I still am not seeing a reasonable alternative to the current system that doesn’t require complete overhaul of the entire consumer-producer relationship.

I also don’t see how I’m supposed to lose weight without eating better and exercising.

I’m my own goddamn regulator. If you need the state to tell you that some particular food is okay, you’re doing it wrong.

Personally, I like to do intensive (obsessive?) research about most things I buy, but I think you are wrong about people’s desire to get information about things they purchase. I think the opposite is true. I think most people assume that, if a product/service is available, it is safe, and, very generally speaking, the lowest cost option is preferred. We can debate whether they’re lazy idiots, but think of the crazy plastic crap that parents buy their kids. When it turns out to be painted with lead or mercury, everyone loses their shit. We have, as a society, decided that it is not worth the social cost to allow people to purchase (usually unknowingly), or companies to sell, products that are demonstrably unsafe/unhealthy. This allows people a baseline for comparison. If I know that everything on the shelf in front of me has exceeded some safety/health floor, I can spend what time I choose to invest figuring out which product I prefer without worrying that I am ignorant of some safety/health issue. It turns everything into apples. This is why I keep prating on about centralization of standards, too.

Regarding rules, I think we may be getting somewhere here. To some extent, I guess I agree that the rules should be set by producers and consumers. However, aren’t government regulatory agencies formed because “The Public” (as if we are some monolith) desires consistent and predictable outcomes? They represent, to some degree, a collective, “We refuse to allow product safety to be a bargaining chip.” It is entirely possible, of course, because government has near-monopolistic regulatory control, that everyone is just being lazy and assuming that the gov’t is doing a good job (or good enough or whatever). Do we really think, though, that by making things less predictable or consistent, that everyone will assume the role of self-regulators somehow?

Finally, regarding market competitiveness, my question still stands. Why, if a single private regulatory agency is indistinguishable, in theory anyway, as you suggest, from a single government regulatory agency, why should we prefer it necessarily? You might not trust government, but I certainly don’t trust profit-driven private enterprise when there is no competition. This is why I appear to be hung up on the regulatory marketplace. If we are looking for market-driven outcomes, well, isn’t a market a prerequisite?

I still am not seeing a reasonable alternative to the current system that doesn’t require complete overhaul of the entire consumer-producer relationship.

No, it wouldn’t. Because as soon as this happened, the private company would be exposed and lose credibility. And/or be sued. You can’t switch to another FDA or USDA. You can’t sue the FDA or USDA.

What we need to do is get the money out of politics.

FDA and USDA officials and inspectors aren’t elected. At the very top, they’re appointed and approved by the Senate. But most of the agency is filled with career public servants. If there’s money exchanging hands that is influencing decisions, it’s already happening illegally. There is a revolving door problem. But I don’t know how you solve that unless you’re going to bar people from working in the private sector once they’ve held a public service job, or vice versa. And I doubt a law like that would be upheld.

Look again at your own article:

“Food-safety specialists said the delay reflected a gap in federal rules that don’t treat salmonella as a poisonous contaminant, even if inspectors find antibiotic-resistant forms such as the Heidelberg strain implicated in the latest outbreak.”

The problem is that we have regulatory capture by the private sector of the regulators – don’t you think it would be worse if the regulators were private?

What we need to do is get the money out of politics. I’ve come to believe that public financing – for all its flaws – is better than any alternative.

I also think you’re a little hung up on rules. What are the rules supposed to be? Isn’t that up to the manufacturer of the product and the user? If a manufacturer makes something that people think is worth using, they use it. If it’s not worth using, they don’t. As I and many people have said: companies don’t want to hurt their users. They may make a calculation that some additional safety margin is not cost effective, but this isn’t because they want dead customers, it’s because their computation doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes it’s a losing bet in the short term, or sometimes in the long term with loss of confidence in the company.

The competitive part is just a description of the possibility. If one company is filling the need, then why does there need to be competition (and how is this different from that one ‘company’ being the government)? It’s when the incumbent is *not* filling the need when you need the possibility for competition. Maybe the incumbent is too expensive, or uses old theory or testing, or even is too rigorous for reality. Then there’s the opportunity for other companies to fill in that perceived need.

I am still not arguing in favor of government regulatory authority. I just don’t see it as being inherently worse than a private sector equivalent. And I still think there are massive risks in introducing a profit motive into safety/health regulation.

At the moment, it is crystal clear who is to blame for issues such as the one you raise above. A private regulatory market, however that might be manifest, seems like it would be far more difficult to assess with clarity. Do you disagree?

I completely understand and agree that there are many cases of ineptitude and abuse in governmental regulatory agencies. To suggest that this is how they always works is, of course, utterly ridiculous. Analogously, Balko is not advocating the abolition of all law enforcement despite countless cases of gross ineptitude and abuse. He advocates for accountability and prosecution of those who permit and incubate the abhorrent behaviors. (If I have this wrong, RB, please correct me.) I don’t particularly think he would like the analogy, but I think it’s fitting. Pubic safety is at stake in both cases. This seems important to me.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/08/10/government-knew-about-bacteria-in-turkey/

That is how it actually works in the real world. And what did the USDA have at stake here? Nothing. For them, business continues as usual, and they might get a budget increase to ensure something like this “never happens again.”

Um no – Pasteurizing involves heating milk products to a specific narrow range of temperatures for a specific period and then cooling the mixture quickly- all in a sterile environment.

The temperature & time is enough to kill most harmful bacteria but not enough to cause the ingredients to “cook”- start the chemical changes associated with heat.

Its very difficult to do on the stove top – and because cooking will wreck the product a stove top operation is likely to err on the side of under pasteurizing the product.

That said I don’t have a problem with this operation running without a pasteurizer, so long as it is clearly labelled as such and the business has insurance to cover all the harm contaminated product might cause in any realistic scenario. Of course that requirement would probably be much more onerous than buying a pasteurizer.

I am not particularly fond of politics creating regulatory standards. And I do not think there is any inherent benefit in government regulatory control. I am quite willing to accept alternatives.

My questions about centralization have everything to do with everyone knowing the rules. What I’m struggling with here is that although there have been a few vague but reasonable alternative proposals offered, the impediments to implementation of these alternatives mean overwhelming uncertainty about product quality/safety standards for both producers and consumers. And we keep hearing over and over that “uncertainty” (over regulations and, yes, I know, taxes) is the problem with businesses hiring (or, more specifically, not hiring).

Another question…

How do we establish truly competitive regulatory markets? I don’t see how enough competing private regulatory firms can be profitable enough for long enough to be called a real market. And, if there are not enough firms to be a truly competitive market, how do we guard against the very same behaviors that we currently find in government regulatory bodies (fraud/cronyism/etc.), especially with profit motivated firms running the show.

I don’t trust government either. I just think that its incompetence is a known quantity. But it seems silly to me to suggest that the private sector is inherently more trustworthy.

Finally, and I ask this honestly, do the Agitatortots think that regulatory standards are actually any use at all? If not, perhaps that explains my confusion. (I know, JCR, my confusion is a product of my corrupted and warped mind, dominated by thoughts of control and thought-crime prosecution.)

There are many cases where the government rules aren’t considered stringent enough by outside folks. Consider auto crash test ratings: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (non-government) or National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (government). IIHS introduces tougher standards before NHTSA does, like frontal offset into a deformable barrier, or even two vehicle crash tests. NHTSA runs a full frontal crash into a solid barrier at a slower speed.

Neither gives a pass/fail rating, so it’s not a case of all cars meeting some minimum standard. Both give ranked ratings. But IIHS is able to change their testing regimen faster, able to respond to new concerns faster. NHTSA still uses older test protocols because of lobbying efforts to prevent changes to them. IIHS isn’t accused of favoritism, although it’s known they have an agenda. They don’t want to pay out insurance claims. So they want the vehicles to be as safe as possible.

Liberty doesn’t require justification. When you advocate putting a gun to someone’s head, it’s up to YOU to show why it’s necessary.

-jcr

They’d be out of business. They wouldn’t be able to bitch and moan and get more tax money to pay for their incompetence. That is the crucial difference between a private and a public regulator.

Compare the UL to a typical government regulator, like the SEC. Do you imagine that anyone at the SEC got canned, or even demoted for their incompetence in the Enron case?

-jcr

I know you leftards hate this, but the fact is that I don’t have to comply with your demand. Try to work it out in therapy.

-jcr

well said!!

True. But the boards of directors of finance giants weren’t fired after destroying their investors’ portfolios either. Both the public and private sectors are rife with good ol’ boyism and cronyism and downright fraud.

You have not made a compelling argument in favor of a shift away from government regulatory authority.