Many humans will do anything it takes to make a profit and not care about who they are screwing over. If you think that's okay that's fine, but then go to Somalia and see how a lawless country works in practice.
Food safety in particular was mandated by populae request. I cannot wrap my head around free market believers like you who apparently think that humans are omniscient beings who have access to all information about every product and every seller they encounter so they can make informed purchasing decisions. That's just bullshit. You are a religious cult at this point.
There is no chance that supermarket shelves would be stocked with toxic/fraudulent food products in our world of secure private property rights, with or withouy food safety regulations. There is an elaborate chain of private interests involved in food production/distribution that would self-organize to prevent such an outcome. McDonalds uses higher standards for its beef than the USDA for example. Automobile manufacturers have higher safety standards than regulations require.
>>That's just bullshit. You are a religious cult at this point.
I recommend some introspection.
I hope you realise that todays "strict" food safety laws were born out of a world where people did exactly what you say they wouldn't. They cut bread with sawdust to make money. They skimped on hygiene. They advertised other meats than they used etc etc etc. Today these things have real consequences. You're saying we should just let people do that? I cannot fathom what drives you to that position.
"Oh, but people won't buy their products as soon as they have been ousted as being cheats" yeah well. People don't buy Nestle products even though they use child slavery and caused mass malnutrion of poor children? It's just so naive to think that this actually happens.
We can mostly agree what is good and bad, but as soon as you have to pay 20 cents extra for fairtrade bread that goes out the window. You know it.
>Somalia's during its civil war didn't work because there was no central authority providing security and preventing raiders from pillaging markets, so markets didn't have the opportunity to become highly developed.
So there was no central authority and therefore the system failed. Isn't a weaker central authority what you want? Governments generally want stability, and guess what. Regulating markets helps stability.
Anyway, this discussion is pointless if you cannot see that total free market idealism is as extreme as pure communism and equally flawed. The optimum is somewhere in the middle.
I believe people will screw each other over no matter what system you use. In a regulated economy people will screw other people by lobbying for regulations that protect their industry from competition. In other words, centralized control via regulatory guardrails doesn't preclude exploitation: look at the opioid epidemic for example. It can in large part be traced back to doctors prescribing opioids as a result of pharmaceutical marketing. The industry is highly regulated and thus profitable for the pharmaceutical giants. The Drug War has been going on for a hundred years and drug abuse is worse now that it's ever been. I doubt that we would be any worse off in terms of drug abuse with a free market in drugs, and I'm sure there would be more competition and lower costs for drugs.
>>I hope you realise that todays "strict" food safety laws were born out of a world where people did exactly what you say they wouldn't. They cut bread with sawdust to make money. They skimped on hygiene. They advertised other meats than they used etc etc etc. Today these things have real consequences. You're saying we should just let people do that? I cannot fathom what drives you to that position.
People do that today as well. With a mandatory safety standard, you can probably raise quality in the short term, but there is a trade-off, in increasing costs and reducing innovation.
Regarding cost: it's not a given that reducing the incidence of food fraud is always worth the increase in food costs. I know it's not a intuitive idea, but sometimes the public welfare effect of increasing costs outweighs the public welfare effects of increasing quality. In a free market people will make a decision on what trade-off is best for them based on their own circumstance. Because it really does depend on the circumstances. Someone who values food safety more than low prices can always opt to buy a reputable label with a strong reputation for food safety. But for others, the lower cost of less reputable brands is more important for them than minimizing the risk of contracting foodborne illnesses or ingesting harmful additives.
With regard to innovation, regulation harms it because it replaces diversity with uniformity. Imagine a thousand food producers, each producing food of varying quality. With regulations, you get them all to use the same food safety procedures. This might mean that 70% of them raise their standards, but it also means the 10% creating innovative ways to maintain high quality standards at lower costs will stop exploring these avenues.
A modern day example would be how Uber found a more cost-effective way of assuring a high quality taxi service with its rating system than the regulatory approach of the medallion system that municipalities use. Taxi regulations, by imposing uniformity in procedures (the licensing process) on the taxi sector, caused the procedures used by taxi companies to stagnate and not evolve for decades. The quality difference between Uber and the regulated taxi services is night and day.
One other point I'd add is that the effect of reducing the rate of innovation is compounding. Over the long run, of 50-100 years, society will lose out immensely from trading recurring increases in innovation from a competitive free market for a one-time boost in quality from imposing a uniform standard for quality assurance.
The greatest force for improved quality and increased affordability is, in the long run, competition between entities free to innovate without the artificial constraint of mandates on their procedures.
Another reason to oppose regulations against the free market is that regulations are subject to being shaped by special interests, who may deliberately push for them to be onerous to stamp out smaller competitors. Many small farmers blame food production regulations for the demise of their sector and the growing dominance of industrial farming.
>>So there was no central authority and therefore the system failed. Isn't a weaker central authority what you want?
Not categorically. I want a strong authority maintaining security and the right to freely contract, but I want that authority to not use its power to infringe upon those same contracting rights.
>Anyway, this discussion is pointless if you cannot see that total free market idealism is as extreme as pure communism and equally flawed. The optimum is somewhere in the middle.
