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> Libertarians like free markets, right? Has anyone tried applying free market principles to drug use? In a completely free market, there are no labeling laws,

by cbd1984 11y ago

> Libertarians like free markets, right? Has anyone tried applying free market principles to drug use? In a completely free market, there are no labeling laws, and no way to enforce purity until after someone has died or been harmed by a bad product and has an estate or next-of-kin capable of suing the producer. And that, of course, assumes the producer is both still in business and is going to be dissuaded from making bad product just because it lost one lawsuit, which might only amount to less than one percent of its total income. I'd rather avoid that.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Free markets in no way preclude torts. If your ... snake-oil medicine kills somebody, that's a tort. Taken properly, this means you won't just lose one lawsuit, you'll enjoy the legal equivalent of being bombed back to the stone age. Free markets only work if there is good and efficient law. Indeed, David Friedman has written extensively on this very subject. His "Machineries of Freedom" is excellent.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > Free markets in no way preclude torts. I just said they allowed torts. I also explained why torts alone are insufficient.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    It looks very much ( to me at least ) that tort law keeps us a lot safer than regulation. It's may be impossible to isolate factors to really say - both grew up together. It may be that both are required. It may also be that regulation or other public safety standards are necessary for the proper operation of tort law.
nickff 11y ago
This is plainly wrong. Free markets allow for testing and approval agencies which do not need to be run by the government. Think of companies like UL which test products before they go to market, and companies like Consumer Reports which test them afterwards. These companies and more can operate to ensure safe goods and services, probably at a much lower cost, and with higher quality than the government. Do not forget that there have been drug and food safety issues under the FDA's watch, and each time, there has been little to no accountability. An interesting related question would be whether people prefer to err on the side of type 1 statistical errors or type 2 errors, and whether the balance of errors would change under a more free-market structure.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > This is plainly wrong. Free markets allow for testing and approval agencies which do not need to be run by the government. Yes, they allow multiple competing agencies, each of which approves a different list of products, none of which is obligated in the slightest to reveal who pays for what. Libertarians love to rail about regulatory capture, then they propose a system where companies can literally secretly own private regulatory agencies. > Do not forget that there have been drug and food safety issues under the FDA's watch, and each time, there has been little to no accountability. You have very little idea how bad it was prior to the FDA, in the snake oil era, and how much the FDA does to ensure safe and effective medications and foods. Yes, it's imperfect. The solution to imperfection isn't to tear it down and start over. It's to fix what's wrong, to invest the time and mental effort to improve things. Yes, this is harder than just letting the businesses run the whole shop. However, we tried that, during the Gilded Age, and it didn't work, so now we have to improve a system we know works better.
  - gozur88 11y ago
    >Yes, they allow multiple competing agencies, each of which approves a different list of products, none of which is obligated in the slightest to reveal who pays for what. "Agencies" is probably the wrong word. "Companies", maybe. In any event, and organization like that lives and dies on its reputation, so I doubt it would be any less rigorous than the FDA. Probably more. >You have very little idea how bad it was prior to the FDA... And you do? You're looking at what the FDA has prevented (thalidomide being probably the biggest win), but how many people have died as the drugs they need remain mired in the FDA's bureaucracy?
  - aminorex 11y ago
    Like Consumer Laboratories?

by cbd1984 11y ago

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

Free markets in no way preclude torts. If your ... snake-oil medicine kills somebody, that's a tort. Taken properly, this means you won't just lose one lawsuit, you'll enjoy the legal equivalent of being bombed back to the stone age. Free markets only work if there is good and efficient law. Indeed, David Friedman has written extensively on this very subject. His "Machineries of Freedom" is excellent.

cbd1984 11y ago
> Free markets in no way preclude torts. I just said they allowed torts. I also explained why torts alone are insufficient.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  It looks very much ( to me at least ) that tort law keeps us a lot safer than regulation. It's may be impossible to isolate factors to really say - both grew up together. It may be that both are required. It may also be that regulation or other public safety standards are necessary for the proper operation of tort law.

nickff 11y ago

This is plainly wrong. Free markets allow for testing and approval agencies which do not need to be run by the government. Think of companies like UL which test products before they go to market, and companies like Consumer Reports which test them afterwards. These companies and more can operate to ensure safe goods and services, probably at a much lower cost, and with higher quality than the government. Do not forget that there have been drug and food safety issues under the FDA's watch, and each time, there has been little to no accountability. An interesting related question would be whether people prefer to err on the side of type 1 statistical errors or type 2 errors, and whether the balance of errors would change under a more free-market structure.

cbd1984 11y ago
> This is plainly wrong. Free markets allow for testing and approval agencies which do not need to be run by the government. Yes, they allow multiple competing agencies, each of which approves a different list of products, none of which is obligated in the slightest to reveal who pays for what. Libertarians love to rail about regulatory capture, then they propose a system where companies can literally secretly own private regulatory agencies. > Do not forget that there have been drug and food safety issues under the FDA's watch, and each time, there has been little to no accountability. You have very little idea how bad it was prior to the FDA, in the snake oil era, and how much the FDA does to ensure safe and effective medications and foods. Yes, it's imperfect. The solution to imperfection isn't to tear it down and start over. It's to fix what's wrong, to invest the time and mental effort to improve things. Yes, this is harder than just letting the businesses run the whole shop. However, we tried that, during the Gilded Age, and it didn't work, so now we have to improve a system we know works better.
- gozur88 11y ago
  >Yes, they allow multiple competing agencies, each of which approves a different list of products, none of which is obligated in the slightest to reveal who pays for what. "Agencies" is probably the wrong word. "Companies", maybe. In any event, and organization like that lives and dies on its reputation, so I doubt it would be any less rigorous than the FDA. Probably more. >You have very little idea how bad it was prior to the FDA... And you do? You're looking at what the FDA has prevented (thalidomide being probably the biggest win), but how many people have died as the drugs they need remain mired in the FDA's bureaucracy?
- aminorex 11y ago
  Like Consumer Laboratories?