novel, though?

I think we can be pretty sure that most people before the creation of the FDA weren't dropping dead from rat poison in their food. Here are some reasons:

- no evidence of entire families dying around the dinner table (as they would if their food sources were poisoned)

- no sudden drop in cancer or other fatal diseases after 1906

- no subsequent discovery that the symptoms of rat poison are confusingly similar to the symptoms of hard work

- no evidence of a sudden increase in diet-related deaths after the industrialization of food and before the creation of the FDA

I know you were just throwing that out there as an example but it's complete and unfounded speculation and, even if it weren't obviously untrue, it wouldn't be evidence that food was more dangerous before the FDA. Your imaginary opponents keep arguing that business owners are only out for themselves and will do whatever they can to make a buck, but who are they going to make money from if all their customers keep dying? What motive would a businessman have to provide a lower quality product than its customers could afford? In fact if he did that he would soon lose out to a competitor. If his customers can't afford a better product then how could he afford to provide it to them?

That's great, bluey. I think that's the answer, or at least I can't come up with a rebuttal to your points. Thanks for your help.

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JeffS:

Its difficult to provide data for a lack of something. If someone wants to provide a novel as "proof" of something, they are just seeking rationalizations, not trying to engaged in reasoned discussion.

Think of it reasonably: Would you buy tainted food or fresh food, if you had a choice? Fresh, obviously. So there is an opening in the market if it was physically possible to bring the freshest food to the market. Thats very important. No government decree can make fruit (or meat) last longer on the shelves. People who could afford to, bought food from places with a reputation of having decent or above quality foodstuffs. People who could not afford to, bought dicey food. What changes when the FDA comes in? Even assuming perfect enforcement, the net result is that people who couldn't afford to eat the freshest foods in the first place now do not have a cheap source of food. Who benefits, here?

The entire scenario the person is positing is based on some faulty assumption that Capitalists would put out bad food - on purpose, and simply because they want other people to suffer.

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The FDA has been the single most destructive force in the history of modern medicine. It is a massive entanglement of government and industry which cartelizes the large pharmaceutical firms and insulates them from market discipline. Data manipulation is standard proceedure. The agency totally prevents the emergence of treatments that cannot be patented by making it unaffordable for companies to put them through the approval process. Perhaps worst of all, regulation has devastating psychological effects on the medical community, causing doctors to forfeit scientific rigor as they capitulate to the regulatory authorities. In a free medical system, doctors would exercise extreme caution and restraint in their prescribing practices and monitor their patients carefully for signs of adverse effects. Under the current system, doctors blindly accept the FDA's rubber stamp of approval as incontrovertible proof of drug safety and proceed to hand drugs out like candy, and anybody who questions the reliability of FDA data is ridiculed as a conspiracy theorist and labeled a quack.

Psychiatry is a good example of what happens under a corrupt regulatory system. The survival of most of the current paradigm of psychiatric medicine depends on the existence of an authoritative regulatory body to suppress the medical community's scientific instincts and prevent people from questioning the philosophic merit of using drugs to artificially elevate a person's mood. The widespread use of SSRIs would never have occurred in an unregulated system. Bullshit labels such as "ADHD" and "oppositional defiant disorder" would also have been shot down quickly without the FDA in place to insist that such diseases exist.

A good test for whether a doctor is competent is simply to ask him whether he is guided by the FDA. If he answers in the affirmative, he is basically unfit to practice as far as I'm concerned.

Edited by cliveandrews
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JeffS:

Its difficult to provide data for a lack of something. If someone wants to provide a novel as "proof" of something, they are just seeking rationalizations, not trying to engaged in reasoned discussion.

Think of it reasonably: Would you buy tainted food or fresh food, if you had a choice? Fresh, obviously. So there is an opening in the market if it was physically possible to bring the freshest food to the market. Thats very important. No government decree can make fruit (or meat) last longer on the shelves. People who could afford to, bought food from places with a reputation of having decent or above quality foodstuffs. People who could not afford to, bought dicey food. What changes when the FDA comes in? Even assuming perfect enforcement, the net result is that people who couldn't afford to eat the freshest foods in the first place now do not have a cheap source of food. Who benefits, here?

Yes, great point.

The entire scenario the person is positing is based on some faulty assumption that Capitalists would put out bad food - on purpose, and simply because they want other people to suffer.

Yes, as well as the faulty assumption that these Capitalists would continue to survive in a free market; that people would continue to buy their bad food despite the fact that everyone who eats it dies. The answer, of course, is that the only way they could survive is through protection. I have no data to back it up, but I would bet any turn-of-the-century food producer who was continually able to get away with poor safety and sanitation had some sort of government protection - probably in the form of strong-arming any journalist who dared to write about them, and a few local cops to make sure the journalist knew his pleas for protection would go unheard.

I've always wondered how these food manufacturers kept such poor sanitation regimes secret. Didn't their employees talk? Did they eat the food? I must assume they didn't. Wouldn't they have told their extended families (and given the fact that these are primarily immigrant workers, we're talking about possibly huge extended families), or their friends? Wouldn't they have talked? It begs reason to imagine they wouldn't. To date, no regulatory body has ever discovered malfeasance; it's always been insiders and whistleblowers. Where were the whistleblowers before the muckrakers of the early 20th century?

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Interesting thread. I'd like to present some opposition, not from me, but common objections that have been presented to me by family members, friends, and acquaintances in support of regulation in these areas. I haven't been able to give what I think is a good counter to their arguments because they are giving concrete examples of issues which do exist or could exist based on issues that do exist, but there may be some history that I am not familiar with as to why these issues exist.

Also, a lot of people stop buying a product when news of contamination is reported. Once the FDA assures people the product is safe again, purchasing resumes. In a free market, companies would not have the fallback of the FDA and would thus have a motive to maintain quality standards, and respond quickly and publicly to any quality issues.

Pro-Regulation counter-argument: (this usually comes up after explaining that the FDA and drug companies collude) Supposing what you say about drug companies working with the FDA to alter or suppress information to protect drug companies from competition, allow them to turn out inferior products, etc. Suppose there is no FDA and they just do the same thing, except they turn to the media and other outlets of information to "buy them off", then what? Now that you don't have a regulatory agency, how do you protect people if the news media is bought and paid for?

This one is a little "out there" but I've heard people say variations of it. The presumption is that - again - even if Government is corrupt, their brand of corruption is better than free-market corruption. I thin kit goes back to the idea that the free-market is inherently corrupt, which is why they trust Big Government over free-enterprise. Ideas?

Your imaginary opponents keep arguing that business owners are only out for themselves and will do whatever they can to make a buck, but who are they going to make money from if all their customers keep dying? What motive would a businessman have to provide a lower quality product than its customers could afford? In fact if he did that he would soon lose out to a competitor. If his customers can't afford a better product then how could he afford to provide it to them?

Pro-Regulation counter-argument: We already have this scenario where businessmen do sell products that kill people. Cigarettes, Alcohol, and what is that? You want to legalize narcotics too? Man, that's crazy. Do we need more businesses selling deadly products? Additionally, pharmaceutical companies make more money selling a drug that treats symptoms rather than selling drugs that solve the problem. Some of them have nasty side effects but it's all about the $$$. Capitalism is evil.

My response: :blush:

People just need to take more responsibility for themselves (businesses included). That should solve any perceived problem of inferior products, but at this point the collective attitude is running wild in the other person and they are not convinced that personal responsibility is "enough" because "we're only human". Now we're on a religious argument about "the depravity of man".

Thoughts? Ideas?

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Pro-Regulation counter-argument: (this usually comes up after explaining that the FDA and drug companies collude) Supposing what you say about drug companies working with the FDA to alter or suppress information to protect drug companies from competition, allow them to turn out inferior products, etc. Suppose there is no FDA and they just do the same thing, except they turn to the media and other outlets of information to "buy them off", then what? Now that you don't have a regulatory agency, how do you protect people if the news media is bought and paid for?

This one is a little "out there" but I've heard people say variations of it. The presumption is that - again - even if Government is corrupt, their brand of corruption is better than free-market corruption. I thin kit goes back to the idea that the free-market is inherently corrupt, which is why they trust Big Government over free-enterprise. Ideas?

You can buy off maybe a few media outlets, but you'd never be able to buy off all of them. We live in a world today that is saturated with news and information - regular Joes are becoming reporters. One example is online reviews. I never eat at a new restaurant before checking it out on the web. If there are negative reviews about food quality or sanitation, I never go there. Furthermore, no company is going to have any long-term viability by continually poisoning their customers. With the FDA (and all regulation) we consumers get lazy - we no longer check out whom we buy from. While very few would ignore reviews about the quality of their next T.V., most would ignore checking out the safety and sanitation of the manufacturers they get their food and drugs from. People want these assurances, but they assume the FDA is giving it to them. It's not. Without the FDA the desire for those assurances would exist, and companies that wanted to remain in business would provide them through independent providers.

In addition, you could point to the fact that kosher and halal food regulation is privately run. This is an example of the private market demanding, and providing, assurances that food is safe and is what it says it is.

Pro-Regulation counter-argument: We already have this scenario where businessmen do sell products that kill people. Cigarettes, Alcohol, and what is that? You want to legalize narcotics too? Man, that's crazy. Do we need more businesses selling deadly products? Additionally, pharmaceutical companies make more money selling a drug that treats symptoms rather than selling drugs that solve the problem. Some of them have nasty side effects but it's all about the $$$. Capitalism is evil.

My response: :blush:

People just need to take more responsibility for themselves (businesses included). That should solve any perceived problem of inferior products, but at this point the collective attitude is running wild in the other person and they are not convinced that personal responsibility is "enough" because "we're only human". Now we're on a religious argument about "the depravity of man".

Thoughts? Ideas?

Well, what choices do they believe we should be allowed to make? The number one killer is heart disease caused from poor diet. Shouldn't the government also force us to eat certain foods? More people have been killed in the name of God (or gods) than for any other reason imaginable - should government decide which religion we choose, or force us to not choose one at all?

There are litterally infinite choices people make which endanger, or harm their lives. Should government make all these decisions for us? After all, we're only "depraved" humans.

Ironically, their argument assumes politicians are issued halos and have their depravity expunged upon election.

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Pro-Regulation counter-argument: (this usually comes up after explaining that the FDA and drug companies collude) Supposing what you say about drug companies working with the FDA to alter or suppress information to protect drug companies from competition, allow them to turn out inferior products, etc. Suppose there is no FDA and they just do the same thing, except they turn to the media and other outlets of information to "buy them off", then what? Now that you don't have a regulatory agency, how do you protect people if the news media is bought and paid for?

It doesn't matter what the news says. It doesn't require the news in order to find out a company is selling harmful products without the buyers knowledge.

Pro-Regulation counter-argument: We already have this scenario where businessmen do sell products that kill people. Cigarettes, Alcohol, and what is that? You want to legalize narcotics too? Man, that's crazy. Do we need more businesses selling deadly products? Additionally, pharmaceutical companies make more money selling a drug that treats symptoms rather than selling drugs that solve the problem. Some of them have nasty side effects but it's all about the $$$. Capitalism is evil.

Sure, the company might be selling harmful products, but the buyer is aware of the harmful effects of these products. This is not the same as selling a harmful product without letting the customer know, which is also known as fraud.

Rob

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Pro-Regulation counter-argument: (this usually comes up after explaining that the FDA and drug companies collude) Supposing what you say about drug companies working with the FDA to alter or suppress information to protect drug companies from competition, allow them to turn out inferior products, etc. Suppose there is no FDA and they just do the same thing, except they turn to the media and other outlets of information to "buy them off", then what? Now that you don't have a regulatory agency, how do you protect people if the news media is bought and paid for?

This one is a little "out there" but I've heard people say variations of it. The presumption is that - again - even if Government is corrupt, their brand of corruption is better than free-market corruption. I thin kit goes back to the idea that the free-market is inherently corrupt, which is why they trust Big Government over free-enterprise. Ideas?

Government-brand corruption is far worse than any kind of free-market problems. Government is supposed to be our means of self-defense against fraud and coercion. When, as now, the government is permitted BY LAW to behave in a criminal manner (i.e., using taxation to collect money for government services), then the whole system is tainted from the start.

Not trusting the profit motive, the desire to create a viable long-term business is a product of corrupt philosophy trying to achieve that very result, and permit more dictatorship & totalitarianism.

The free-market has no means to force you to buy a given product. It can only act to persuade you to buy its products. The government has the power to compel you to do or not do.

The thing about government interventionism in general is that it is not only immoral, but inefficient. You could take as an example the FDA, or various trades & practices standards for home construction or even taxation itself.

With FDA, you have gov't setting down umpteen criteria for what constitutes "safe" food or safe practices for handling food. And yet with all their tons of regulations, there are still businesses that are putting tainted food on the market, or using unsafe food handling procedures. Why isn't the system working? Whose greed is really at fault? I say it's the government's greed via the taxation system, which is making it more & more difficult for businesses to operate safely and making them look for any way to cut corners. The system that intended to ensure healthy food is causing the opposite result. You can't force the result by law. You have to leave it to people to do the best they can do and advertise themselves honestly. If there aren't enough customers willing to accept whatever sub-standard product the person is offering, then that person has to improve their product or find another line of work.

I know that stipulating how something ought to be done, or setting minimum requirements to be enforced by law seem like a good idea to a lot of people, but what it actually achieves is the opposite result. Rather than keeping everyone up to a certain standard, there develops instead a market for corruption. When government sanctions the initiation of force on its own behalf, it sets up a criminal society, one that seems to more and more accept the criminal way of behaving. The honestly successful are treated shabbily or sued for such idiotic things as insider trading or charged with an offense under the Anti-Trust legislation.

***

To look once more at your example, another result of legislated standards is the lethargy it produces in consumers. They think that a government-decreed standard means satisfaction guaranteed. Most people might not admit it, but the benefit they are looking for is the chance to evade the responsibility to think and judge for themselves.

Pro-Regulation counter-argument: We already have this scenario where businessmen do sell products that kill people. Cigarettes, Alcohol, and what is that? You want to legalize narcotics too? Man, that's crazy. Do we need more businesses selling deadly products? Additionally, pharmaceutical companies make more money selling a drug that treats symptoms rather than selling drugs that solve the problem. Some of them have nasty side effects but it's all about the $$$. Capitalism is evil.

My response: :confused:

People just need to take more responsibility for themselves (businesses included). That should solve any perceived problem of inferior products, but at this point the collective attitude is running wild in the other person and they are not convinced that personal responsibility is "enough" because "we're only human". Now we're on a religious argument about "the depravity of man".

Thoughts? Ideas?

My response would be, "Yes, actually, I do want to legalize narcotics too." There are plenty of deadly products on the market already which are only deadly if used improperly. Should they be banned? As for alcohol and narcotics, one man's poison is another's savior. Narcotics will be of immense value to someone dealing with a terrible illness for example.

Relying on people to "follow the money" means that by & large, people will find they make money by offering good quality products.

Edited by AllMenAreIslands
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  • 2 weeks later...
My response would be, "Yes, actually, I do want to legalize narcotics too." There are plenty of deadly products on the market already which are only deadly if used improperly. Should they be banned? As for alcohol and narcotics, one man's poison is another's savior. Narcotics will be of immense value to someone dealing with a terrible illness for example.

Relying on people to "follow the money" means that by & large, people will find they make money by offering good quality products.

Hmmm, I think the argument was lost in the specifics. The anti-deregulation argument I hear uses that as an example. But the argument is actually that businesses would sell deadly products and "get away with it" because there were no immediate consequences. The examples that exist are (allegedly) alcohol and cigs.

Of course, my response has always been take responsibility for yourself. Depending on the argument, you could make a case for consumer reports type associations that rate companies/products. Some people find that unconvincing though. I was wondering if there was a better argument I hadn't thought of.

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Hmmm, I think the argument was lost in the specifics. The anti-deregulation argument I hear uses that as an example. But the argument is actually that businesses would sell deadly products and "get away with it" because there were no immediate consequences. The examples that exist are (allegedly) alcohol and cigs.

Of course, my response has always been take responsibility for yourself. Depending on the argument, you could make a case for consumer reports type associations that rate companies/products. Some people find that unconvincing though. I was wondering if there was a better argument I hadn't thought of.

There are already a slew of Consumer Reports-type associations, including Consumer Reports. Underwriters Laboratories have been around since Edison first lit up New York; there's the MPAA, the RSA, the Car Safety Institute, and some other alphabets I can't remember right now. All are private organizations which provide far more knowlegeable information than any government beuracracy. Not to mention the literally millions of individuals who post reviews on internet web sites. I never buy anything without first researching it, and that research never includes any government information.

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I do believe that a complete deregulation of food, drugs and narcotics would in the end decrease your personal freedom and harm the population. Sooner or later companies will discover the imense powers of physical addiction. even right now millions of people are addicted to alcohol and cigarettes although huge sums are spend to educate people on their dangers.

think about what would happen if mc donalds or coca cola started to add a nice little substance to their products that would make you feel a little better, but that would eventually make you an addict.

sure, a lot of people would avoid these products then but there would be also a lot of people who would buy them, like people buy cigarettes and beer.

and that would be just the start. companies could now develop new and maybe extremly effective substances to make people addicted to their products.

think about a substance that is far more addictive than heroin and free to buy for everyone just around the corner and advertised everywhere. there is at least a risk that a large number of people would become addicts and that can have a great impact on the general society.. just look at Russia's problems with alcoholism.

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