Individuality is a fluid concept and in its purest form could be the detriment of human survival. I have to rely on so many people for my survival. So to a certain extent I have to trust everybody, but I do not have to believe that there is some Utopian system that would alleviate all my fears.

Thank you for providing more information. I did mean to imply that the generics couldn’t be sold; I was merely wondering if the generics had passed the FDA inspection and still had a problem (for example, Vioxx). Saying that, I still have a question for you. You wrote that you needed “to rely on the FDA as a clearing house of information” with this generic. I guess I am wondering, did you HAVE to do this or did you CHOOSE to get information from the FDA?

I ask because if one of my appliances is recalled, I will easily get enough information by going to the Underwriter’s Laboratory Website. In this instance, a private group has taken the time to become the expert on appliances. With both the brand name and the company’s money on the line, UL is far more effective in preventing appliance issues than the FDA. As I mentioned above, the FDA approved Vioxx and then suddenly the drug was causing other problems. So what exactly did the FDA do? Isn’t it the FDA’s mandate that they check drugs for other complications? Why should we keep a government program around that could pretty easily be replaced by a private group and that isn’t living up to its own reason for existence?

By the way, for fun, you can replace my reference to the FDA in the last sentence with a reference to the United States Postal Service and nothing else will change. Just another example of a government program failing miserably compared to private groups.

The question you asked seems like you are saying that no Ford Cars should of been sold before they recalled the Pinto.

having bad government is the fault of the society. Apathy and those that are too high minded to participate create that.

It has been my experience that bad government directly correlates with the power its officials have. the more power they have, the more evil men are attracted to the posts. These evil men use fraud or force to acquire their positions, and then abuse their positions for their personal gain.

I cite as a case in point FDR. When he first ran for president, he ran against Hoover. The Great Depression, then about 2-3 years old had risen largely as the result of the Hoover administration’s disastrous monetary, industrial and agricultural programs. Hoover ran on a platform of continuing his interventions. FDR ran on a platform of returning to free markets and away from government managed trade.

Then, once in office, he proceeded to violate most of his campaign promises; he expanded Hoover’s programs. He forced farmers to destroy crops at gunpoint while people were starving in the cities. He confiscated the nation’s gold. He encouraged people to spy on their neighbors and report them for economic crimes. He adopted Mussolini’s cartelized economic policies as much as the Supreme Court and Congress would allow him to get away with.

Thanks to his disastrous policies the Great Depression, instead of Ending in 1933 or 1934 lasted into 1946 (trust me, World War II didn’t end it, B-29′s are not consumer goods).

Were people high-minded and apathetic? Nope. They were lied to and tricked, subjected to massive propaganda campaigns, cut off from dissenting voices. The lies and trickery were so pervasive so effectively promulgated, that today they are still held to be “the truth” by most people.

The people who supported Roosevelt throughout his reign were people who stood to gain from his policies. The major industrial leaders who saw their profits assured and new competitors permanently silenced in favor of existing producers. The banking industry loved the way he allowed them to keep their profits while forcing the tax-payer to pick up their losses. Social Reformers of all stripes saw their chance to use government to force their cures on the populace.

In the end, they hastened millions of deaths, and consigned people to decades of misery. We the tax-payers still suffer from many programs they created to support their fellow tax-eaters.

It was not apathy or high-mindedness that allowed this. Rather it was the power they seized that allowed them to coerce and loot their victims far more thoroughly.

you wrote,
“I’ve had to rely on the FDA as a clearing house of information, when one pharmaceutical had a recall of all of its generic drugs.”

I have one question for you. Did the FDA approve of those generic drugs and allow them to be sold in the market with the “FDA-approval” logo before they were recalled?

As you brought up the issue of trust, I see you implicitly trusting two things:

1) Government is capable of protecting you.
2) Government cares about you.

The first is usually not true. Government may be able to punish those who wronged you, but they’re really pretty bad at protecting you. They rarely stop things such as E. Coli (as seen in multiple outbreaks over the last decade and a half), although you can at least make an argument that they reduce these things through threat of punishment. Either way, trusting the government to defend your life leaves you defenseless.

The second is where it really gets nasty. Most politicians are about making you believe they’re looking out for you, when they’re really looking out for their own re-election. Why do you think every regulation benefits big business, stifles competition, and often backfires when it comes to its stated purpose? Usually because politicians aren’t writing regulations to protect you, they’re doing so to protect their own Congressional seat.

The problem is that you’re looking at government the way you were taught government should behave. When you start to look at it through the actual history of its behavior, it seems like nothing more than a big lie. Government doesn’t work, because the incentives are all wrong. They’ll only act in your interests if they have to, and with an apathetic, uninformed electorate, they really don’t have to.

When it comes to the food industry, I actually do have trust in them. They do have to compete for my business. If they defraud me and start lining my canned goods with lead, I’ll sue their asses. A company who defrauds their consumers, or negligently causes them harm, will not last very long.

The difference is that if it’s a private entity, we can put them out of business through lawsuits and boycotts. If they harm someone in my family, I can demand restitution and usually get paid off. But what happens when a government agency causes me harm. What happens when FDA regulations take away a life-saving drug that a dear loved one could use. Can I sue them and put them out of business? Nope… Can I boycott them by not paying my taxes? No, because they’ll come to my house and throw me in jail.

So you want to know who to trust? Who’s done more to earn it, the food companies who continue to provide you with good food? The companies who are now voluntarily ceasing the use of trans-fats because they’re found to be unhealthy? Or do you trust the government, who create farm subsidies that encourage the use of things like high-fructose corn syrup, which is so much more unhealthy than cane sugar (which they tax with high tariffs) that you can reasonably argue that they’re making us fat?

I’m not going to argue that the free market is perfect. After all, in the free market, people die, people get poisoned, people get injured due to the neglect of businesses and corporations. My argument is simply that government leads to even worse outcomes than the free market would provide.

I see a purpose of government to defend our life. We accept this when our enemies are men, but not with other entities. As an individual we cannot know everything and we cannot be eternally vigilante against every threat.

We’ve tried the self-regulation of food production. Strangely, it didn’t become safer. We’ve tried the self-regulation of food-reselling – and strangely, it doesn’t work either. In Josh’s world, a supermarket should be able to relabel or food-color its rotting meat – and if you get botulism, too bad, so sad. Maybe you won’t shop there again – until you realize that in an attempt to extend profits, supermarkets as a whole are reselling bad meat. But that’ll be okay – because there’s no need or ability to regulate it. After all it passed muster in this county so it’ll be just fine after six days in the sun in transit to your neck of the woods. Why should the state or federal government care?

Canned food – that’ll be okay too if the can was lined with lead instead of aluminum or tin because that metal was cheaper and more readily available at the time the manufacturer got his cans. It won’t bother you a bit if the baby food you have contains a shard of glass that shreds your toddler’s esophagus – there’s no need to regulate or enforce standards there. Welcome to Russian Roulette grocery shopping.

You’ll be able to wash that bad tasting food down with some bottled water … laced with arsenic. That’s because there weren’t any rules or regulations on what ‘bottled water’ should really be nor any standards to be adhered to. Since there’s no regulation, there’s no reason to actually deliver clean water, but rather water that comes from the Hudson. Enjoy.

Sorry that the beer killed you. We said that it was 6.2% alcohol by volume. It was actually 34% and you seem to have overdosed – but don’t worry, you get to keep the brain damage. Thank goodness the state doesn’t enforce any standards! Thank goodness we’ve attributed this gross negligence to state-run railways, interstates, and interference however.

With food, you only have to be wrong once to have some lifelong consequences. Why do you insist on such a guessing game, Josh?

“So-and-so got sick from bad meat. The government should do something about it.”
“Where did they get it?”
“The supermarket.”
“Where did the supermarket get it?”
“I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t know where his food comes from?”
“No. Do you?”
“Not really. Do you think it came a long way?”
“It could have come from anywhere.”
“By interstate? Railroad?”
“Sure.”
“Who builds those?”
“…the government…”

Most people see a problem and don’t think about its root. But the whole agribusiness system is a creation of massive state interference, both in transportation, water allocation, and regulation. More state interference is the wrong way to go: instead we should be pushing for more decentralized production. Production closer to the point of consumption reduces pollution and regulation – less energy goes into transport, and less regulation (state or market discipline) is needed for oversight.

- Josh

It is the government that has provided standards and enforcement of those standards for food safety. Otherwise, you will have more E. Coli outbreaks because there is no incentive for Joe Farmer to actually make sure his product is clean – the ‘free market’ isn’t going to do it. After all, there was free market ruling the day in the 1900s, and sometimes your sausage contained pork parts – and sometimes it didn’t. Food does not need to be some guessing game where maybe you’re safe and maybe you’re not. You have to only be wrong once btw, so worrying if you’re a ‘repeat’ customer isn’t quite the threat it’s perceived to be.

The elimination of unsafe food processes is because of government regulation, not in spite of it. Ultimately, that golden calf makes sure that, well, the calf is safe to eat.