[identity profile] kylinrouge.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] talkpolitics
Well apparently I thought wrong. There is great division in these here lands over the proper handling of food regulation (or lack thereof) by our glorious Big Brother government, who exist only to extract our hard-earned tax money from us at gunpoint. Who put these clowns in power, anyway? I certainly didn't. That would require having me come out of my bunker to go to the polls, and there are Black Panthers there ready to pounce on me! But I digress.

Now, we can't have a discussion without some baselines and clarifications, the first of which is the fallacy that libertarians want anarchy. They don't- they are perfectly accepting of a nice democratic republic with a nice Constitution. They simply don't like being told what they can and can't do, and would like these restrictions kept to an absolute minimum. Fraud, perjury, forgery, violence, or really any process that relies on force or lying should be illegal, and we all agree on that.

I have a personal issue with libertarians in that some (to not cast a generalized glance) advocate a society driven by a profit-motive, but a lot of things that act toward the benefit of society go against the profit motive. Testing your food, stickers with expiration dates, very rigorous safety measures, all of these cost money and yet in a society without safety laws, these people are expected to still follow these procedures that cost them a lot of money? This didn't happen in history, and I don't know why it would happen if all regulations were removed. That's my one gripe, and I'd like to not focus on it as much to just address the issues I'm about to bring up.



To that degree, we discuss under the premise that it should be illegal to lie to your consumers. How do you keep an industry from lying to its clients? That is one of my first questions. One way is through government regulation. Here is an anecdote about how Heinz became the market leader in ketchup:

By the start of the Twentieth Century, Heinz was a major ketchup producer, but so were several companies who padded their bottom line by mixing rancid tomatoes into their product.

Seeing an opportunity, Heinz joined the chorus of scientists, consumer advocates and government officials who were clamoring for federal oversight of the processed food industry, even sending future Heinz CEO Howard Heinz to lobby President Theodore Roosevelt in favor of a the Pure Food and Drug Act, which prohibited some of the processed food industry’s most revolting practices and gave enforcement authority to the agency which would later become the FDA. In 1906 the Act passed, and most of Heinz competitors were pushed out of business.

Because Heinz was one of only a handful of major ketchup producers who were already in the business of mass producing ketchup solely from fresh tomatoes, they quickly capitalized on the vacuum that formed as the rancid ketchup industry collapsed. Heinz became the market leader, and it remains so today.


Others would advocate merely that you provide government funding to test, and require safety labels on products that may contain harmful substances. Let the people decide after reading the labels whether or not they want the product, right?

My point is simply to indicate that, despite Heinz’ belief that “pure food . . . is good business,” the truth is that thousands of American consumers bought rancid ketchup for decades, even though they had the option to choose Heinz’ safer product. Market forces left thousands of Americans sick from tomato mold. It wasn’t until the federal government got involved that rotten tomato ketchup left the shelves of local groceries.

My argument is thus: History shows that people aren't quite the rational thinkers we'd like them to be. Even today, people make poor choices all the time and it costs them dearly. We have warning labels on cigarettes, but smoking is still very popular. We have warning labels on alcohol, but that hasn't stopped alcohol-related diseases or DUIs. My argument is that warning labels are not enough. To truly remove a harmful product from the shelf is to regulate against it. To set a limit of harmful content in a product that makes it illegal to sell above that amount.

Why should we allow this to be a risk? What benefit does tainted food serve being on a shelf? Even if you allow compensation to the person who ate the tainted food, if it's deadly then they're likely going to die before they get a dime. Liability is a non-factor to the consumer when dealing with deadly substances.

In the Heinz example, they started out by advertising the product as being pure while the others used rotten tomatoes, but people still continued buying rancid ketchup. Despite having all the information, market forces continued to favor the cheaper, tainted food. Using this historical evidence, my conclusion is that people can't make rational decisions even under the best circumstances. To really understand this topic you really have to look at the pure food movement in the 1900s and how hard it was to get people to not eat rancid food. To get them not to eat contaminated meat from butchers which was food colored to not look bad. To have food produced in the same place that rats defecated in. To have no laws against expiration dates. It was very difficult in that day, despite vast amounts of information available to the people, to get them to stop poisoning themselves without laws. It sounds crazy to just believe people will eat something that can kill them, knowing it can kill them, but I believe that it's a well-educated, white, wealthy viewpoint. They don't know what it's like to be poor, hungry, and uneducated. It's just a fact of life that abject poverty causes a lot of bad decision-making, and there's no way to stop the cycle without regulation that keeps poison off the shelves.

Secondly, I believe that it makes no sense to allow a company to produce something that can kill somebody. There is no reason for it to be on the shelf in the first place. How big is the label? Is it big enough or is it hidden with small text? How is it marketed? You run the risk of people being deceived. If there is merely a law to test the product, but none that makes it illegal to actually do it, then what can you do? If the warning label sufficiently covers the risk (assuming it hasn't been hampered in any way), what can someone do for compensation?

The Pure Food and Drug Act was initially concerned with ensuring products were labeled correctly. Later efforts were made to outlaw certain products that were not safe, followed by efforts to outlaw products which were safe but not effective.

Let's not confuse my analogy with alcohol and cigarettes as some sort of bizarre argument to outlaw those things. Both of them are okay in moderation, but it only takes one bad piece of food to get poisoned. That is the essential difference.

A regulatory system prevents tainted food from making it to stores. It prevents people from even having the option to consume. The whole point of market regulation is to mitigate externality, not allow a broader range of (very poor) choice to the consumer. This is the key point here of a regulatory system.

When you mitigate externality, you keep from incurring extra costs. You have to remember: Salmonella spreads, e.coli spreads. Just allowing them to produce tainted food runs the risk of it spreading to the rest of their products. For example, under current regulation if a farm is found to have tainted spinach then it is forced to get rid of all their spinach, and their entire process of making spinach has to be reevaluated. That's what regulation does.

A final note is that I am aware and acknowledge the imperfections in our system. There is corruption, there are regulatory agencies that promote bad food, there are inefficiencies and many other problems. I wish to improve this system, and I believe that it doesn't come from doing away with it entirely and returning to the age of robber barons and the most unsanitary food conditions our country has ever had.

Source: http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/libertarians-are-dumb-or-why-we-eat-heinz-ketchup/blog-298247/?page=2

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

(no subject)

Date: 19/7/11 22:42 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
Yes, the companies incur a higher overhead for their extra precautions in testing and safety. This is a much lower cost than the negative externalities that arise from lack of regulation.

Can you prove that?

How is the company producing safe food if they don't test it or use safety precautions?

Because testing and safety precautions don't cause safe food. My wife doesn't use a hairnet in our kitchen, the food is still good. I may have waited a few too many hours to put my leftovers in the fridge, the food was still good.

. If it's really such a horrible piece of legislation, surely we would've been worse off post-1906 instead of better off?

If we're truly better off, you haven't justified that, either.

However, food regulation sets out to test food for bacteria, and that's exactly what it did. There's no way to abstract that.

What I was saying with the analogy you don't like because it kind of torpedoes your position was that we can look at a result and say "hey, it worked" even though the result may very well exist independent of the regulation.

(no subject)

Date: 19/7/11 23:16 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
The entire point of my topic was that market forces were not going to do this.

Which you still haven't established.

Following known safe procedures doesn't result in something that's safe?

Not always, no. Just like following unsafe procedures does not guarantee unsafe results.

but if you ALWAYS cook chicken to a certain temperature then it will ALWAYS be safe.

Uh, wow. No.

I'm not asking you to take my word for it, just read anything- ANYTHING on the subject.

You believe I have not. The reality is much more complicated than you're willing to admit.

So, regulation enacted to test food for bacteria does not actually reduce the bacteria content of food because the companies that had bacteria in them were put out of business. No, this was just a coincidence, even though there's no other way the bacteria would be found if it wasn't specifically tested for it.

I'm saying specifically that, even if bacteria levels dropped, the intent was not so much to drop bacteria levels but to accomplish something else.

(no subject)

Date: 19/7/11 23:48 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
Food quality as on a trend downwards in the late 19th century to the early 20th century, and it didn't change until regulation. Around the world, countries established food regulation and in every single instance, the quality of food reversed its trend from downward to upward.

Correllation is not causation.

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<i>Food quality as on a trend downwards in the late 19th century to the early 20th century, and it didn't change until regulation. Around the world, countries established food regulation and in every single instance, the quality of food reversed its trend from downward to upward.</i>

Correllation is not causation.

<i><Show me where a proven safety procedure did not result in a safe food product 99% of the time.</i>

You've changed the game - I was saying exactly this - there are no guarantees.

<i>Bacteria die at a certain temperature. We know this. We recorded this. We have empirically studied which temperature bacteria is completely eliminated at. If you eat it within a reasonable amount you have a one in a trillion times chance of getting sick. Fact. Read up on the facts of bacteria.</i>

I understand bacteria fine, thanks. The problem is less food safety and more safe handling on the consumer end, really, but you seem to think that there's this proven, 100% definite method. There's not. No amount of regulation can change that, either.

<i>I wanna know what's so complicated about all this, because it all looks plain as day to me.</i>

I've been fairly clear about the regulatory processes impact on the marketplace.

<i>I don't understand why it's on me to prove that food safety regulation increase food safety (I know I know, ridiculous on its face) for which there are thousands upon thousands of sources</i>

So provide a couple.

<i> but you don't have to prove your position at all.</i>

The book I have is unfortunately boxed up somewhere. I would refer you to the book I mentioned earlier, however, for some examples within the farming industry.

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 00:27 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
You have to be trolling me now. You even accepted my premise as fact and still pull this card.

I...I did? Let's not call each other trolls - we disagree, that's all it is.

99.9% is a guarantee. If I give you 99.9 to 1 odds on winning roulette you would be withdrawing all your money from your bank account before I could finish the sentence. If you claim that 99.9% is not a guarantee then you have no idea what the word means.

lol, okay.

Nobody was talking about what consumers do with their regulated food. We're talking about government regulation on producers, not your wife.

You missed my point. My point was to bring up the reality that most regulation could be deemed unnecessary if consumers were more careful, and that no amount of regulation can fix stupid consumer choices.

my response to that was that I had no sympathy for producers that willingly create tainted food.

Nor do you have sympathy for producers who a) do not create tainted food but b) are forced out of the market by the bigger boys due to your regulatory desires.

Alright, this is proof positive that you ignored my link 2 replies ago.

I was looking for more than Wikipedia clones, sorry.

When I have countless sources on my side, and you have a boxed-up book, who looks like the conspiracy theorist? Food regulation is a century old and NOBODY is claiming that the primary purpose was to reduce competition.

If you need to toss that sort of nonsense around, you and I won't go far. But plenty of places discuss it in various forms, such as this (http://www.jstor.org/pss/1239523). Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal is not boxed up, and you have yet to even admit I pointed it out...

The thing I don't understand is... why? Why do you scoff at the facts of the matter? What do you gain by denying history? I'll never, for the life of me, understand your stubbornness.

First, I'm not denying history. Second, I'm stubborn about the facts - I'm not saying food regulation has been or is worthless, I'm merely asking you to also note that it has significant negatives associated with it.

You ask "Why?" Because people need to stop trying to get the government to solve every problem they have.

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 01:21 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
Again, this is a matter of history, not logic. We keep coming back to this point so I think we're done here.

It's about both!

They're not forced out of the market by the 'bigger boys', they're forced out of the market due to non-compliance with methods that insure safe food. I'm repeating myself here for the 50th time as well.

Why do you dismiss the anticompetitive nature of the regulatory process? I'd really love an answer for this.

I never claimed that there were no downsides to regulation, but the positives outweigh the negatives, as you can see by looking at pre-1906 food sanitation and post-1906 food sanitation.

Correlation and causation again.

Not every problem, but there are certain things that are granted to the government well within the power of the Constitution. Mitigating externalities is definitely one of them.

Where is this power granted?

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 01:54 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
Because it's a side-effect, not the purpose. This is something we disagree on and you just don't believe that any legislation can be proposed with good intentions, or at the very least the 1906 Act.

I'm trying not to attribute things to you, I'd appreciate the same. "Any legislation?" No, but regulatory bills? Almost always.

5th Amendment.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the regulatory process.

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 02:36 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
That's regarding actions of the government during a criminal investigation/trial, not private firms.

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 11:29 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
No, it allows the government to take action.

No, it doesn't. The 5th amendment is a restriction of government, not an enabler.

Also, what? Private firms can deprive you of life?

Also different.

Not only this, there's a phrase: "inter-state commerce covers everything." It means pretty much means government is granted the power to regulate.

Sure, but that phrase doesn't exist in the Constitution. The government, Constitutionally, cannot touch local food matters.

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 22:28 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
Due process extends to all corporate entities and people.

Not exactly. The point, again, is that the government cannot do those things.

It can if the products can deprive you of life without due process of law.

The products aren't the government.

(no subject)

From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com - Date: 21/7/11 00:46 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 11:32 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
Wait a minute, I just looked up that book title you linked. This guy is against child labor laws?

The.

Fuck?

Holy moly, this guy is crazy.


You have to read the book to understand why in the context of farming.

Thank god for those laws. Allowing cows to be slaughtered in sanitary conditions instead of their own feces on the field. I can't take any of his rampant sensationalism seriously. At least in my link it isn't a bunch of crazy incomplete thoughts and rambling incoherency where he can't go two sentences without screaming BUREAUCRATS.

Glad to see you're going into it with an open mind.

Thanks for the laugh, jeff. The excerpt I looked at was pretty good. It seems like this guy is uneducated and doesn't understand regulation.

Yeah, he only runs an incredibly well-known and widely-respected farm. He's clearly clueless.

(no subject)

From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com - Date: 20/7/11 20:35 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com - Date: 20/7/11 22:26 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com - Date: 21/7/11 00:49 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 01:21 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
I don't understand why I have to read what you present to me but you won't even consider what I present to you. This is a one-sided exchange.

When did I not consider it?

(no subject)

Date: 20/7/11 01:55 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com
I did. But it's not really much of a reference.

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