I'm about to go...
That said, here goes. I take some issue with CommanderROR's statement that:
Quote:
Originally Posted by CommanderROR
Everything you say about the EU and their involvement is true..or rahter, it would be true in an ideal world.
We live in a real world however, and if you don't come donw heavy on the companies AND the people about just about everything, then what you get is madness and mayhem. If it were up tot eh companies, then we would have a few big Goliath companies that control the market. They would make the prices and they would decide what people want and what not. If it were up to the food companies, then we would all be eating stuff that causes cancer and whatnot until we die, even if they know what's in their products.
Have you ever seen a big boos of some cigarette company smoking? Well, they know (and have always known) that smoking kills you, but they still want us all to smoke. If Crack were legal, do you think anyone would hesitate? Do you think any businessman would think twice about selling Cocaine? They would probably even sell it to babies, advertising it as "Ideal method to make sure your kid never cries and is always happy" or something like that...
Of course, these are extreme examples, but I don't think they are untrue. The whole economy is a delicate balance between the companies wanting to make as much profit as they can and the governments making sure that nobody get's ripped off, addicted, poisoned or whatever...and that is the reason why we have too many laws...every loophole is immediately exploited, that means more laws to close the loopholes and so on...
SNIP
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I shan't argue the need for anti-trust action when those "few big Goliath companies that control the market"
actually start trying to "make the prices" and otherwise engage in anti-competitive behavior. (Note: It's not illegal to be a monopoly in the US, only to use monopoly power for anti-competitive purposes.)
As for food safety and other scandals of the past, note that there was a strong movement towards accurate labeling and safe ingredients around the time that books like "Cannery Row" were published... and
long before the government got into the act. Folks were doing things like (successfully) suing meat-packers for fraud (
e.g. false advertising) when the contents of the package weren't what they claimed. Things were being cleaned up. Slowly and painfully, but being cleaned up. It's not at all clear that government action was either necessary or more effective than what was already happening. Nor is it at all clear whether the clean-up would have succeeded without government action. And, of course, we can't exactly run the experiment again.
As for tobacco company bosses and smoking, note that strong
evidence that smoking kills only became available in the 1950s. (There was plenty of anecdote and personal-experience to
suggest it long before that. I'm using evidence in the "peer-reviewed science" and "stand up in court" sense.) Tobacco company bosses smoked plenty back then. So did 'most everyone else, too! Please note: I don't intend to claim that Big Tobacco hasn't pulled just about every sleazy maneuver in the book since that evidence arrived -- and before it arrived they tried to bury it in fake 'research' making opposite claims, for just one example. Big Tobacco is just about the poster child for underhanded obstructionism. But they definitely haven't "always known" that smoking kills you. Your argument would be much stronger if you got the details right.
As for selling cocaine to babies, well... On the one hand, go look up laudanum. On the other hand, go find some
facts (as compared to hype) about how much of a problem it really was. Certainly there were real issues with people getting hooked on it, or getting their kids hooked on it. It was also of real benefit to zillions of people. The best research I've seen suggests that it was far,
far less of a problem than alcohol. And remember, outlawing opiates for non-prescription use in the US was a combination of anti-competitive work by the AMA and hype over the "yellow peril" (for those not familiar with US history, this was turn-of-the-20th-c hype about how those "chinamen" would get hopped up on opium and do bad things to our helpless white women. 'scuse me a moment... using mental floss...). There were
no actual facts or public health data driving the issue.
I think this is another example of "most of the history you learned in school looks waaay more complicated when examined more carefully."
End of
Xenophon