“While Congress mandated the third-party testing, the commission in January said it would delay enforcement for a year of some of the testing requirements for phthalates and lead content — though many companies are doing the tests anyway.”

This and Mattel’s so-called “exemption” are indications the CPSIA may not be willing to enforce the lead ban after all. Either because they can’t afford to or they know the law itself can be challenged because of the CPSIA’s exemption.

If Mattel is forced to comply with the ban despite using its own facilties, I guarantee you this law will not stay on the books for long nor will it last should the agency begin to enforce the lead ban one year from today.

The CPSIA is setting itself up for a lawsuit one of which, I am sure, the Institute for Justice would certainly pounce upon.

I know if I was an IJ attorney I would be sharpening the blades of my swords awaiting a client harmed by the lead paint ban’s effects to walk through my door to slice and dice this lead paint ban.

I still submit that it is better to have a thousand different information/certification sources than one agency or individual invested with the power to decide whether something is safe. That way, we’ll know when one particular source is suspect and learn to avoid that source as I have learned to do with the FDA, etc. I think you’re looking for a static solution in a dynamic world. there’s just no way that you can look at one particular entity and assume that it will always look out for your best interests. Bureaucrats, again, are subject to the same flaws and foibles as we are, only when they make mistakes, it affects a much larger percentage of folks than when an individual or even a corporation does.

Further, I’d suggest that big business and the regulatory state exist in symbiosis–without one, the other would cease to exist. Without a large government with the power to regulate every aspect of our lives and guarantee a corporation 1) existence; 2) lower competition through erecting barriers to entry like onerous startup regulations or exclusive territories and 3) the ability to continue to game the system as long as your buddies remain in power, it is doubtful that any firm would be able to grow as large as an ADM or Royal Dutch Petroleum and maintain that position for any number of years. In other words, without gov’t to prop them up, those interested in harming consumers through low-quality dangerous products would soon go out of business through poor reputation and/or expensive lawsuits. Again, some people might be harmed or even die in the process, but the centralized regulatory process has proved worse at keeping us safe and is more expensive that a privately-managed (and therefore dispersed) system of monitoring and managing risk.

As the saying goes, hard cases make bad law. To protect the small percentage of folks who may be duped by saddling everyone with higher costs not only makes everyone pay for the gullibility of a few, but makes all of us less safe as it centralizes risk management to a few folks who we both admit are being coopted by big corporations.

If you believe that the average consumer is an unwitting dupe of the corporate spin machine, I ask again, how you or anyone has escaped. And, I would suggest that if you think that more than a very small percentage of folks are hapless victims of corporate chicanery, you may be falsely assuming that other are more susceptible to manipulation than yourself, which is a variant of the third person effect hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_effect. It’s easy to believe that even if you’re hip to the truth, most everyone else is getting the wool pulled over their eyes, but that just isn’t so.

And, i’m spent:)

But I’m still not convinced that the government, of all entities, is the one to entrust here. Instead of manipulation for the sake of corporate profit, we end up with manipulation for the sake of a host of other things — political gain, special interests, state revenue, etc etc. All perpetrated by a centralized governing body which has no oversight itself. Our elected officials are no more benign than whatever group you pull out of whatever swanky board room in the country.

I’m obviously not coming up with much in the way of suggestions here — probably because, as many have noted, there is no solution that will guarantee consumer safety. It seems to me though that heavy-handed government regulation is the greater of two evils, not the lesser. At the very least, it results in just as many product safety loopholes at a much greater cost.

Obviously I didn’t escape. I’m in the same boat as everyone else.

Look, if you believe, as you obviously do, that big business will happily manipulate government to its advantage, I don’t see how you could possibly believe they wouldn’t just as happily manipulate you, or the institutions you rely on to assess products, or the standards and science which those institutions employ to make that assessment.

For every person raising a flag about the safety of a company’s products, that company can fund a bogus research paper or op-ed or entire institute dedicated to proving the opposite, knowing that most consumers lack the specialized knowledge necessary to determine the veracity their claims. Or they can invent some credible-looking but ultimately-meaningless certification on their product (you see this quite frequently, for example, in greenwashing).

The risk of producing a dangerous product can create both good and bad incentives–it can motivate a company to continually refine their processes to produce the safest product possible, or it can motivate them to make it as difficult as possible for the consumer to understand the danger. Complicating this is the fact that their suppliers are operating under the same dynamic.

Mattel presumably did not knowingly allow toxic chemicals and elements into their toys. Mattel was, as I understand it, actually a consumer itself in this situation, purchasing services and products from Chinese companies. And Mattel, despite its wealth and teams of scientists and quality analysts, got suckered as a consumer by the deceptive and dangerous practices those companies employed.

Again, to return to the engineering analogy, that doesn’t mean products never fail; planes crash, bridges collapse, Windows freezes, etc. This is true whether Boeing is designing planes, or if the FAA takes it over (*shudder*). But it’s a cost-benefit analysis in the end. Decentralization has proven to give the biggest quality payoff for a given investment.

Saying “lobbyists corrupt legislation” is way too simplistic. Without lobbyists, a lot of legislation wouldn’t even happen. Legislation is work and work comes at a price which lobbyists are willing to pay. But, you could just as easily turn it around and say that legislation is the means by which Congress extorts money out of industry (lobbyists). The public isn’t even a part of the equation. It’s merely an annoyance.

Congress is one of the only free markets in America. Favors are bought and sold at will. It’s completely unregulated.

How did you escape? If the average consumer isn’t smart enough to overcome the wiles of the greedy corporate conspirators, how did you become so enlightened?

Your task, btw, is to prove that the regulatory system, replete with all of the gaming, lobbying, and capture and the attendant costs of such (costs which decrease safety because businesses are focused on meeting reg requirements rather than safety itself and/or are putting their smaller competitors out of business by lobbying for more expensive regs) makes us safer than we would be if there were no public agencies and consumers had to use their own brains to determine what is safe enough for their family or themselves to use. They will do this based on past experience, recommendations (amateur and professional), private testing companies (like Underwriters Labs, Consumer Reports, Trust-e, etc.)–you know the means by which everyone makes most decisions. Yes, some people will still use fraud and attempt to slip one by unwary consumers and, yes, some people will be injured and even die, but that happens now with all the precious safeguards of bureaucracy in place. Why is the FDA, which has made horrible mistakes that killed people in approving drugs and has killed many more people by keeping other drugs off the market, any better than you or I at deciding what is best for other people?

You claim not to be advocating perfection, but by your very arguments, you are claiming that if we just regulate enough, we can achieve near-perfection. I will never understand why intelligent people such as yourself, who understand that a public regulatory system will always be captured and used by big corporations to keep themselves isolated from competition and maintain market share would ever advocate the continuation of that system.

Public choice theory has proven that bureaucrats are just as self-interested as the rest of us and yet you want to invest them with more and more power, so that their mistakes will cost society more and more in terms of lives lost, wasted energy and money, which is a measure of our time. Why? How many times do they bureaucrats have to fail before you will admit that we can’t perfect the system, that there shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all system in the first place? The best way to manage is risk is to decentralize decision-making. It goes back to the old adage about all your eggs in a single basket–that’s a terribly risky way to do things as is having one person or agency decide for everyone else.

End of rant:)

Also, bullshit to that. They’re for it because they’re savvy enough to know how the wind is blowing and want to ensure that they get a hand in crafting the regulation. Absent consumer demand for regulation, they would not be pushing for it, as evidenced by the fact that they weren’t pushing for it before this incident came along with all its attendant citizen outrage.

Sure it is. The libertarian argument here is that lobbyists corrupt regulation, and therefore we should get rid of regulation. Libertarians have no problem with lobbyists. Indeed, libertarians oppose just about every effort I’m aware of to limit the influence of big business on government.

You’re assuming the consumer is sophisticated enough to accurately assess the safety of the products involved.

I was making a general point. In any case, yes, I do think that Mattel has been forced to take more responsibility for this than they otherwise would have. For one thing, they were fined a couple million dollars under the authority of the existing regulatory regime, which, had libertarians their way, would not exist. Likewise, they are still being forced to comply with a more rigorous testing process. It’s unfortunate that they were able to get an exception to do testing in-house, however.

And you’ve just missed the goddamn problem, too. Of course Mattel is huge and can afford the regulatory burden. That’s why they’re for it. It decreases competition by forcing out the smaller companies.

No, I understand the problem perfectly. My point was that Mattel can afford all manner of burdens, regulatory and otherwise, and will enjoy an advantage because of that, regulated or not. As I stated, large corporations can afford the costs of regulations, but absent regulations they can also afford the costs of settling lawsuits, buying good publicity and squashing bad, blanketing the country with advertising, strong-arming retailers into pricing and stocking agreements, co-opting consumer watchdogs and attorny generals, rebranding and relaunching their product lines, buying controlling stakes in supposedly independent testing labs through shell corporations, etc. They will always have an advantage in any market, so pointing out that they may have an advantage in a regulated market isn’t particularly meaningful.

Are you stupid? Do you think that’s what happened here? The government has required Mattel to take responsibility?

And you’ve just missed the goddamn problem, too. Of course Mattel is huge and can afford the regulatory burden. That’s why they’re for it. It decreases competition by forcing out the smaller companies.

Well, no shit. I guess it’s good that I never argued any such thing.

The choice is between a world where manufacturers bear most of the risk for unsafe products and a world where they can palm that responsibility off on regulatory agencies, which bear no responsibility to anyone.

Oh please.

In the first place, risk is quite different from responsibility in this situation. A risk is something that a company would be taking when selling potentially harmful products that could open them up to a lawsuit or loss of consumer confidence in their brand. A responsibility would be their obligation to ensure that they don’t actually sell such products. It’s obvious from the fact that we’re even having this discussion that many companies will happily assume the risk while ducking the responsibility, and just hope it works out in the end.

Indeed, this entire thread and, quite frankly, libertarian ideology in general, is about how terrible it is that the government would require companies to take responsibility. You all hope that risk aversion will compel them to responsibility, but clearly that hasn’t happened.

Secondly, with the exception of potentially eliminating competitors which libertarian theory insists would be driven out of the market by consumer demand anyway, how are the businesses palming off responsibility? From where I sit, it doesn’t look like they were taking responsibility in the first place, and I don’t see what’s forcing consumers to continue purchasing their products or preventing them from suing in the event those products are defective anyway.

Moreover, you’re overstating the effects of regulatory capture in general. The fact is, the major players in the market will always have an advantage. Mattel is huge and can therefore afford the recall and the $2.3 million fine and the lawsuits and, if it comes down to it, to rebrand and hope nobody notices.

Haha, those old Akroyd skits were awesome. What the hell happened to SNL, anyway?? Anything good came out before I could even stay up that late.

Well, the general idea is that without onerous regulatory requirements, small businesses have a much lower barrier to entry (and to survival). The result is more consumer choice. The result of more consumer choice is tighter competition. The result of tighter competition is an asymptotic approach toward the product a consumer desires the most.

So if, say, a guarantee that a product won’t kill a consumer’s child constitutes a significant portion of that consumer desire — which, one would hope, it might — decreasing regulatory barriers results, ultimately, in safer products.

The post is critical of the self-stroking relationship between big business and big government, and points out that lobbying plays a major role in this dynamic. While one might consider this a tangential (rather than direct) criticism, it is certainly not an example of reverence.