Is anyone else bothered by the lack of trust watching?

[Ardentfrost]

and the less the gov't is involved, the less power it has to ensure our liberties aren't stamped out by market expediency/profit.

There's a problem with that logic... you're assuming that the gov't is there to absolutely protect our liberties, but that would insinuate that we entrust our liberties to the government. If we do that (which we have in many cases) then we'll end up with no liberties (which we have in many cases).

Our liberties are ours to give and are our responsibility to protect.

The government is there only to do the things we outlined it should do. We gave up certain rights in the constitution in the name of order (like, for instance, the right for me to kill someone if they kill my loved one). The drafters were very specific and dealt with very important issues. If you notice, there's not a word in there about dealing with market forces or messing at all with the private sector.



And you talk about wanting to know all the content of your food without doing too much work, but how can you do that now? All you know is that there are guidelines and companies have to follow those guidelines. But what about the acceptable amount of rat feces allowed in your meat? Or insects? The guidelines are written by lawyers and interpreted by other lawyers... we cannot just sit down and say "ok, let's see what is in the meat" all we know is that it doesn't have more than this % of that.

I am an advocate of having a centralized place to store information. And I have no problem with the government providing that place. There seems to be no reason behind competing about WHERE info should be stored, and is even counter productive. In this way, the government can accentuate the market without getting involved.

I've mentioned this before, but they did this for coal miners back in 1910. They tracked deaths, accidents, etc... and the result was the market reacting in a positive way, making a safer environment for the miners. By 1954 (or some year around there) when the first regulatory legislation was written down (mining related), yearly fatalities were less than a 1/10th of what they were 40 years earlier. The market had produced research that found out coal dust was just as much a cause for explosions as methane. The market took care of the problem, and it was because the owners and insurance companies had the information available to them, and reacted in the most logical way: to minimize loss of life so that they could maximize profit.

Too many people think that trying to make money only produces a result that is hurtful to the consumer, but that simply isn't true. Consumers are smart, and given the right amount of information will drive the market for a high quality product at a reasonable price. Likewise, the work force is smart, and will naturally cause work conditions to be optimal for their situation (I'm not saying we'd have 40 hour work weeks had the government not got involved, but why do we want that anyway? Shouldn't we be allowed to negotiate our own lives without government involvement?). Companies have no choice but to give both consumers and the work force what they want (within reason). Otherwise they won't have anyone buying their product and/or they won't be able to attract enough members of the work force to make their product. Supply and Demand is a bitch like that.

[DosEquis]

The slippery slope in the thread is a bit overboard. "Well why doesn't the government just tell us how to make dookie while at work too!"

The problem with some industry is the cost of infrastructure. That cost prevents competition. AT&T's network is worth billions. You just can't compete with that. Drilling for oil is extremely expensive, the competition can't get started. Then if there does happen to be a competitor out there, if they start making waves the bigger guy buys them out.

The 'free market' is good in spirit but can't be left to go unchecked. The trick is figuring when is it appropriate to manually correct. Without competition comes the potential for abuse.

[Ardentfrost]

Originally Posted by DosEquis

The slippery slope in the thread is a bit overboard. "Well why doesn't the government just tell us how to make dookie while at work too!"

The problem with some industry is the cost of infrastructure. That cost prevents competition. AT&T's network is worth billions. You just can't compete with that. Drilling for oil is extremely expensive, the competition can't get started. Then if there does happen to be a competitor out there, if they start making waves the bigger guy buys them out.

The 'free market' is good in spirit but can't be left to go unchecked. The trick is figuring when is it appropriate to manually correct. Without competition comes the potential for abuse.

Vonage and Comcast are competing with AT&T's massive infrastructure using a BETTER infrastructure.

And some gov't monopolies are needed... for instance, water. I don't really see a bunch of companies providing that infrastructure to houses separately. A single infrastructure is needed.

And drilling for oil is expensive, but there are still regulations that makes it hard for you to just do it in your backyard if you went out and bought one of those oil drilling things.

[R-Type]

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

There's a problem with that logic... you're assuming that the gov't is there to absolutely protect our liberties, but that would insinuate that we entrust our liberties to the government. If we do that (which we have in many cases) then we'll end up with no liberties (which we have in many cases).

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

Our liberties are ours to give and are our responsibility to protect.

Well I was implying conditionals, not 'absolute' protection. Who's going to defend me when Meat Corp. decides to mix my food with cow dung to bulk it up and save some money? Who protects my reasonable 'right' to know anything about what it is I buy? Without any sort of backbone, the government cannot do anything to ensure that liberty is maintained and the market becomes a battleground. Under normal conditions, I would sue, but without government intervention, I'd have no recourse but to declare war on Meat Corp to reclaim some kind of compensation (assuming I don't die from food poisoning). Without threat of government action, there's no reason for the powerful elites to take me seriously because they have far more resource than I do. The market will favor the side with more resource, not the side who's necessarily 'right' in the sense of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' It's only one step away from anarchy, and as it is, it's bad enough already (who gets the best lawyers usually wins).

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

The government is there only to do the things we outlined it should do. We gave up certain rights in the constitution in the name of order (like, for instance, the right for me to kill someone if they kill my loved one). The drafters were very specific and dealt with very important issues. If you notice, there's not a word in there about dealing with market forces or messing at all with the private sector.

Because back then, the 'market' was literally a marketplace where you buy food and basic necessities. While it was multi-national, it was not globalized. Today it is, and that radically changes the picture. In the past, if you traveled far enough, you could leave the sphere of power you didn't like. Today's market is full of multinational trusts and monopolies which are impossible to escape from unless you can find a way to live without their products (or those of their wholely owned subsidiaries).

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

And you talk about wanting to know all the content of your food without doing too much work, but how can you do that now? All you know is that there are guidelines and companies have to follow those guidelines. But what about the acceptable amount of rat feces allowed in your meat? Or insects? The guidelines are written by lawyers and interpreted by other lawyers... we cannot just sit down and say "ok, let's see what is in the meat" all we know is that it doesn't have more than this % of that.

Perhaps, but less regulation would surely result in HIGHLY variable quality in food production and extreme marketing designed to obfuscate what exactly it is the consumer is buying.. Vendors would switch brands and brands would switch farms all the time, haggling to get the lowest price, not the best quality. The farmers, trying to meet demand, would comply with cheap but poor product. Safety? Nutritional value? haha, riiiight. The only way to counter all of that is for everyone to grow their own food, which is probably a step forward for overall nutrition, but who realistically has the time for that with today's economy and job performance expectations?

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

I am an advocate of having a centralized place to store information. And I have no problem with the government providing that place. There seems to be no reason behind competing about WHERE info should be stored, and is even counter productive. In this way, the government can accentuate the market without getting involved.

I don't.. a centralized system for information would be subject to corruption, both the social and technological kind. Maybe I'm not sure what you're getting at here..

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

I've mentioned this before, but they did this for coal miners back in 1910. They tracked deaths, accidents, etc... and the result was the market reacting in a positive way, making a safer environment for the miners. By 1954 (or some year around there) when the first regulatory legislation was written down (mining related), yearly fatalities were less than a 1/10th of what they were 40 years earlier. The market had produced research that found out coal dust was just as much a cause for explosions as methane. The market took care of the problem, and it was because the owners and insurance companies had the information available to them, and reacted in the most logical way: to minimize loss of life so that they could maximize profit.

The problem is that the curve for 'maximizing profit' is not necessarily the same for the curve that would measure optimal health for the miners. This is applicable to food production.. A deregulated market would deem a 10% death rate for food consumption a 'great improvement' over a 45% death rate. The reality is that most citizens would be living shitty lifecycles, lots probably getting sick and NOT dying. Everything is relative,so I think that there needs to be a force outside the market that coerces certain industries to produce the best quality/safety possible, above and beyond the point on the graph where they would glean the maximum profit. With food, we've got 'quantity' down, now lets try to make it as healthy and beneficial as possible. It's the next logical step.

Originally Posted by Ardenfrost

Too many people think that trying to make money only produces a result that is hurtful to the consumer, but that simply isn't true. Consumers are smart, and given the right amount of information will drive the market for a high quality product at a reasonable price. Likewise, the work force is smart, and will naturally cause work conditions to be optimal for their situation (I'm not saying we'd have 40 hour work weeks had the government not got involved, but why do we want that anyway? Shouldn't we be allowed to negotiate our own lives without government involvement?). Companies have no choice but to give both consumers and the work force what they want (within reason). Otherwise they won't have anyone buying their product and/or they won't be able to attract enough members of the work force to make their product. Supply and Demand is a bitch like that.

Well, 'smart' is relative, but even if they are, they can't make informed choices when so much marketing is designed to obfuscate the truth instead of project it. This applies to almost all markets, not just food, and is getting worse as (it seems) companies have more and more dark secrets to hide as their products become more and more complex. The fact one needs to dig deep holes with google 'researching' a specific product instead of just looking at a few manufacturer ads/tech papers for it is telling.

[Ardentfrost]

I'm not going to break down your post section-by-section, but I'll mention a few things.

The "graph" about miner deaths related to safety SLOWED when the government got involved forcefully. That means that the rate of decreasing deaths wasn't as drastic after as it was before. It obviously wasn't linear (the less deaths there are in a year, the less you can reduce it by the following year), but afterwards it leveled off and has had very little noticeable changes since regulation. So, what you said about employee health not being as good until after regulation isn't supported by the facts. This is a single example, but it's a good one.

And you say that there'll be a huge disparity in food quality without government involvement, but privatized industries tend to reach a standard and optimal market quality without regulation. If all companies in an industry are producing shit, and one emerges with a better product, consumers will favor that company. As they begin to hold a larger and larger share of that industry's market, the other companies will have to "catch up" to compete. They may still have customers, but even a multi-billion dollar company can't afford to allow itself to be beat out over something as silly as loading up their meat with cow turds (using your example).

Beyond that obvious example, today's theories behind manufacturing (like the Theory of Constraints, Dependencies and Probabilistic Randomness, Six Sigma, quality assurance) all are either based around or have a major part in dealing with the quality of the product produced. Studies have shown that returning customers make up some large % of a company's sales, therefore making a product that the customers like is far more important now-a-days that it was 100 years ago. The old school of thought was that as long as you can get someone to buy your product, you're doing fine. That's a lot different than today. That's just an example of how industries have changed to provide us with better products WITHOUT the need for (or use of) regulation.

Not to mention that since modern sales are based largely on returning customers, what good is it for a company to poison you? That seems to be something a lot of people mention. If the pharma industry relies on it's customers coming back for more drugs, why would they risk their lives by cutting the pills with cyanide or something? If Oscar Myer puts something in their hotdogs to make them "bulkier," but it makes their customers sick, who is going to continue to buy their hotdogs? The companies that do these things will tank fast. The response may not be immediate (as you or someone has said), but neither is gov't regulation. They don't check every hotdog in every hotdog factory for rat poo. As a matter of fact, government agencies have sporadic and PLANNED testing sessions. A single factory might get checked 4 times a year unless a complaint is filed. If the factory knows the agency is coming to test it's stuff, don't you think they could produce a lower quality product for the rest of the time?

Health codes act that way too. You go to a restaurant and it says it gets a B or something... it was checked on that place's cleanest day of the year, guaranteed. So unless you're there on that specific day, then I'd be willing to bet you're getting a C quality clean job unless that place works hard to keep everything clean. I know when I go somewhere, the rating it gets means a lot less to me than how the place ACTUALLY is. No soap in the bathroom and I won't eat there. Bathroom door that pulls in when you're inside pisses me off. I pay attention to the floors, the clothes the employees are wearing, the kitchen if you can see it. All those things matter to ME, but I could see how a lot of people would just look at the grade and assume that's good enough. Which do you think is a better method? Rely on the gov'ts grade or take 2 seconds to come up with your own opinion? If a place got a grade A, but then you read about problems with roaches in the food, would you eat there?

All I'm saying is, how much can you trust the system you're pushing so hard for? How much could you trust a system implemented and maintained by people just like you? But above all, and this one is so hard for people to accept even though it makes perfect economic and common sense, you can also trust that a company WANTS you to have a good experience with its product, because at the end of the day, they want your money and providing that good product is the only way they'll continue to get it.

[Donkey®]

I work for one of those large cell companies. I agree. Verizon, AT&T and Alltel need to be dismantled.

[lew]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

I work for one of those large cell companies. I agree. Verizon, AT&T and Alltel need to be dismantled.

Alltel isn't a large cell company.