Antibiotic Use vs Libertarianism

Great Debates
61

I will note that it is not banned completely - "just for the purpose of treating bacterial infections in poultry. This ruling does not affect other approved uses of the drug. "

So it seems a reasonable regulation given that it was done “because of scientific data that showed that the use of enrofloxacin in poultry caused resistance to emerge in Campylobacter, a bacterium that causes foodborne illness.”

So it was ultimately a public health issue.

And you’re right that veterinary (mis)uses of antibiotics are more prevalent and easier to fix. I don’t think this necessarily means that misuse of antibiotics by people isn’t relevant , so therefore we don’t have to worry about regulations in the human area.

I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouths, but I suspect that the libertarians would not want any regulations put on veterinary use of antibiotics either - let the free market decide what is best. If I want to use antibiotics, and that results in resistant Campylobacter in my chickens, then my customers will get sick or die, and I will be sued by the victims or the heirs - so since I am an all-knowing and always responsible businessman, I will never use this drug. (This begs the question of course, about exactly WHO will be doing research on the dangers of drug use by farmers. The farmers? Why would they sponsor studies that could be used as evidence against them in court?)

Trouble #1 is that people are not always rational actors, and are not always literate about the risks that they may take with their own or others lives. Yes, this is true no matter what system, but with the current system of regulations, we successfully prevent many of these people from making bad risk assessments in the first place.

Trouble #2 is that this is a reactive solution, and will not bring back the lives or health of the customers.

Trouble #3 is, antibiotic resistance will not be limited to my farm or my customers, since the resistant bacteria are free to move about in the environment. I have impacted the commons with my bad behavior.

Trouble #4 is a system that relies solely on reactive punishment through the court system, will then fall prey to the failings of such a court system; it can take much time to resolve (especially with appeals), the resolution is frequently subject to human foibles (an incompetent lawyer, etc.) and it is very difficult to prove a causal relationship in complex systems (eg. you cant PROVE that MY use of fluoroquinolone caused YOUR particular sickness. You could have gotten it from another source)

62

Another flaw in a free market in the modern world seems there’s no room for mid-course correction.

As my initial argument in this whole debate is that we live in a highly technological society. We’re employing technologies in areas where some consequences cannot be foreseen. Some are damn near irreversible.

It’s this irreversibility that will destroy the free market, since if a poultry farm starts using a drug that increases production, but in the end, ultimately creates a pandemic that will destroy their farm, and spread this resistant strain to other farms, the free market can’t say, “Huh, well that didn’t work. I guess I’ll look for another tactic or just go back to the way I was doing things before.”

With the mid-corse correcting regulations we’re implementing now, we’re greatly mitigating these sorts of irreversible issues.

63

crickets

64

If you look at the situation around us you are 100% wrong. The free market has already acted since consumers now demand antibiotic-free poultry.

We all seem to agree that over/mis-use of antibiotics in the farming industry is a problem, the government knows it’s a problem, but where is the government action? What has the government done?

Which worked faster?

The free market has actually lessened the potential for superbugs. And if we compare this with GMO labeling rules, we should consider ourselves lucky the government ALLOWED chicken to be labeled antibiotic free. For those familiar with that issue, the US government decided it didn’t want products label GMO Free because it created fear. The opposite of what most European markets did.

“Huh, well that didn’t work. I guess I’ll look for another tactic or just go back to the way I was doing things before.”

Once again, you criticize the free market, but willfully ignore what happens when the government screws up and tries to close the barn door long after the cows got sick and died. One only has to look at the mad cow crisis in Britain to see the consequence. And to clarify before most of you reach for the reply button, the point here is that NEITHER the free market NOR the government can prevent outbreaks.

Oddly enough, this case parallels the mortgage meltdown in that the government was happy to see poultry yields increase, which allowed for price decreases. And by making itself a player, the government is stuck playing favourites: looking back it should never have allowed the misuse of antibiotic use in poultry farming, but it had a vested interest in seeing food prices decrease, and farm income increase.

To make the sort of “mid course correction” you’re talking about would have been devastating. So instead as someone already pointed out, we get “middle of the road” which is possibly the worst path of all.

65

Euphonious Polemic; there is so much wrong with your post and there is no way I have enough time to go through it all, but let’s just clear up this:

I’d like you to go back and rewrite that statement using this simple equation
government = people

When you do that, what sort of regulations do you end up with, and how successful will they ultimately be?

Again, you are wrong in two directions at once: Libertarianism does not need to rely solely on reactive punishment, just like in today’s system people often have to seek a court injunction when they think something might happen. You can bitch now about the cost of going to court, but it still disproves the “relies solely on reactive punishment” argument.

Secondly, the criticisms you are using against libertarianism also apply to our current system. It frequently relies on reactive punishment. It’s really only a matter of luck that things aren’t worse, which doesn’t say much about our current situation.

There is no question that regulations COULD HAVE made us safer, but the reality is that our system doesn’t allow for the necessary regulations, and leaves us suffering from the failed ones we do put in.

I can’t remember if you’re in the West Coast of Canada, but anyone in Eastern Canada is well aware of the problems faced by c. difficile.

66

Getting an injunction is not a possibility I have ever seen used in libertarian thought. If it were, then the current government is Libertopia, since all regulations are injunctions, just under a different name: Because X might cause problems, the government doesn’t let you do it.

And John Mace, you identify as a libertarian. If freedom being more important than justice is a core libertarian belief, then you have to believe it. It’s basic logic. If all A believe B, and C is an A, then C believes B.

67

You are always the charmer, aren’t you? Ever thought of starting a reply without the insults?

I think they’ll be very successful, because we live in a complex world, that requires an increasing amount of specialist knowledge. The subset of “the people” who do the research and make the regulations are specialists, and I think they do a fine job. They certainly do a better job than I could do, because no matter how clever I think I am, it would be difficult for me to do research and become a specialist in the many, many fields it would require. I cannot make the best, rational decisions about EVERYTHING in my life, from complex medical/biochemical decisions, to what kind of concrete mix works best in bridge structures.

The reactive mode of suing, going to court, etc. certainly seems to be the only thing that libertarians bring up when it comes to how we’ll sort out problems. Since you say I’m wrong, why not tell us what else libertarians would rely on if regulations and government were eliminated.

This is not an argument for why we should change systems. It’s your opinion that it’s only luck that things aren’t worse. Thank you for your opinion.

In summary, you have not specified how I was so, so very wrong.

Your points can be summarized as:

  1. I’m just so very, very wrong.

  2. People = Government, so therefore if people in the genera public do not always know how to make decisions based on complex scientific concepts, then NOBODY will be able to. (hint: decision makers and scientists are a specialized subset of the general public)

  3. Libertarianism does not rely only on reactive means. It also has other (unspecified) things it can do. Anyway, courts exist now.

  4. Any of my critiques can be applied to the current system

  5. People know that C. difficile exists.

68

Some consumers. A subset of the population choosing to purchase untreated poultry is irrelevant from a resistance standpoint. But that’s not what we’re talking about. The government banned some uses of antibiotics. Use continued up until this ban.

Post 58?

I’ll hazard to guess that doing something is faster than doing nothing, so it looks like the government was faster.

I really don’t know what you’re getting at here. Maybe you’re referring to Tyson getting in trouble (with government) for labeling its chickens as “antibiotic free” even though it was injecting the fetuses with antibiotics and adding antibiotics to the feed? This was all after fluoroquinolone was banned, again, by the government.

I’ll ask again:
The US gov’t* has already banned the use of antibiotics in some cases, and there are bills in the system that will extend these bans. Is anyone really going to argue that this is a bad thing?

I’m really curious to know if anyone out there truly feels that these bans should be rescinded so that the free market can decide the appropriate amount of antibiotics use in poultry.

*There are also plenty of older bans (by governments) in other countries.

69

So, we have
government = people

then we have
Trouble #1 is that people are not always rational actors,

Hence, the government is not always a rational actor. We’d like it to be, it would be awesome if it could be, but sadly that’s just not the way it works out. The hilarity of these debates is that a handful of dopers use “people are irrational” to argue against libertarianism, and then use “people are rational” to argue for government.

If the people are not always rational, than neither will their government.

Next we have an often repeated misconception:

The subset of people doing the research are NOT the same group of people making the regulations. The very smart researchers make recommendations to the regulators who may or may not be smart. Often there are multiple groups of smart researchers who can’t quite agree. And there are often regulators who have motifs not quite pure.

As an example: The regulators, in the case of poultry farming, listen to super smart epidemiologists who 100% agree we should ban 100% of antibiotic use in poultry–it’s the only way to be sure. The regulators mull it over a bit, then listen to the super smart researchers in the poultry industry. Those guys say they shouldn’t ban anything because it will destroy the poultry industry. Then they listen to voters a third of who say ban it all, a third say ban nothing, and a third that isn’t sure what poultry means.

What do we end up with? Middle of the road. Ban some of it, for some uses, some of the time. Have the fines low enough as to not be too harsh, and only enough inspectors so as not to cost too much.

What you are describing would be a and I agree that would be awesome, but it’s not what we have.

The way that comes across to some of us is that because you cant’ be rational about everything, you won’t bother to be rational about anything.

But what happens when you are asked through referendum to participate? What if the government put it to a popular vote as to whether or not chickens should get antibiotics? You have conclusively proven that vote will be a miserable failure people the general population can’t possibly be expected to vote rationally on the subject. And by proxy, they’ll fail to elect politicians who could act rationally.

Once again, government would not be eliminated. Please go back, re-read your posts, and correct your own errrors that are based on that misconception.

Not meant to be. It is a counter to the baseless hyperbole that without regulations we all die.

No, thank you for finally pointing out that all these petty little attacks on libertarianism are based solely on opinions, without any relevant facts.

“Deregulation will make us less safe” is just one of the many examples in kind.

70

emacknight, is your position that our current level of antibiotic regulation is no better than having no regulation?

71

What is our current level of regulation? And how safe does they make us?

Consider the two key regulations in place: requiring prescriptions and licensing doctors.

Those two things together make it only slightly harder to get antibiotics, and make it much more expensive since the doctor and pharmacist need to get paid. But notice what they DON’T do: nothing to ensure people take the full round, and nothing to ensure people won’t use left over pills. Those two actions (in addition to farming overuse) are what’s causing a lot of the superbugs. And historically speaking, neither doctors nor pharmacists had any problems giving out antibiotics like candy. Exactly what the regulations were meant to prevent.

But let’s pretend that the regulations worked perfectly and completely prevented superbugs, there is nothing to stop people in other less regulated countries from creating superbugs and then traveling to the US. Again we aren’t willing to put people in quarantine for six months like Britain did for dogs and cats. If we aren’t willing to restrict travel, we aren’t actually safe.

All that aside, it is my position that the statement, “Deregulation will make us less safe” is simply another baseless scare tactic.

Fun fact you may not be aware of: when my wife and I applied for a green card we had to go through a lengthy process of showing what vaccinations we had, and then getting a bunch topped up. In addition we had to get tested for TB, where a positive test would have blocked our application. Seems like a good thing to have in place, except that we had been living in the US for 5 years at that point. If we had TB we picked it up here.

72

Our current laws make it much harder to get antibiotics.

73

Ok I have trouble with this “proactive” concept.

It seems to me that “proactive” is the same thing as “reactive.”

Let me illustrate: A) A regulatory agency passes a regulation that is enforced with a fine or revoking licensure if the regulation is not complied with. A licensed person/company after a half dozen blatant failures to comply is heavily fined and has the license yanked. “If you do this, these are the consequences.”

B) A legal system develops doctrines (torts) in causes of actions (lawsuits) that are enforced by the payment of damages and/or commands to not do something (injunction). A person /companytransgresses and is ordered to pay and not do something. “If you do this, these are the consequences.”

C) A legislature passes a criminal statute that demands payment of a fine and/or restricting the activities of a person who violates the statute. A person violates the statute and is fined and sent to jail.“If you do this, these are the consequences.”
In all three cases the schemes are the same, that is, reactionary: first, notice not to do a thing is given, then punishment of some sort if this thing is done.

Regulation means that the person deciding is unelected, and in the case of the United States, is not prohibited from revolving door employment between the industries regulated and the regulating agencies. Scientific expertise is not the required skill in this case, beauracratic expertise is. These persons are known to produce 100,000 pages of “makework” paperwork where 100 might suffice under another system. Conforming with rules becomes the point rather than the original goals of the rules. Somebody somewhere gets the useless job of telling people that weren’t going to do anything wrong that they’d better not do anything wrong and making them fill out forms that show they didn’t do anything wrong so the regulator can have a job filing the forms. As well, when a regulatory agency levies a fine, you have no guarantee that the person levying the fine didn’t work for your industrial competitor last year and plans on working for them next year also. Nor do you have recourse against them if that is the case.

Civil remedies are also subject to abuse, but at least in the court system waste for the sake of waste is prohibited, even though it still happens; at least it is not the approved of norm. What the court system has going for it is that it does not supply needless wasteful jobs pushing paper around chasing the illusion of proactivity; only those actually harmed complain, and the only action taken is against those who have done harm. Civil remedies have greater efficiency in that they waste no time with the fiction of “proactivity” that regulation provides. Plus the people doing the enforcing are ordinary citizens sitting on juries. No makework there. (On the jurors part, that is. Yes, I know unscrupulous lawyers abuse this system.)

Criminal remedies are the best yet in that they are efficient as civil remeides are in that they only pursue actual wrongdoers on the behalf of victims; they also have the added bonus that you can throw the lawmakers out of office if their lawmaking is too extreme. Drawbacks include the fact that bad legislation does not follow bad lawmakers out of office. Still, the power to enforce resides in the hands of juries who can and do nullify bad statutes on constitutional and/or moral grounds.

Now, we have these three means of attempting to persuade people/industry to behave themselves so that their right to earn a buck (if they have the gumption to earn a buck) does not extend to the point of doing direct harm to others.

I’d favor the criminal law, except that it uses prison too often as a consequence. The list of acts that prison is required as a consequence is damn short in my view. With my legal education in mind, it’s also damn hard to write a constitutional criminal statute that can provide redress. Plus, an individual can’t control the criminal process like he can the civil remedy court process. It’s a whole lot easier to prove a tort of superbugs in the hens than it is to write a criminal statute criminalizing superbugs in the chickens. That’s why I vote for the idea that our main source of reactive remedies should be the court system when someone violates us.

I’m totally against the “proactive” illusion of a beauracrat shuffling forms concerning issues that everyone already knows: If you harm someone purposefully (criminal law) you are going to be punished. If you harm someone purposefully or negligently you are going to be punished.

Regulation also says if you do (or don’t) do a thing you will be punished; it is just as reactive in nature as civil or criminal remedies. But regulation makes people who never came close to doing/not doing a thing subject to forms and entanglements (driving their costs up) to provide some worthless bum a job telling people to do/not do things that they should already know not to do or that they should do.

I think it’s been well shown that our current regulatory system has produced every bit of the superbugs that we can reasonably expect could exist, because the problem is the same under any scheme: Antibiotics are over-prescribed (supposedly medical licensing will stop this) and people do not tend to finish their antibiotic courses (no reasonable regulation is suggested to solve this problem, civil, beauracratic, or criminal) as well as the problem over agricultural abuses of antibiotics.

Under any of the three schemes, regulation is regulation and it is always reactionary in nature. Why regulate by having paper shufflers tell people who do not raise chickens they can’t medicate their chickens and require a form be filled out? If reaction is all that is possible, let reaction rule; and let only those aggreived shuffle their papers around. I for one am sick of the waste in the paper-shuffling scheme.

Regulation is regulation, whether beauracratic, civil, or criminal. It is all a proposition of punishment for violating an edict. I favor abandoning the faulty concept of proactivity and using a system designed so that only those harmed can exact consequences against only those who did the harm.

As an aside, I have to say as a Libertarian, I have never heard this libertarian=anarchy concept that I keep seeing posted here.

Libertarianism (as a political movement in the U.S.) features two key features: The non-initiation of force to solve social or political problems, and personal responsibility.

These debates seem to recognize neither.

74

Being proactive in general is a way to reduce, mitigate or correct future issues.

Being reactive in general is to only react when something happens.

We have ways to project or predict certain scenarios. It makes sense to be prudent and proactive in a lot of circumstances to protect the commonwealth. If our government was entirely reactionary, I’m guessing we’d see far more heinous and irreversible damage done.

What Libertarianism doesn’t seem to recognize, is that our society – no, our civilization – is dependent on technologies epic in proportion to the time of the American Revolution.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. All this stuff we take for granted comes at a reasonable price: Regulation.

75

By what mechanism does so-called “proactivity” work? Is it not the same 1) first give notice 2) punish if disobeyed? Is not this the same scheme addressed in the criminal law? By what means is “proactivity” different from reactivity?

Does it see the future and punish ahead of time, before the harm is done?

Do we not tell ourselves that there will be fewer murders in the future if we punish murder today? Why is not punishment for murder “a way to reduce, mitigate or correct future issues?” Yet the criminal law is called reactive, not proactive.

If antibiotic regulation were truly proactive, it would have eliminated the rise of superbugs. But it’s not. And it’s not a useful reactive solution either as it currently works; I don’t hear of any licenses yanked when doctors over-prescribe antibiotics. People die from superbugs too, the same as a doc who over-prescribes narcotics sometimes “kills” a patient.

76

I’m trying to piece together some responses here but it’s difficult because there is so much ignorance about basic 8th grade biology here that I don’t know where to start. “If antibiotic regulation were truly proactive, it would have eliminated the rise of superbugs,” belies this. ANY use of antibiotics creates selective pressure for resistance. The point of regulation is to mitigate that without losing the utility of antibiotics (since the only way to completely avoid resistance is to not use them at all, which kind of defeats the purpose.)
I’m also very interesting in hearing how removing all agricultural AB restriction and “let[ing] only those aggreived shuffle their papers around” is going to prevent antibiotic misuse.

77

You’re missing my point, very clearly. To address it you should be showing how regulation helps any better than other punishments for disobedience, in what way does it solve problems before they start, that the criminal and civil penalties do not?

But instead of addressing the issue, you want to insult my level of education and understanding of biology. Shall I insult your understanding of law in response? Because you seem unable to address whether proactivity is superior and why, if you can show proactivity to be anything different than reactivity to begin with. It’s like claiming that there will be fewer murders if you give a beaurocrat a job of having us all fill out a form that we will not murder anyone, and somehow imagining that stops people from murdering.

78

Letting only those aggreived pursue remedies is still a restriction.

In what way is a person or business more motivated to do right?

a) “Gosh, if we do this, we’ll have to pay a million dollar fine to X agency for violating a regulation.”

b) “Gosh, if we do this, we’ll have to pay a million dollar judgment to someone we may have hurt for commiting a civil tort.”

Now why is one more effective than the other in preventing a bad result?

In which scheme do those who render the judgment/fine go to work for the industry the next year, or vice versa?

Which of the two is wasteful by creating make-work jobs that need not be done in light of a more efficient remedy?

I’m NOT in favor of allowing unrestricted antibiotic misuse. It’s the nature of the restriction.

79

Clearly, the answer is a), because the aggrieved must either foot the legal bill for pursuing the tort, or find a attorney who will do it on a contingency. Either case reduces the number of plaintiffs with real damages that actually make it to court. A federal agency has the resources to enforce standards across the board, and not just on those companies who lack the money to overwhelm the aggrieved with legal maneuvers.

Federal regulations can also be written to escalate sanctions for repeat offenders, which cannot occur through the courts.

Plus, enforcing federal regulations proactively prevents people from being hurt, while the aggrieved must first suffer actual damages to bring a tort. Surely you can see the advantage to preventing losses rather than simply reacting to them.

80

Perhaps you show that someone may be less motivated, maybe not. I’m not arguing the tort system is perfect as it is. We can use those federal trillions to increase access to the courts, just as well. Pointing out needed tort reform doesn’t help regulation. Of course we should have long ago done something about abusive discovery and other tactics designed to outspend the opponent.

And the reason we can’t write statutes increasing penalties for civil wrongs is…?

Besides, you are wrong. When asking for punitive damages, you can also show that company x has been succesfully sued over the same issue five times before.

You’ve utterly failed to show that “proactive” “do act x and expect consequence y”
differs from “reactive” “do act x and expect consequence y.”