Who needs government regulation on consumer products? Just have some Radithor and be happy.
‘Zilla, I didn’t order a strawman. Please return it to sender. Thank you.
Let’s not be hasty. To consider just a couple of examples: regulators and inspectors prevented e. coli deaths from tainted meat, spinach, and juice; and, they prevented blindness from contact lens solutions.
We are also safe from being killed in no-knock raids, and from having our property seized via eminent domain. You might also be aware that regulators prevented a global financial meltdown through their vigilance.
Now, Godzilla might argue that I should imagine how much worse it would be without so much help from the regulators.
He might be right, so I will continue to insist that my barber be licensed.
Ooo! Can I play? How ’bout the way the way the government efficiently protects us from threats in the most regulated aspect of modern life — air travel?
God, I dunno if you should pick on radiation therapy as a place where government regulation fell down, or helped. You might keep in mind that government in the 1920 and 30s — the heydey of “Radithor” and such products — was just as careless about radiation explosure. Heck, can we recall it was the government that is now paying a fortune in damages to those exposed — in many cases without consent — to massive amounts of radiation during the Atomic Age, from the native residents on Pacific atomic atolls, to those downwind of nuclear air tests in Nevada, to soldiers and sailors ordered into Grounds Zero mere minutes after atomic blasts?
It’s not like the dangers of low-level radiation were obvious — to anybody — and it was merely the carelessness or cupidity that made unregulated medicine sell the stuff to ignorant consumers. No one knew the dangers, then. There’s a good reason Marie Curie, the foremost early expert on radioactivity, two-time Nobel-prize winner (physics and chemistry), died of radiation-induced cancer. A rather alarming number of the top scientists on the Mahattan project (Fermi, Oppenheimer, Bradbury, Feynmann) died of cancer, too.
And, finally, you should keep in mind that radiation is therapeutic. It’s still the treatment of choice for cancer under some circumstances. Not only that, but you might say radiation is cruelly deceptive at low levels of exposure. It does kickstart the immune and tissue-repair systems (this is presumably why it is useful in cancer therapy). No one knows why, even today. But people who are mildly sick, and exposed to low levels of radiation, do get better faster. The only problem, of course, is that their risk of cancer decades later goes up. But of course it took decades to find that out. And government didn’t find it out any faster than private interests.
The problem isn’t regulation; it’s overregulation. A few rules are necessary, but the vast majority of them exist to give more gummint “workers” overpaid jobs and more bureaucrats and politicians power. 🙁
You might also be aware that regulators prevented caused a global financial meltdown through their vigilance debauching the currency and giving loans to poor credit risks.
FTFY.
Seriously, I’m always puzzled by people who think that a bank panic caused by the actions of the FEDERAL reserve and the FEDERAL National Mortgage Association and the FEDERAL Home Loan Mortgage Corporation was in some way a failure of the free market.
You can have the snake oil, and non disinfected food. I prefer mine the other way around thank you very much. Of course state inspections do not work 100% of the time. Inspectors cannot be everywhere, every time. When they do inspections they check for flawed processes, or environments. Perhaps you would prefer an external auditing by Andersen Consulting instead.
No one likes having their property seized from eminent domain. However they do enjoy their water pipes, sewers, roads. Has it been abused? Absolutely. A shopping mall is not a public good. Does not mean eminent domain is without its uses however. Is the Interstate Highway System useless?
The global financial meltdown was due to a lot of factors. While the government had a lot to do with it (glut in money supply, allowing a limited number of corporations to control a large swath of the financial system), I always find it interesting that with you people, everything that goes wrong must necessarily be the fault of the government. Yet the corporations can do no wrong. Democrats claim that murderers are just poor, innocent souls corrupted in their childhood by evil society. For Republicans it surely was the evil State that corrupted corporations into doing their nasty deeds. I heard it with Enron. If this is so, why is it that there were other corporations which did not need to resort to these shady dealings to do their trade? You do not usually extend this courtesy to actual living and breathing people. If Bernie Madoff did it, he was a bastard. If Enron did it, it was because the evil State pushed it to that point.
I always find it interesting that with you people, everything that goes wrong must necessarily be the fault of the government.
Godzilla, this is an example of a strawman argument. From Wikipedia,
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
Here, the misrepresentation is your claim that “you people” believe that everything that goes wrong is the fault of government (and subsequent claims, “corporations can do no wrong”, “Democrats claim that murderers are just poor, innocent souls corrupted in their childhood by evil society”, etc). Since this isn’t the case and your whole post depends on this misrepresentation, the rest of your argument falls flat. You can fix this by first discussion genuine arguments made by relevant people, say posters in this thread, and discussing why those arguments are wrong.
You can have the snake oil, and non disinfected food. I prefer mine the other way around thank you very much.
But…God, the point is that everybody does. Can you name anyone who is happy about buying medicine that doesn’t work, or food that makes him sick? Who would — and here is the point — willingly buy a 2nd time from someone who sold him such stuff?
Of course not. And that’s the magic of the market, my friend. If the only way you can get your hands on people’s money is by convincing them, of their own free will, to exchange it for your stuff — then your stuff had damn well better be worth the money. Because no amount of persuasiveness, good advertisement, good connections with wealthy and powerful people, is going to substitute for the plain ugly fact that the poorest schmo on the planet can help put even the richest businessman out of business by simply refusing to buy his thingy, because it doesn’t work, or does some evil.
So your fanciful belief that in the absence of government coercion, people would willingly or ignorantly buy stuff that’s very bad for them defies common sense. Why would they? No one would notice that product foo from Vendor X is shoddy, overpriced, worthless, dangerous? Why? Do you find that to be the case now? Neither you nor your friends ever pays attention to what over people — news stories, Consumer Reports, reviews in magazines — say about the quality of a new product? C’mon. Get real.
The fact is, when it’s your own money on the line, people are very careful about what they buy, scrutinize its worth with a microscope, and very judgmental about failure. If you’d ever worked customer service, you’d know that. There’s a good reason nearly everything you buy more complex than a toothbrush comes with a warranty. People demand accountability. And please note that warranties of quality and suitability — which are a far better method of regulation than prior restraint, mind you — are the invention of the private market, not government.
No one says there isn’t any role for government. There is: do the things private concerns cannot, for example, set national testing and reporting standards, so that citizens in State Foo can read and easily understand measurements or tests from State Bar. Like the EPA city/highway mileage figures. They’re arbitrary, but they bear some relationship to reality, and since they’re totally uniform eveywhere, it lets you make apples to apples comparisons between cars. Or use the power of the state to compel openness: every car manufacturer has to publish its rates of in-warranty repair. Or use the resources of the state to do tests that are hard for private concerns, like crashworthiness tests of airplanes, or tests that use extremely expensive facilities, like nuclear reactors, then certify the results, so people have a choice about buying “FDA approved” or “NOT approved by the FDA” stuff.
It’s an excellent idea for government to be a major source of information, and a “referee” that makes sure buyers and sellers are open with each other. But there is no appropriate role for compulsion of the choices buyers and sellers freely and knowingly make. If I choose to buy an untested, possibly dangerous drug, full well knowing the possible consequences and benefits — maybe I’m dying of cancer, and it’s a long-shot hope, my only long-shot hope — then the rest of you, in the form of the government, have no God-damned business interfering. For my own good? Screw you. I determine my own good, and, in exchange, I will let you determine yours. Advise me all you want, but in the end, to be a free man in a free society means I make the final choice. Not you. Not even a majority of yous.
We are also safe from being killed in no-knock raids, and from having our property seized via eminent domain.
Is this satire?
Seriously, I’m always puzzled by people who think that a bank panic caused by the actions of the FEDERAL reserve and the FEDERAL National Mortgage Association and the FEDERAL Home Loan Mortgage Corporation was in some way a failure of the free market.
You forgot (imo) the big one; the CRA. Created by the FEDERAL government, and going back to the 70’s through multiple administrations of both parties. An absolute and total corruption of what little free-market we had in mortgage lending.
…you people…
Racist!
Godzilla, (@11:24)
All the private ‘actors’ you referenced are now gone from the scene due to their actions. Whither gov’t regs post-failure?
Why do some view the government as inherently more trustworthy than the rest of us? Given what it’s done in the past, the fact that government is clearly less accountable than citizens or private organizations, the usual political shenanigans associated with regulation, and the fact that government clears the field in activities it wants to take control over (think we wouldn’t have more UL-type certifications if the government didn’t “regulate”?), I don’t get that line of reasoning.
Who needs government regulation on consumer products? Just have some Radithor and be happy.
‘Zilla, I didn’t order a strawman. Please return it to sender. Thank you.
Let’s not be hasty. To consider just a couple of examples: regulators and inspectors prevented e. coli deaths from tainted meat, spinach, and juice; and, they prevented blindness from contact lens solutions.
We are also safe from being killed in no-knock raids, and from having our property seized via eminent domain. You might also be aware that regulators prevented a global financial meltdown through their vigilance.
Now, Godzilla might argue that I should imagine how much worse it would be without so much help from the regulators.
He might be right, so I will continue to insist that my barber be licensed.
Ooo! Can I play? How ’bout the way the way the government efficiently protects us from threats in the most regulated aspect of modern life — air travel?
God, I dunno if you should pick on radiation therapy as a place where government regulation fell down, or helped. You might keep in mind that government in the 1920 and 30s — the heydey of “Radithor” and such products — was just as careless about radiation explosure. Heck, can we recall it was the government that is now paying a fortune in damages to those exposed — in many cases without consent — to massive amounts of radiation during the Atomic Age, from the native residents on Pacific atomic atolls, to those downwind of nuclear air tests in Nevada, to soldiers and sailors ordered into Grounds Zero mere minutes after atomic blasts?
It’s not like the dangers of low-level radiation were obvious — to anybody — and it was merely the carelessness or cupidity that made unregulated medicine sell the stuff to ignorant consumers. No one knew the dangers, then. There’s a good reason Marie Curie, the foremost early expert on radioactivity, two-time Nobel-prize winner (physics and chemistry), died of radiation-induced cancer. A rather alarming number of the top scientists on the Mahattan project (Fermi, Oppenheimer, Bradbury, Feynmann) died of cancer, too.
And, finally, you should keep in mind that radiation is therapeutic. It’s still the treatment of choice for cancer under some circumstances. Not only that, but you might say radiation is cruelly deceptive at low levels of exposure. It does kickstart the immune and tissue-repair systems (this is presumably why it is useful in cancer therapy). No one knows why, even today. But people who are mildly sick, and exposed to low levels of radiation, do get better faster. The only problem, of course, is that their risk of cancer decades later goes up. But of course it took decades to find that out. And government didn’t find it out any faster than private interests.
The problem isn’t regulation; it’s overregulation. A few rules are necessary, but the vast majority of them exist to give more gummint “workers” overpaid jobs and more bureaucrats and politicians power. 🙁
You might also be aware that regulators
preventedcaused a global financial meltdown throughtheir vigilancedebauching the currency and giving loans to poor credit risks.FTFY.
Seriously, I’m always puzzled by people who think that a bank panic caused by the actions of the FEDERAL reserve and the FEDERAL National Mortgage Association and the FEDERAL Home Loan Mortgage Corporation was in some way a failure of the free market.
You can have the snake oil, and non disinfected food. I prefer mine the other way around thank you very much. Of course state inspections do not work 100% of the time. Inspectors cannot be everywhere, every time. When they do inspections they check for flawed processes, or environments. Perhaps you would prefer an external auditing by Andersen Consulting instead.
No one likes having their property seized from eminent domain. However they do enjoy their water pipes, sewers, roads. Has it been abused? Absolutely. A shopping mall is not a public good. Does not mean eminent domain is without its uses however. Is the Interstate Highway System useless?
The global financial meltdown was due to a lot of factors. While the government had a lot to do with it (glut in money supply, allowing a limited number of corporations to control a large swath of the financial system), I always find it interesting that with you people, everything that goes wrong must necessarily be the fault of the government. Yet the corporations can do no wrong. Democrats claim that murderers are just poor, innocent souls corrupted in their childhood by evil society. For Republicans it surely was the evil State that corrupted corporations into doing their nasty deeds. I heard it with Enron. If this is so, why is it that there were other corporations which did not need to resort to these shady dealings to do their trade? You do not usually extend this courtesy to actual living and breathing people. If Bernie Madoff did it, he was a bastard. If Enron did it, it was because the evil State pushed it to that point.
I always find it interesting that with you people, everything that goes wrong must necessarily be the fault of the government.
Godzilla, this is an example of a strawman argument. From Wikipedia,
Here, the misrepresentation is your claim that “you people” believe that everything that goes wrong is the fault of government (and subsequent claims, “corporations can do no wrong”, “Democrats claim that murderers are just poor, innocent souls corrupted in their childhood by evil society”, etc). Since this isn’t the case and your whole post depends on this misrepresentation, the rest of your argument falls flat. You can fix this by first discussion genuine arguments made by relevant people, say posters in this thread, and discussing why those arguments are wrong.
You can have the snake oil, and non disinfected food. I prefer mine the other way around thank you very much.
But…God, the point is that everybody does. Can you name anyone who is happy about buying medicine that doesn’t work, or food that makes him sick? Who would — and here is the point — willingly buy a 2nd time from someone who sold him such stuff?
Of course not. And that’s the magic of the market, my friend. If the only way you can get your hands on people’s money is by convincing them, of their own free will, to exchange it for your stuff — then your stuff had damn well better be worth the money. Because no amount of persuasiveness, good advertisement, good connections with wealthy and powerful people, is going to substitute for the plain ugly fact that the poorest schmo on the planet can help put even the richest businessman out of business by simply refusing to buy his thingy, because it doesn’t work, or does some evil.
So your fanciful belief that in the absence of government coercion, people would willingly or ignorantly buy stuff that’s very bad for them defies common sense. Why would they? No one would notice that product foo from Vendor X is shoddy, overpriced, worthless, dangerous? Why? Do you find that to be the case now? Neither you nor your friends ever pays attention to what over people — news stories, Consumer Reports, reviews in magazines — say about the quality of a new product? C’mon. Get real.
The fact is, when it’s your own money on the line, people are very careful about what they buy, scrutinize its worth with a microscope, and very judgmental about failure. If you’d ever worked customer service, you’d know that. There’s a good reason nearly everything you buy more complex than a toothbrush comes with a warranty. People demand accountability. And please note that warranties of quality and suitability — which are a far better method of regulation than prior restraint, mind you — are the invention of the private market, not government.
No one says there isn’t any role for government. There is: do the things private concerns cannot, for example, set national testing and reporting standards, so that citizens in State Foo can read and easily understand measurements or tests from State Bar. Like the EPA city/highway mileage figures. They’re arbitrary, but they bear some relationship to reality, and since they’re totally uniform eveywhere, it lets you make apples to apples comparisons between cars. Or use the power of the state to compel openness: every car manufacturer has to publish its rates of in-warranty repair. Or use the resources of the state to do tests that are hard for private concerns, like crashworthiness tests of airplanes, or tests that use extremely expensive facilities, like nuclear reactors, then certify the results, so people have a choice about buying “FDA approved” or “NOT approved by the FDA” stuff.
It’s an excellent idea for government to be a major source of information, and a “referee” that makes sure buyers and sellers are open with each other. But there is no appropriate role for compulsion of the choices buyers and sellers freely and knowingly make. If I choose to buy an untested, possibly dangerous drug, full well knowing the possible consequences and benefits — maybe I’m dying of cancer, and it’s a long-shot hope, my only long-shot hope — then the rest of you, in the form of the government, have no God-damned business interfering. For my own good? Screw you. I determine my own good, and, in exchange, I will let you determine yours. Advise me all you want, but in the end, to be a free man in a free society means I make the final choice. Not you. Not even a majority of yous.
We are also safe from being killed in no-knock raids, and from having our property seized via eminent domain.
Is this satire?
You forgot (imo) the big one; the CRA. Created by the FEDERAL government, and going back to the 70’s through multiple administrations of both parties. An absolute and total corruption of what little free-market we had in mortgage lending.
Racist!
Godzilla, (@11:24)
All the private ‘actors’ you referenced are now gone from the scene due to their actions. Whither gov’t regs post-failure?
Why do some view the government as inherently more trustworthy than the rest of us? Given what it’s done in the past, the fact that government is clearly less accountable than citizens or private organizations, the usual political shenanigans associated with regulation, and the fact that government clears the field in activities it wants to take control over (think we wouldn’t have more UL-type certifications if the government didn’t “regulate”?), I don’t get that line of reasoning.