Your experience at the farmer's market is surely equivalent to what most people would experience in Walmart.
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.
Any market given the space to develop becomes highly vetted. 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.
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 that you realise your arguments for a totally free market are exactly as useful as the arguments for a state controlled economy. It doesn't work because people will always screw each other over. This is the reason communism is not viable, and it is the reason libertarianism is not viable either.
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 recommend that you realise your arguments for a totally free market are exactly as useful as the arguments for a state controlled economy. It doesn't work because people will always screw each other over. This is the reason communism is not viable, and it is the reason libertarianism is not viable either.
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.
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.
Just like people will always abuse the system. People hae learned to do this, especially in the US. Your solution is simply to make it easier for companies to screw people. Why don't people boycott companies TODAY when they do this? If they did, then I might support your argument. The fact is that there is no evidence for people doing this.
>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.
If they do they are thrown in jail. Now usually the people really responsible are not because of a failing legal system. That problem is not solved by just letting them do it and get away scot free.
Regardings costs. Peopme are so amazingly bad at making decisions as a group. It is mathematically provable that if everyone acts in their own best interest everyone can easily be worse off as a result. This assumes everyone is a rational actor, and we know that people are not even close to that which makes it even worse.
>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.
>A great many industries were kickstarted by government subsidy.
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.
This is indeed a problem, but your solution is essentially to just let companies do what they would otherwise be have to lobby for. Most lobbying cases are for laxed regulation or to allow companies to get away with monopolistic practices.
>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
We can argue the word "freely" then. I don't believe people freely enter contractual relationships when one side has a clear power advantage and actively tries to manipulate you.
And by the way, it's not a fallacy to appeal to moderation when overdosing kills you.
Since you believe that everyone should make their own decisons and we should just live with that. Perhaps you should consider that the system we have to day was born out of people making their decison to not have 100% libertarianism because they were smart enough. By your logic this would be all the reason you would ever need.
At some point you just have to realise that the requirements necessary for the system you want to outperform what we have are opposite to how people actually behave in real life. I hope you are young, then it is fine to be a bit idealistic. We all realise why things don't work sooner or later.
>>Your solution is simply to make it easier for companies to screw people. Why don't people boycott companies TODAY when they do this?
In the previous comment I explained why I don't think this will make it any easier, on the balance, for companies to screw people over. Please go over my previous comment again as I explain what I see as the trade-offs of more regulations, and how they are slanted toward people being screwed over more.
>If they do they are thrown in jail.
If they're caught. And that applies to a world without food regulations as well. Just because there's no regulatory requirement to have the food certified by the USDA doesn't mean it becomes legal to sell goop marketed as milk. That's still fraud, because it's a violation of basic contracting law:
>>Regardings costs. Peopme are so amazingly bad at making decisions as a group.
I disagree completely. I think the market is a marvellous way to bring our collective intelligence to bear to guide product development, and is resulting in consumer food purchases becoming healthier and consumer options becoming more diverse over time. Consumer choice is the reason organic foods have seen their market share grow so much over the decades. It's the reason product diversity in supermarkets has grown so much. People are willing to pay for quality, and as society becomes more prosperous, we'll see more value-added food of higher quality.
>>>A great many industries were kickstarted by government subsidy.
Government subsidies can indeed kickstart an industry by bringing about advances in basic science and by incubating new industries, but that's not relevant to the debate of whether we should be restricting market choices with regulations, and whether industries will evolve faster with or without such regulations.
>>This is indeed a problem, but your solution is essentially to just let companies do what they would otherwise be have to lobby for. Most lobbying cases are for laxed regulation or to allow companies to get away with monopolistic practices.
My solution is to let the companies be regulated by consumer choice. Seems like the least corruptible and best incentivized system of development for an industry.
As for monopolistic practices, I endorse public funding of public options in monopolistic sectors, instead of regulations that violate the right of private market participants to act freely.
>We can argue the word "freely" then. I don't believe people freely enter contractual relationships when one side has a clear power advantage and actively tries to manipulate you.
A court of law, made up of a jury of our peers, should be determining what contract was entered into freely, not a sweeping snap judgement about an entire class of contracts without looking at the specific details of each case.
I strongly disagree with your notion that any agreement between parties of unequal wealth levels is nonconsensual, and I believe any court of law would disagree with you as well, as being inconsistent with established and legal understandings of consent.
I think one should take ideology out of these considerations and defer to the courts on issues of contract law. That's essentially what I'm endorsing by promoting the free market.
>>Perhaps you should consider that the system we have to day was born out of people making their decison to not have 100% libertarianism because they were smart enough. By your logic this would be all the reason you would ever need.
I don't believe people are smart when it comes to macro issues like economics, and thus I believe they collectively impose incredibly destructive economic policies like socialism, anti-free-market regulations, etc. through the political process, which lets the mob forcefully impose its will on everyone.
The economy is too complex for any one person to understand, so what people often do is oversimplify it with ideological notions about evil corporations, and how regulations written by some legislature can allegedly make them act in the public interest, which in reality is nonsense, and ignores how agents in the economy actually operate, and what incentives actually drive positive and economically productive behaviour.
I believe the complexity of the economy can only be addressed in a decentralized fashion, through the spontaneous emergence of market supply chains and prices, that represent the collaborative coordination of economic resources by a diverse set of parties each acting based on localized information, and who through their market actions, contribute that localized knowledge to public information resources about the larger economic picture.
It's important to try to help the average person understand that the market does work in the long run for most areas of the economy, and not to buy into the siren call of centralized and simplistic government solutions.
By your approximation I should be dead by now. The salient point is that it's my human right to associate with whomever I please.