""Remember, before the Pure Food and Drug Act, there were no warning labels. You had no idea what you were getting, or what you were being told was the truth. They were not liable, not accountable, and had no reason to tell you the truth. You can't make an informed decision if you're being denied all the information."
Oh I absolutely agree to truth in labeling laws, well that is not quite true because I do not believe that we need separate laws for them, more generic anti fraud laws will suffice but yes requiring accurate information about the product you are buying is entirely consistent with libertarian thought.
That being said you characterization of companies in the late 19th century knowingly selling tainted food is inaccurate. The Germ Theory of disease was not a generally accepted scientific theorem until around 1880 and not conclusively proven until the 1890's. The pure food and drug act was passed a mere 2 decades later in 1906.
It is not so much that people were being denied information, it was that at the time most people didn't know what information was important. This is also why they were "not liable", because at that time the overwhelming majority of people who did get sick had absolutely no idea of the cause and so no lawsuits were ever filed and if they were there would have been no actual evidence to support the theory.
Ultimately here is the problem with your entire premise. You are seeing a correlation between the passing of food safety regulation and food safety improving and assuming that one caused the other and ignoring all other possible causes for that improvement such as technological and scientific advancement.
Even if you could show that government regulation is the primary reason behind improvements in food safety this does not mean than the 100 years of science and engineering that have occurred since then would simply disappear if the regulations were repealed. If that happened food would not go back to the "bad old days of "robber barons", in fact companies would be scrambling to find anyone that consumers would trust to certify them as being safe and consumers hearing horror stories like yours wouldn't buy anything that wasn't certified safe and our food would actually get even safer than it is today."
It is actually worse than that, there are several church run soup kitchens that were giving away home cooked means to the homeless and were shut down because their food was not prepared in a kitchen that met commercial regulations.
So the homeless people instead of eating the perfectly healthy food prepared in homes ate whatever they could find in dumpsters.
but yep, regulations only ensure that healthy food is eaten.
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Date: 19/7/11 21:22 (UTC)Oh I absolutely agree to truth in labeling laws, well that is not quite true because I do not believe that we need separate laws for them, more generic anti fraud laws will suffice but yes requiring accurate information about the product you are buying is entirely consistent with libertarian thought.
That being said you characterization of companies in the late 19th century knowingly selling tainted food is inaccurate. The Germ Theory of disease was not a generally accepted scientific theorem until around 1880 and not conclusively proven until the 1890's. The pure food and drug act was passed a mere 2 decades later in 1906.
It is not so much that people were being denied information, it was that at the time most people didn't know what information was important. This is also why they were "not liable", because at that time the overwhelming majority of people who did get sick had absolutely no idea of the cause and so no lawsuits were ever filed and if they were there would have been no actual evidence to support the theory.
Ultimately here is the problem with your entire premise. You are seeing a correlation between the passing of food safety regulation and food safety improving and assuming that one caused the other and ignoring all other possible causes for that improvement such as technological and scientific advancement.
Even if you could show that government regulation is the primary reason behind improvements in food safety this does not mean than the 100 years of science and engineering that have occurred since then would simply disappear if the regulations were repealed. If that happened food would not go back to the "bad old days of "robber barons", in fact companies would be scrambling to find anyone that consumers would trust to certify them as being safe and consumers hearing horror stories like yours wouldn't buy anything that wasn't certified safe and our food would actually get even safer than it is today."
It is actually worse than that, there are several church run soup kitchens that were giving away home cooked means to the homeless and were shut down because their food was not prepared in a kitchen that met commercial regulations.
So the homeless people instead of eating the perfectly healthy food prepared in homes ate whatever they could find in dumpsters.
but yep, regulations only ensure that healthy food is eaten.