It’s economically worth it to kill one percent of your customers, if you have a process that cuts your costs by two percent.
So do we assume that in Libertaria there is no tort system that would hit this restaurant with a huge lawsuit making big news?
Are we also to assume that police do not investigate suspicious deaths?
Can we assume that the press will not have the same type of incentive that it has now in order to prevent shady dealings with powerful business?
That wasn’t my understanding of the Libertarian idea.
That depends on how far you want to take the libertarian idea.
There might not be police, only private security.
The press reports on whatever will make them the most money. Without fraud, slander, or libel regulation in place, they aren’t restricted.
The libertarian idea only works if you assume that every wrongdoing will be immediately caught out by the public at large and that the public can make complete intelligent informed decisions. And even that all was possible (it’s not), it does no good for the poor bastards who fall victim and make the news in the first place.
What would you estimate the fair market value of your life is? It’s a fair question because the business has a figure for your life. They know at what point it can be cheaper to pay off a wrongful death lawsuit than fix a problem.
What suspicious death? The guy died of food poisoning. What are the police going to do about it? Poor hygiene in food preparation isn’t a criminal matter in Libertopia.
Yes, we can. We can assume that in Libertopia, as in America, the press will be run by powerful business interests and media coverage will reflect that.
Of course not. Libertarianism works if everyone does what they’re supposed to. Communism works if everyone does what they’re supposed to.
The problem is that in the real world, people don’t do what they’re supposed to. You need a system that works when people are fucking around.
There are actually 25, Hitler was a Libertarian, or so I’m told…
Are you volunteering to be one of those 4 or 5 dead patrons? You do realize. right, that there’s no reason to think that you won’t be the one dying from something stupid and preventable, like, say, poor refrigeration or rat droppings?
What you are describing is a blind faith that the government will keep glass out of your burrito, has that been the case? With state funded health inspectors have we eliminated glass in food? Did we stop or even minimize food born illnesses?
If you remove the health inspectors, people’s behaviors change, because now the individual has to acknowledge that there might be glass in the burrito, instead of assuming a state funded bureaucrat is inspecting each an every piece of food that gets served.
It won’t result in everyone getting sick, more likely it will result in very few if any commercial restaurants. Right now there is misplaced trust in the restaurant industry, remove that trust and it’s like going to eat in any developing country.
What this would look like is Halloween. Someone heard that once there was a razor blade in an apple, so suddenly parents had to get off their asses and look at the food their kids had collected for free from strangers. Say that last sentence out loud, then consider how fucked up that is. Parents sent their kids out alone to ask strangers for candy. What did they think was going to happen?
If you ever get the chance to travel outside of the US, how do you propose you’d function without the FDA following you around?
Chances are you’d avoid the pani puri stall and head for McDonalds. But why? Why do people assume McDonalds is as safe in India as it is in the US?
What you’ll also see is a shift away from the flawed assumption that everything is safe, and towards personal responsibility. The biggest outbreaks of food poisoning have been from raw tomatoes and spinach. Outside of the developed world people don’t eat a lot of raw fruits and vegetables, they know it’s not safe, but we pretend that the government is protecting us so you see people eating produce in the store that shouldn’t be considered any safer than raw meat. We now know to cook meat to certain temperatures, because we know that’s the safest way to eat it.
But that brings us back to the original problem, how is the government supposed to protect us? It just admitted it was wrong about what temperature to cook pork. That mistake cost the pork industry a lot of money. The US government is wrong about raw milk cheese, and as a result we can’t buy it any where. The US government has no idea how to deal with sushi, or eggs, or homemade pickles. They’ve gone through a lot of trouble to classify beef, pork, poultry and seafood, but I asked about ostrich and got blank stares. Why? Because the US government doesn’t know how to deal with ostrich yet. Is it poultry? Game? Can it be served rare like beef? What about kangaroo?
So this is the reason not to have a libertarian society?
What does it say about our current society that those things still happen? Who exactly do you think it checking the refrigeration habits and your local diner? Frankly, the current standards are pretty lax, 2 hours is a long time to cool something from 135 to 70F, then another 4 hours from 70 to 40.
Removing the health department means that restaurants now have to factor reputation into their business plan. They have to convince customers the burritos are glass-free, much the way Chinese restaurants now post signs that say MSG-free. Car companies put in a lot of effort to convince you they’re safe. But the sad reality is that people don’t actually care that much, they will knowingly buy from repeat offenders, read up on the listeriosis outbreak at the Maple Leaf plant in Canada.
Have you a cite for this? Why should wild-gathered or orchard-grown raw fruits be unsafe?
I guess that I need a better definition of who we are Pitting in this thread. What you describe sounds like anarchy: no police, no crimes, no tort system whereas what I’ve heard most Libertarians preach about is less and very limited government; not something like Escape from New York.
Not necessarily. That depends on (e.g.) your profit margin, whether your competitors are less likely to kill their customers, & whether the deaths of your customers are well-publicized.
There are a lot of dynamics in play, from discrediting an entire industry (you might get tarred by your competitors’ practices) to scapegoating one office.
It’s generally better for the whole sector to appear to be responsible up front, & the best way to appear responsible is actually to be responsible. Not for nothing do industries sometimes self-regulate.
Using the force of law can give regulation teeth, & help deal with those who want to ride free on the industry’s good rep. But if the government regulators are underfunded or corrupt, those functions are diminished.
This last is why having nominal authority in the hands of defunded regulators is the corrupt businessman’s presently favored tactic. And big conglomerates have the volume to make cultivating their own sympathetic Congressmen cost-effective, particularly if they cooperate.
What I am saying is that the market has built-in mechanisms to keep restaurants from killing their customers. If I open a restaurant, I’ve invested a lot of time and money into growing my business. Why would I want to do something like feed my customers maggot-infested meat to save a few bucks when the downside is their deaths, bad publicity, loss of customers, and a possible huge lawsuit?
Why would you assume they are safe?
First problem is that you have no idea what’s been on those plants before you go there. As an example, salmonella comes from bird shit. Guess where birds like to sit–trees. If manure was spread that comes from cow shit. Heavy rain splash the shit up onto the food. If the field was irrigated where did the water come from? Botulism exists in the soil and covers things like onions and garlic. Workers in the fields are also a major source because they have a tendency to shit in the fields (leading to the next point).
Second, who is picking the fruit? Do you think his/her hands are clean?
Third, how is it transported? In a bag, basket, cart, truck? Do you think any of those are clean?
Forth, without a source of cleaning drinking water, how are you going to wash it off?
You have to make a lot of assumptions for food to be considered “safe.”
Because you’re a libertarian and that means you want people to die. It’s a fact, I read it on a t-shirt.
Any idiot can open a restaurant or deli or other food service store. I’m sure everyone here knows the guy who can do anything he’s seen done once, and can do it better. Having regulations in place ensures that when Mr. Mensa first opens his food service joint, patrons have a reasonable expectation on the cleanliness and food handling. No need to have the first few night’s patrons all spending time in the ER with salmonella poisoning before word gets around that numbnuts really knows nothing about food safety. And without a mechanism to shut him down, he stays in business until he runs out of money, poisoning people all the way. Sure, the informed consumer knows to stay away, but hang out in a store for a few hours and just listen to how uninformed consumers can be. Same goes for building cars, making electrical appliances, etc.
emacknight
I just asked my mother-in-law, born and raised in the Philippines, about raw food. They’ll cook their meat and fish until it is dead, dead, dead, and when they cook vegetables, they’ll do the same. The operative word is “when”. Especially away from the cities, they ate raw produce often and gleefully, simply because it was available. In the cities, it was less available and more expensive, so they didn’t get to enjoy fresh as much. Now my information is anecdotal, so if you’ve data backing your claim, we’d all like to see it.
The great thing is we don’t have to speculate on how an unregulated system of food production would work. We had one.
Just look back to 1905, prior to the enactment of the Wiley Act. And you can see how well an unregulated marketplace monitored food production.
Some of us prefer to live in a world that works. Not in a world that should work, according to theory.
Suppose you do poison a customer, what are they going to do about it? If they sue you, they’ll have to have some proof that you were the source. What are people going to do, save a sample of everything they eat in a sealed evidence bag? Who’s to say how much e. coli is too much, anyway? And they better have a good case, or you’ll counter sue for someone spreading such slanderous lies about your business.
If we’re talking about what would happen in a lebertarian world, let’s take it to its ultimate implementation.
But the current regulations don’t play out the say you think they do. The health department will inspect before issuing a license, but there is nothing stopping him from fucking up his first night. There are no government inspectors in the kitchen, no state or federal employees making sure he cools food fast enough, or cooks chicken to 165, or even if he washes his hands.
And beyond that there are so many factors out of his control. What if the source of the outbreak is peanut butter, deli meats, tomatoes, or spinach? All products he handles the way the government tells him too, but still spread disease and kill people.
What if the city fails to monitor the drinking water and that’s what makes people sick? Or what if an angry employee sabotages production?
Long story short, you’re not as safe as you think you are.
The bulk of my information is anecdotal having lived with relatives in India, as well as traveled to a dozen or so developing nations.
Produce that’s eaten raw is frequently fruit with a thick rind that can be pealed. And don’t forget that just because they eat it doesn’t make it safe. If we used that logic scooters would be family vehicles.
http://www.cuboimages.it/FOTO/thumbs/EYE_cubo/EYE07170.jpg
People in developing countries also make fun of Americans for living in sterilized environments that means anything they eat makes them sick. So you’ll frequently hear it mentioned that the Philipino family has a digestive track that allows them to tolerate less clean foods.
But even in developed countries, how do you account for variations in practices? I remember sitting in a restaurant in Spain and being amazed that eggs were kept out at room temperature. France is fine eating raw milk cheese. Japan is okay eating raw fish.
Like I’ve said, we live in the real world. We accept the fact that no system is perfect. But the fact that a system doesn’t work 100% of the time doesn’t mean you should throw it out and replace it with a fantasy system.
You’d think that it wouldn’t be beneficial for banks to issue loans to people who clearly wouldn’t be able to pay either. Or to lie about their books. Or a million other things. Or to adulterate your toothpaste with poison. Yet it happens.
First, some managers have criminal mentalities, and, just like common criminals, are sure they won’t get caught. But more of them, faced with a situation where cutting corners saves the company money and increases their bonus, but increases the chance of a problem slightly, will choose to cut corners. And, when they get away with it for a year, they will cut corners a bit more. They no doubt think that they can get away with it until they retire or quit, and they get to keep all the extra pay. Lots of them do get away with it. And the worst that usually happens is that they pay a fine nowhere near their ill-gotten gains and go to a country club prison for a while.
Libertaria might have a chance of working if the fuckers got flogged to near death and so much of their money taken that they are made homeless. Not going to happen, because they’ve got the power, but it would be nice.
Remember, the people who nearly destroyed the financial system, put millions out of work, millions more out of their homes, and caused untold damage around the world - are all sitting pretty today. And the libertarian wing of the Republican party is doing its best to stop any laws that would help keep it from happening again.