Where Were The Regulators?

When people advocate government regulation, they fall prey to a critical error: they believe government can actually successfully regulate! Despite the fact that government regulation simply creates loopholes and exceptions that can be exploited, those advocates still believe in the basic premise of the system.

What then, to make of this?

But a darker side to the beef industry was revealed in January, when the Humane Society of the United States released a video showing sickening conditions at a California slaughterhouse. Cows too ill or injured to stand were shoved along by forklifts or dragged by their legs across the floor. Downer cows, as they are called, are unfit for human consumption. But many at the slaughterhouse run by the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company were killed, processed, and their meat sent to the National School Lunch Programme. “They’re going onto the plates of children,” said Wayne Pacelle, the head of the Humane Society.

You think the government can keep us safe? They can’t even certify that what they buy themselves is safe!

The next time someone tells you that they expect that government regulators are better than those of the private sector, remind them that it wasn’t government that saved you from the bad beef, it was committed non-government citizens.

The bureaucrats will offer to save you, by instituting some new regulation or some new rule. How did that work after the first mad cow care?