The regulations in question have changed twice in the last 6 years, so yeah, the government is reasonably responsive in these cases.
And anyways, a broken government is the fault of electing bad politicians not evidence that we need to remove all regulatory frameworks.
I mean, how would you address the problem pointed out in the NY Times article? Eliminate Medicare? Do you not see why the majority of the population would see that as an overreaction?
You do realize that “the government” is not some alien race of robot lizards, right? That it’s made up of people just as much as “the market” is?
The only difference is that the government is at least ostensibly supposed to care about the country’s welfare, whereas the market only cares about profits. I realize it’s the conservative position that the country’s welfare will be cared for as a natural consequence of focusing on profits, but because the direct goal is profits, once it becomes more profitable to say “fuck the country,” that’s what’ll happen.
Q.E.D.
The [del]market[/del] government is yourself. The [del]market[/del] government is a collection of voluntary transactions made by individuals.
The prosecution rests its case, your honor.
We are “the government”.
I wouldn’t exactly call government transactions voluntary on the individual level.
How exactly do you think the government operates?
The entire food safety system is based on reacting to what got people sick, and then trying to come up with a patchwork of meaningless requirements to make the public feel safe again.
Look at the TSA on Sept 10th, 2001, and then on Sept 12th, 2001. Was having locked cockpit cabins that complicated an idea? And even after 4 planes were hijacked, it still took a guy lighting a shoe bomb on a plane before they required us to take our shoes off. It wasn’t until after they discovered a plot to smuggle liquid bomb components on a plane that they banned liquids. But then not all liquids, you can still smuggle bomb making materials as long as it’s divided into 3oz containers and fits in a 1qt bag.
Does anyone else remember when laptops had to be powered up?
And even after a guy smuggled a bomb in his underwear the TSA’s big solution was to require passengers on inbound international flights to sit with their hands on their laps for the hour before landing. I flew from Canada to the US the day after and the newly required pat down excluded the one place the guy had a bomb!
And it wouldn’t be a libertarian bashing thread if I didn’t post a link to the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge Collapse. A case where the government didn’t give a shit about bridge inspections until AFTER one fell down. Only then did they realize a bunch of other bridges weren’t fit for use and had to be closed. So tell me, why did people have to die for the government to take action?
How is that any different than a private corporation that lets lack safety kill people? The government may not have profit motif, but they still decided to spend inspection money on other things like a really nice $5million bicycle bridge.
I’ve already posted a link to the recent ground turkey recall in which the government knew about the problem but was required to wait until AFTER someone got sick.
So I’m afraid your argument against libertarianism is equally applied to government regulation. The government can’t keep you as safe as you think it can.
Then neither can the self reliant individual.
Exactly. So why should I trust a guy elected as governor any more than the same guy when he used to be a CEO? And after his term as governor, when he goes back to being a CEO, should we trust him?
Now you’re starting to get it.
Presuming each entity moves efficiently with regard to its stated goals, when there is an outbreak of bad spinach:
The government moves in and pulls the spinach off the shelves at the first sign of contamination. Some people get ill and die, but the problem is contained.
The corporation pulls the spinach off the shelves after it has been determined that the loss of future business would be greater than the loss of disposing of the contaminated spinach. This does not happen immediately, and the extra step required to determine if profit motive aligns with public welfare means that more people die than with government intervention. And if it is determined that the loss in recalling the existing spinach outweighs the loss of business, well, caveat emptor.
The individual dies. There is no containment. You fucked up and ate the wrong thing. And without an overseeing entity, at best your friends and family will be able to avoid the same fate, but everyone else is at the same risk you are.
Only if I accept your premise, which I don’t. Government is the way we work together to solve problems that are too daunting for each by himself.
First sign? Contained? You sure about that?
2006 North American E. coli Outbreak
2011 German E. coli O104:H4 Outbreak
You really give the impression that all business are set out to kill people, and all governments are infallible.
The real problem you should be addressing is that consumers just don’t give a shit. Like you they’ve already forgotten about all the previous food poisoning outbreaks. It’s just not that big a concern to people, and frankly they’d just rather not think about it.
Unfortunately, those problems are usually too daunting for the government to solve as well, so at best you money wasted, regulations that can’t be removed, and another false security that causes more deaths.
Speaking of the Congo, when I lived there, in a time of a weak central government and no regulation to speak of, you only went to restaurants vouched for by friends. We got to buy food in the UN commissary, which was imported. We also boiled all our water. When we went across the river once to Brazzaville in the Congo Republic, a slightly more reasonable place, my mother made the mistake of eating a salad washed in unpurified water, and promptly got food poisoning.
We managed to mostly avoid food poisoning. The poor (in both senses) Congolese no doubt had no such luck.
Such was life in a libertarian paradise.
Not at all. The problem I have is that the corporation’s first duty is to its shareholders and earning a profit. That goal may or may not align with the welfare of consumers. I’ll happily allow that in general, the two do align, but that doesn’t change the fact that profit, not welfare, drives corporations. Where they don’t align, the results are catastrophic.
A government’s first duty is to all its people, not just some. It’s ostensibly created to provide for the public welfare, however effective it actually is.
Some governments suck, some do well. Some corporations I don’t really have a problem signing my life over to (hi Google), some corporations I wouldn’t trust if they gave me free products for life. But the quality is irrelevant; if I have to choose one or the other in deciding what will be more effective in protecting the populace and ensuring it receives basic necessities, I’ll look to government, because in the end public welfare is not in the corporation’s best interest; at best it’s a secondary interest.
This is libertarian mythology, nothing more.
In a nutshell, I’d rather have a government that does an imperfect job of looking after my interests than trust to a hyper-efficient corporation that doesn’t give a damn.
It’s fine if you want to believe that a company’s motive is profit and that may or may not align with public safety. But what I’m curious to know is what motive do you assign to the government?
When you consider the Bush administration, was their first duty to all of its people?
*When they ignored a memo that said, “al Quaeda planning to attack the US”
*When they lied about WMDs in Iraq and their motivation for going in.
*When they cut taxes for the rich while running a massive deficit and two wars?
*When they ignored warnings about hurricane Katrina?
*When they deregulated the banking industry and sat back while the financial world crumbled?
*When they let Lehman Brother’s fail?
*When they pushed for the Defense of Marriage Act?
*When they ignored inspecting federal interstate highway bridges?
If you can get **elucidator **and Der Tris to defend the Bush Administration than you might have a case that the government is looking out for your best interests.
Why on earth would you trust a corporation?
Has the government been able to fix the economy?
In the German e. coli outbreak the government very swiftly moved to pull Spanish cucumbers off the shelves. The Spanish government moved quickly to shut down two greenhouses. The Russians moved quickly to block all vegetable imports from Europe.
Turns out they were all wrong (and possibly trying to cover their asses). Their best guess after the fact was bean sprouts (so they shut down a farm), but they also think it might have been spread by human fecal matter, or maybe seeds from Egypt (a claim Egypt denies).
This outbreak got 3,792 people sick, and 42 deaths, but wasn’t the result of evil profit driven corporations. It would have happened with or without government regulations. And the government involvement didn’t really help the matter, since they were so horrible wrong initially.
When you consider “motives” how trusting are you of the German government when they initially pointed to Spain?
On the other side of the spectrum was the case of Peanut Corporation of America. If I remember correctly the source of the infection was from leaky roofs that allowed bird shit to fall into the vats of peanut butter. Read through that, it’s funny. One of the plants in Texas never bothered to file for a license, so it was never formally inspected.
What bothers me about that case was that when they finally identified the source, the peanut butter ended up in hundreds of products. It was almost impossible for consumers to know if PCA peanut butter was in something.
What I find interesting is that many companies inspected the facilities on their own and decided it was too disgusting for them. That’s how the free market works. If you are a candy manufacturer you are better off trusting your own inspectors and lab teams than the government.
Far as I can see, the gist of the OP is “when we set out to do things, we risk other things happening that we hadn’t anticipated. Therefore, we shouldn’t do anything ever, or ever try to change anything because the risk is too great”.
Which is a fine philosophy to live by. If one wants to live and die in their crib.
What I’m curious to know is: if you don’t believe that description is true, what exactly do you believe is a company’s motive?