Sig worthy! :d
[QUOTE=Someone Else]
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
[/QUOTE]
The “someone else” in question being John Rogers the comic book writer, or at least that’s who I keep seeing it attributed to.
“We” are way too trusting of government? This seems a little over-inclusive when large numbers of Americans think it was the U.S. government that destroyed the WTC buildings, is poisoning our water supply, and that vaccination programs are covers for eventual genocide.
I do think you’re on to something with your “hysteria” : “libertarian” connection. But I’m afraid you have it backwards.
“government restaurant inspection” gets about 2 million Google hits. e.g. http://www.ca.gov/OnlineServices/OS_Consumers_inspections.html
Is your point, if any, that government inspections have zero value since inspectors, not working for private industry, are necessarily incompetent?
Better yet, don’t Google “restaurant inspection.” Try instead “logic fallacy.” No, not any particular fallacy; there are hundreds but you’re probably guilty of most of them. 
Wow. I wonder if all the rednecks gulled into voting “libertarian” realize how elitist that “philosophy” is. I said you helped us make our case, that libertarianism is about plutocracy and dog-eat-dog economics. You agree with this, almost in as many words. (As for why America’s “hyper-efficient” libertarian markets meant bankers were happy to make bad loans, I’ve explained this in other threads.)
Your very own words seem like their own rebuttal, but since you’d LOVE to see an answer to your glee that in Utopia “stupid people get deceived” let me just say that my Utopia isn’t much like yours.
Y’know, some mental health professionals estimate that the number of psychopaths in society may be as high as 10 percent, because many psychopaths, although lacking human emotion, are able to cope well enough to be functional and even highly successful in society. (They do very well in corporate environments where amoral self-aggrandizing pays off well.) So, I’m thinking … libertarianism is JUST the sort of political agenda that would appeal to a psychopath … so rational, so simple, so “don’t give a fuck about anyone else.” And there aren’t that many hard-core libertarians. Could it be that most libertarians are attracted to libertarianism because it so perfectly reflects their psychological state?
Yes, they are closed down after being inspected. Before people are dead.
On the other hand, we have the most excellent theoretical private system, which involves no regulation at all. These labs would be free to provide false results for money, until such time as the false results lead to sickness or death.
Then, after someone catches on, the lab would go out of business, leaving the field open to another lab that would provide false results for money, leading to more death and sickness.
As has been pointed out, the libertarian method of quality control is a reactive one, rather than a pro-active one. It only functions after harm has been done. This is incredibly poor public policy, and will lead to bad results.
emac, have you ever once in your life assumed that a negative consequence of a person’s action WASN’T due to their personal stupidity? Because that’s how you’re coming off: as a smug, know-it all who’s utterly uncaring and thinks everyone deserves everything that happens to them.
Things *happen *to people. No matter how smart, how rich, or how careful you are, things happen to you. It’s inconceivably ignorant to think that all people, most people, or even a plurality of people have the time, money, and effort necessary to ensure that they are safe all the time. I bet you eat and drink a lot of things you cannot personally ensure the safety of, and you travel to, from, or through areas that you haven’t personally inspected, assuming that the roads, sidewalk, walkway, driveways, and pathways you use are safe.
People shouldn’t have to do that for everything in their life through every moment of their life. It is a better result to delegate that function to a government that protects the people who can vote them out of office. Left to their own devices, ALL corporations are only in it for the money. We have hundreds of years of history as proof of that. Without government regulations and protections, you would still be picking lead paint out of your head, wearing lead makeup, having your clothes made by orphans, and eating food scraped off the floor of a meat packing factory. Whatever vague freedoms you think you’d gain for returning to such a time is not worth it
There are at least three reasons why this is doomed to fail:
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The people making the regulations are stupid, corrupt, or both. I’ve already given examples of stupid regulations (the TSA is ripe with it) but the most recent is the USDA’s move to lower the safe temperature for cooking pork. And as for corrupt, it’s not just financial although that’s there too. I gave you the example of the USDA banning imports of Canadian beef, not because that was the safe move, but because it was good for American business. They are also morally corrupt leading to bullshit like blue laws, banning gay marriage, banning stem cell research funding to name a few. And as everyone here as repeatedly pointed out, they totally fucked up regulating the banking industry. Would you like more examples?
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The regulator bodies themselves are stupid, corrupt, or both. Again, NY City Police force circa 1970. The Walkerton water debacle. It’s far too easy to bribe the inspectors. Essentially the refs aren’t as pure as you make them out to be. We all know businesses are out to make money, bribing city officials is just another part of it.
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Those enforcing the rules are stupid, corrupt, or both. Again, that judge getting bribed to put kids in jail. And opal.
You are putting way too much faith in a system that consistently fails. But when it fails you have a ready excuse, usually a lack of funding, which is supposed to come from the rich.
Bullshit. Too often the regulations favour large corporations and penalize small ones. Think about cases where a city/state ordnance requires some sort of building upgrade or retrofit, putting in a wheelchair ramp. That cost is often enough to cripple a small business, but easy enough for large ones. Another example is requiring nutritional labeling. That’s easy for large food manufacturers that already have the data, but next to impossible for smaller start ups that want to sell salsa at the local market. You’ll notice the result is to create loopholes that then make exceptions for “special people” which then encourages big businesses to exploit those loopholes.
Best example of this was my home town that had a province wide ban on Sunday shopping until a couple of years ago. A fine piece of regulation that surely saved millions of lives. But people liked Sunday markets, so they had to make a bunch of exceptions. Eventually a rather crafty local businessman realized that if he took his store and divided it into 4 smaller stores he could be the only business open on Sundays. A month later several of the major grocery chains followed his lead, so when you went in the bakery was one store, meats another, produce a third. Easy to do if you’re big enough or really small, but impossible if you’re kind of medium. the big stores already had 4 cashiers, now they were just spread out. If you only have one cashier you’re fucked. Long story short the province lifted the ban, now it’s chaos every Sunday at the mall.
Unfortunately that’s how it will always come across when ever it’s suggested that the party involved is a participant and not a victim. For example, pedestrian hit by car. We have a natural tendency to favour the pedestrian, to make them a victim. But the pedestrian plays a roll in the scenario, and it’s not hard to conceive of situations where the pedestrian is either fully at fault (crossing against a light) or partially (crossing at night in black clothing).
The claim made earlier was that the high school drop out was a victim of an evil corporation that tricked him into getting a mortgage–as a direct result of that person’s stupidity. I have very little tolerance for such stupidity. If it was a 15 year old I might question what was involved. If there might be fraud I definitely want it investigated. But simply basing a defense on stupidity? If you can’t be bothered to look up what ARM stands for you shouldn’t be buying a house.
Is it conceivable that people should ever be asked to take responsibility for themselves? I’m still waiting to hear what regulations are proposed to help idiots get mortgages while avoiding scams.
Actually, I can do one better. Two years ago I got a motorcycle, quite possibly the most dangerous thing a person can do. But as part of it I went and took the Motorcycle Safety Course (at a cost of $160). The course is a blast btw I highly recommend taking it, even if you have no intention of riding/owning a bike the course is fun.
I also took driver’s ed as a teenager and the main difference between the two courses is that in the motorcycle class they drill into the point that you are the only one responsible for you. In a car when you approach an intersection you evaluate right of way; green means go, red means stop. In a car, green means you have right of way, so people blindly zip through intersections making a very dangerous assumption that other people will stop.
On a motorcycle there is no right of way. Every intersection is near certain death. You go in assuming a) that cars won’t stop, b) that they can’t see you, c) if you get hit you die. So every intersection is treated with caution, I never expect a car to see me, and I never expect that they’ll stop. Same goes for when on the highway, every time I pass a car I expect that they don’t see me and plan to pull into my lane. I am the only one looking out for me.
So let’s tie this in with the discussion on regulations. Technically speaking the government really shouldn’t let people ride motorcycles, makes you wonder why they’re allowed. But more to the point, let’s talk helmet laws: I wear a helmet because I made the decision, I don’t need the government forcing me to do it. If someone is a) dumb enough to ride a motorcycle and b) dumb enough to go without a helmet, whose fault is it?
We also have plenty of examples of failed or misplaced government regulations. My point here is that the government and regulations aren’t making us as safe as you think.
Another interesting example, again from my home town, was when the province gave pedestrians the right of way, essentially if you a person is at a crosswalk you are required to stop and let them cross. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Problem is that it gave pedestrians a false sense of security, they walk to an intersection and assume cars will stop. They don’t bother checking for themselves if the cars are going to stop, they don’t even bother waiting, now they just step out and go. The false sense of security made people less safe.
Once again The Onion sums it up perfectly:
Report: Life Put In Hands Of 2,000 Complete Strangers Every Single Day
You seem to have great contempt for government, emacknight. Because government (ostensibly to serve the common good) will often work to enhance the power of big corporations (perhaps due to corrupt campaign financing), you would prefer to give the power directly to the big corporations (which, due to the ineffable Mystic Wisdom of the Market, will serve the common good).
I’d still like a Libertarian to answer the question in OP: What do you think of Democracy? I don’t know if elections exist in your Utopia, but if they do there will soon be a Proposition 1:
“Because of the spate of food poisoning in restaurants since Emack’s Utopia was put in effect, the government will forthwith resume food and restaurant inspections.”
I’m guessing this will be no problem with your Greed is God, Money is Everything mentality. The poisoning restaurants will compete with other interests to buy votes and, if the poisoners win (and we need not concern ourselves with the votes of the “stupid” and “deceived”), that’s what the Free Market deems best.
I’d LOVE to get a straightforward answer to this, but am not holding my breath.
(PS: The last debate you and I were involved together was “Resolved: capital at risk is capital that is at risk.” I’m afraid that the details of that fascinating hyper-intellectual debate got too intricate for me to follow. What was the conclusion? 
)
World health officials scramble to stem deadly E. coli outbreak
Source of the out break is currently presumed to be organic cucumbers from Spain packaged in Germany.
But what I’d like you to take note of is how Russia is dealing with it.
Feel free to answer some of my questions (post #150). BTW I took your suggestion and looked up logical fallacies, don’t suppose you’ve heard of the straw man, excluded middle, or ad hominem before have you? Fascinating stuff, perhaps you should have a look. It’s too bad this board isn’t regulated, imagine if you couldn’t distort people’s statements to suit your own rhetoric. What would you be left with? Instead you are free to post as you wish.
I’d rather look at how private industry handles food contamination issues. Which like in this case is typical. ‘Don’t do anything to limit our sales, not that many people are going to die!’ ‘Our profits are much more important that public health!’
No answer? You like what your government did for you, but you have no interest in contributing, instead it seems you’d rather the rich pay their share and yours too.
War on drugs has failed, report finds War on drugs has failed, report finds
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The theory that increasing law enforcement action would lead to a shrinking drug market has not worked, the report says. To the contrary, illegal drug markets and the organized criminal organizations that traffic them have grown, the group found.*
Shocking. What else would you like to regulate?
Silly Russians taking government action! They should just wait for the free hand of the market to put the toxic vegetable sellers out of business. It will just take a few thousand deaths, and it will really be the consumers fault for buying toxic vegetables anyway.
And what’s with this so called “World Health Organization” anyway. Do away with them I say. A privately run organization would clearly be better. Because it’s private, and would not steal my tax dollars. Same with the US Center for Disease Control. Wasting my tax dollars on a bunch of dead Germans.
Why with the tax dollars I save, I could simply hire my own food tasters.
I’d like to regulate naive stupidity, but I think that’s beyond anyone’s power.
Why would you “rather” do that? Why not look to see how governments are currently handling it?
Private industry sucks at it too. In my experience they are scrambling to figure out how to deal with this and prevent future loss of revenue. Businesses want to make money, hard to make money when you can’t sell your product.
Private industry sucks at it, government sucks at it. How is it that this slipped past so many government regulations? Quite the Utopia we have.
Doesn’t stop people with naive stupidity from trying though. Maybe if we ban doughnuts from being sold in Hospitals we’d stop stupid people from getting fat.
Oddly enough, I was trying to make fun of Nova Scotia but I also get to make fun of Topeka, Kansas as well. That’s tax dollars hard at work.
Nobody has claimed that government regulations = Utopia. Besides you of course. Weren’t you just lecturing someone about common fallacies like the straw man fallacy?
Things can slip by government regulations because a company frequently has a strong profit motive to cut corners and ignore regulations. Idiots who bleat about “cut my taxes” often result in lower taxes and the inability of governments to actually enforce regulations.
A failure of government regulations by cheating corporations does not then lead to the inescapable conclusion that we should therefore toss out the regulations and let the cheating companies “do the right thing”.