From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Fri Jun 27 2003 - 05:10:47 MDT
On Thu, 26 Jun 2003, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>Alfio wrote:
>
>>> But what reason is there to think that laws and the bloated
>>> government departments that always grow around them like a cancer
>>> will stop somebody selling colored water as orange juice better than
>>> the market can?
>>
>> I am somewhat uneasy at applying market logic to issues regarding
>> basic human needs. Even assuming that the market will adjust
>> perfectly, it will do at the public expense (at first): for example,
>> if a producer sells some poisoned food, the market will not correct
>> it before some people die. Or, if very unsafe cars are sold, again
>> they will continue to be sold until they are demonstrated unsafe on
>> the market, e.g. when people die because of them (come to think of
>> it, the FDA is doing a better job than automobile regulations...)
>
>### This is incorrect. Only unpredictable dangers will be inadequately
>addressed by the market (but this is the nature of the world - the
>unpredictable by definition defies a specific preventative action, whether
>individual or collectivist). The predictable dangers can be easily addressed
>by civil liability and insurance. [...]
I'm not so sure. Just to stay with the previous examples, I have heard
enough examples of questionable behaviour by food industries (I'm not
talking about GM, but about for example wine with methanol, junk food made
more or less out of plastic, etc.) and car makers (SUVs rolling better
than billiard balls, plastic-made little cars that crush into nothing),
even with all the checks currently in place. Most of them are attempts to
sidestep those checks and regulations, which can surely result in
lawsuits. But we see that a minority of companies keep trying.
A market solution would wait for the first incidents to appear before
doing anything. And if the lawsuit deterrent is not working now, I have
some doubts that it would be working then. At least, we don't have many
examples of pure-markets to see if it happens this or that way.
Ciao,
Alfio
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