So, you’re saying without government, the church would impinge on my freedom and not allow me to buy alcohol or cars on Sundays.
Yet, the government is currently impinging on my freedom and not allowing me to buy alcohol or cars on Sundays.
So again, I’ll ask, can you tell me why the government won’t let us buy alcohol or cars on Sundays?
I’m sorry, but that’s just lazy argumentation, and it begs the questions we’re actually debating, which is whether or not it’s government regulation that actually protects you from those things.
In another thread recently, I pointed out an industry that has been almost completely unregulated, despite making hardware for a very dangerous activity: SCUBA diving. There are no government inspectors of diving equipment. The only certification needed from government is a DOT stamp on high pressure SCUBA tanks. Other than that, no one’s guaranteeing the safety of any of the hardware. And yet, SCUBA has an amazing safety record, and the equipment is extremely safe.
It’s also very cheap for what it does. Diving has become accessible to anyone, because competition in a free market and the lack of regulation has allowed faster innovation in both cost and safety. Amateur divers today are diving deeper, with exotic equipment and gas mixtures, than military and professional divers did 20 years ago, and with a better safety record. In a totally unregulated market.
The industry even self-regulates dive operators and divers themselves. PADI and NAUI have nothing to do with the government, but they act as very strong regulatory bodies. Dive operators won’t even fill your tanks unless you can produce your NAUI or PADI card. DAN, the Diver’s Action Network, acts as a clearinghouse of safety information. Dive Operators who have shoddy practices are shut out of the tourist trade almost immediately. You can go to a remote island and find a dive operator operating out of a plywood hut, and you’ll still discover DAN, NAUI, and PADI placards - and safe operations. Without government regulation, the market has taken over the responsibility for regulating safety, and it’s done a better job than government.
General aviation is one of the most heavily-regulated industries around. But there is an exception - the homebuilt aircraft movement, which is almost entirely unregulated. Anyone can sell airplane kits, and anyone can build them. The airplanes are better, faster, and all the safety innovations of the last 20 years, such as ballistic parachutes for light planes, came out of the homebuilt industry. The airplanes tend to be built with structural safety tolerances greater than those mandated by government for the regulated industry. And despite the airplanes generally being higher performance, the safety record overall in the homebuilt industry is very, very good.
I can give you examples like this all day long. If you actually survey industries where government regulation is minimal or nonexistent, you simply don’t find the kind of horror stories you think happen when government removes its boot from the neck of businesses. The market is a more powerful regulatory force.
I’m groping toward a position where the difference there is that those things you mention are luxuries, and ones that not relatively many people avail themselves of on a regular basis. Food is a necessity. Medication is a necessity. Transportation is a necessity (whether it’s the safety of your individual car, or the safety of a commuter train). There are too many consumers and too many providers of food, medication and transportation to have any hope of anything like the organizations you cite. If there’s no law against food contamination, what’s to stop factory farms from simply rebranding their product? How many people are capable or knowledgeable enough to inspect their own food or medication? How would the average consumer even know what was in their medication (or food) if they had to inspect it themselves? Should everyone have a full analytical laboratory in their home and use it for every bottle of pills or package of meat?
I guess I just don’t understand WHY anyone would want their entire life to be a crap shoot? Is this meal going to kill me? Or this bottle of meds? Or this trip to the supermarket? What is it about this “freedom” that appeals to you? Are you suicidal? Bored? Tired of having a reasonable chance of surviving to old age? Our modern safety regulation regime seems infinitely preferable to the old days.
You don’t even need to look to history for evidence that those days aren’t behind us if we consider repealing those regulations. Just look at China…lead paint on toys, melamine in milk and dog food…industrial shortcuts are universal and timeless.
Who says it has to be a crap shoot?
If you want to buy recommended products from a regulatory agency, go ahead. I’m not stopping you. But why would you want them to force you to buy only what they approve, and take away any other potential choices you may have? Why would you ever sign over that power - permanently and irrevocably - to anybody?
I don’t know where you live, but I’m going to assume it’s in the USA. Have you ever travelled outside the USA to a foreign country - say Mexico, Brazil, some of the poorer parts of southern Italy, or perhaps a game farm in Africa? If so, did you eat in a restaurant? Or did you fast for the whole time, and come close to starvation?
If you did decide to eat in a restaurant outside the USA, which millions of travellers do every day, why? They aren’t regulated and inspected by the FDA. Weren’t you terrified? Did you think death was just around the corner? How in the world did you muster up enough courage to put something in your mouth that wasn’t (supposedly) approved by the good ol’ FDA?
Let me guess. You looked for cues, made an assessment of the risk factors, and acted accordingly. Perhaps it looked like there were a number of similar people to yourself eating inside. Perhaps the restaraunt looked like it was a place of substance and had been around for awhile. Perhaps you followed the recommendation of a friend or the nice lady at the hotel.
You make decisions like this all the time and don’t even realize it. But for certain segments of your life, where you are less sure of your own choices, and uncomfortable with the personal accountability that comes with those choices, you go for the cheap psychological fix of letting someone else make the decision for you. Worse than that…you don’t even follow their recommendation, with the option to back out. You go for the Full Monty - you want them to force you to follow their choices, by signing over your rights and freedom.
Why would you do that? Why would you disempower yourself like that?
Hmm, must be an Idaho thing. My state has 2 senators.
So to take your last example, on one side you have
The FDA doesn’t exist.
What might happen next?
A whole shitload of food poisoning.
I have. In South America I was basically told not to eat any food I didn’t cook myself. In India I was told to only eat things made with bottled or thoroughly boiled water - most restaurants catering to westerners were safe, but often the only way to ask others if they had gotten sick. Often the answer was yes. I was pretty lucky - in two weeks I was only made ill once. In Europe I was never concerned - the EU has pretty solid regulation of food.
I prefer to know that the food and water I eat and drink is safe without asking others how sick it has made them. The “right” to choose tainted food and drink is one I have happily conceded to my empowered and elected representative. If I feel that the FDA is doing a poor job, or that it is causing food prices to be too high, then I will elect representatives to change things.
I like Sam’s two examples of self-regulation as well. Recreational activities, by and large, don’t need government oversight. Mass-transit, food, and health-care, IMO, do.
So can you tell me why the government won’t let us buy alcohol or cars on Sundays? Who is that protecting?
The government still won’t allow same sex marriage, who is that protecting?
How’s the war or drugs going? Make any headway yet? I guess it’s only been 40 years.
So is it all or nothing? We can’t distinguish between good, sensible practices and practices that do more harm than good?
I agree all three of these regulations should be modified or outright eliminated. See? Common ground!
I don’t go around saying throw out everything just because I disagree with these regulations. Instead I try to elect people that are likely to end them.
Underwriter’s Laboratories
Consumer Reports
J.D. Powers and Associates
The Better Business Bureau
NetCheck
NASD - The National Association of Securities Dealers
ISO - the International Standards Organization
National Foundation for Consumer Credit
Public Citizen
Edmunds
IIHS - the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
The American Bar Association
Fair Trade Grower’s Alliance
The National Safety Council
That’s just off the top of my head. There are hundreds of such organizations. A lot of them work behind the scenes - Netcheck is something you may not have heard of unless you’ve worked in retail, but they act as a regulatory body for consumer credit for businesses. The National Safety Council does training, product evaluation, child seat education, and many other functions. It offers training courses for motorcycles and bicycles.
The IIHS publishes most of the auto safety stats you see. When you see a car company advertise its ‘Five Star Crash Rating’, that’s not a government certification - it’s a result of testing by the IIHS, and a poor rating in crash tests can kill a car in the marketplace. That’s one reason why cars today are built to safety standards MUCH higher than the government minimums. I would say you don’t need government safety standards for cars at all any more, because the private market has taken over that role already - with higher standards.
I’ll bet a lot of people think that organizations like the IIHS, UL, and the National Safety Council are government agencies. They’re not. They were created by market forces.
How do you do it today? Do you really think the government is protecting you from unscrupulous manufacturers in every aspect of your life? Or do you simply assume that foods are safe, and when proven right give credit to the government?
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the market has many ways of signalling quality and safety to you. For example, brand recognition. If you buy Kellog’s cereal, you can assume that it’s of a certain quality and safety, right? Do you think that’s provided by the government? If so, it’s not. Not on a day-to-day basis, and certainly not with quality. Rather, the market force that keeps you safe is the company’s investment in its brand. If Kellog’s releases a box of cereal tainted with poison and it kills a kid, its brand will be destroyed overnight, and the cost could be in the billions - far in excess of what the government fine would have been. In addition, the company would be open to damage lawsuits. So Kellog’s works its ass off to provide high quality and safety - FAR more than any government minimum requirement.
What about lesser brands, or no-name brands? That brings another player into the safety regulation game: the retailer. Wal-Mart has its own testing facilities that test for quality for its rebranded products. It has buyers that act like government inspectors, checking factories of its suppliers for quality. It does this because it has a vested interest in maintaining its own brand value, and if it had a habit of selling tainted goods, no one would shop there.
Then you have other intermediaries - doctors, lawyers, your auto mechanic, a friend who’s an engineer. We get advice from them and absorb it along with all the other information we collect. Some of it is even subconscious - If you see an ad for a product on prime-time TV, you know that that ad cost millions of dollars. You see it associated with a brand name, and you don’t even think about basic safety and quality - you assume it’s there. That’s because companies that have been around a long time and have a good brand reputation can be assumed to have a certain level of quality. You don’t think about it, but this information gets internalized.
Now, when you see an ad at 3 in the morning for some miracle product, hawked by a commercial that looks like it cost $10 to make, you’re a lot more skeptical, aren’t you? The assumption of quality isn’t there. That Ronco Slicing Magician is probably not built as well as the Braun slicer you saw in prime time, right? Again, you don’t think about this stuff maybe when it’s happening, but as a sophisticated member of society you internalize all that info.
Likewise, if you drive by a BMW used car dealership, with a million-dollar glass and steel showroom, what do you think the quality of the used cars will be compared to the dirt lot down the road with the handmade “Ca$h for Cars!” sign in front of it? Where are you most likely to find a lemon? You instinctively know that it’s the dirt lot, but why? It’s because the fact that BMW is putting its reputation on the line matters, and the fact that they built a million-dollar showroom means they plan to be around a while, which means they can’t afford to sell crappy cars and destroy their rep. That dirt lot, though? It might be gone next week, and reopen under a different name across town. So you are more wary of their cars, and if you decide to buy one you’re likely to put a lot more effort into making sure it’s okay.
We get millions of signals like this as we interact with the economy. The market ensures the quality of the vast majority of goods we buy. The government is actually a minor player, and an increasingly irrelevant one in the internet era.
Which brings me to the internet - the greatest consumer tool ever made. Want to know about the quality of a good now? Snap a picture of its bar code with your phone, and Google Goggles will take you right to a review site where you can find out exactly what thousands of people have experienced with the product. Companies have had to step up their quality even higher in the internet era, because bad experiences fly through the internet like wildfires.
Look around the room you’re currently in. Look at all the products around you. Think about their quality, and then ask yourself how much the government had to do with that quality. Did it ensure that your keyboard would last as long as it has? That your monitor would be bright and easy to read? That your computer wouldn’t randomly reboot on you every ten minutes? That the Coke you’re drinking has a consistent taste that you like? It guaranteed none of that. Yet there it is.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that few Americans on this message board have traveled outside of the US.
You can ask the same question though: For those that live in a state with seat-belt (or helmet) laws, we can assume you follow them. If you drove into a state without those laws would you immediately unbuckle it?
Because I am not so conceited as to think I can spot health threats by looking at superficial appearances, or that there are things I don’t know enough about to even attempt to assess the relative safety of. I prefer to rely on the expertise of professionals in the field to act as my proxy and assure that most of the market meets minimum standards. In return, I am perfectly willing to give up your right to serve me what ever you think the market will bear, and use whatever coercion is necessary to enforce it. I believe in tyranny by the majority.
Now, first realize that when you give the government power to regulate things you agree with, you also give them the power to regulate things you don’t agree with.
You seem fixated on medications, but that also means we can’t get a simple box of allergy medication with epinephrin in it.
No one is saying “throw out everything.” That’s what is known as a strawman fallacy. Bosstone did you see, that’s an example of a strawman, make note.
How’s that working out for you? It seems more people would rather the government kept gays from marrying and 20 year old from buying beer on a Sunday. Der Tris tried to suggest that having a government means the church isn’t controlling our lives. Hard to see the difference though when you listen to many US politicians.
I understand perfectly well what the stated intentions were. You’re the one who seemed unable to process the concept that government regulations might accomplish the opposite of their stated goal.
And you’re apparently still the one that thinks government is the best/only mechanism for stopping greedy assholes from trying to rip people off.
Hey, good thing I didn’t say that, then, eh?
And succeed only in giving a false sense of security.
Today’s reinforcement of the OP:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/ezekiel-emanuel-cancer-patients.html?_r=1
Damn you type long posts… 
The thing is, almost nobody disagrees with you about any of that. Consumer goods are pretty much the definition of a functioning market. Functioning markets, with highly symmetric information and little coercion or externalities are great with little to no regulation.
But this has almost nothing to do with conflict minerals, where the consumer has very little information about what he is buying, the producer is extremely coerced, and the transaction has a huge externalities. These are the types of markets that require government intervention.
Using the successful non-regulation of the first type as a reason to eliminate regulations on the second is misguided.
No, it seems most people simply can’t. Hence the purpose of the OP. The majority of Americans would rather ban weed than tobacco. One is pretty much harmless, the other is responsible for 443,000 deaths per year.
More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined. (from the CDC)
Can you tell me why I can’t buy alcohol or a car on a Sunday? But I can by plenty of tobacco.
[QUOTE=emacknight]
No one is saying “throw out everything.” That’s what is known as a strawman fallacy. Bosstone did you see, that’s an example of a strawman, make note.
[/QUOTE]
Fair enough. The default Libertarian position is “government in intervention in the marketplace is bad”. I think that this is overbroad (just as the converse is overbroad), and the features of the individual market should determine the type and quantity of regulation that is appropriate.
I agree, it sucks. It’s not easy being an atheist, social liberal in America. But I do what I can and try not to bitch about it too much - it’s still the greatest country in the world.