3 ms·

> For your car example, it assumes nobody would ever buy cars for safety features. You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper

by croon 10y ago

> For your car example, it assumes nobody would ever buy cars for safety features. You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper seatbelts in car A is any different from vinyl seatbelts in car B without any governed inspecting organ. > or the medical example, the entire reason pharma can charge that is because of government grants monopolies. No, the FDA approves things (for good: people don't die from rushed medicine with unseen side effects, and bad: it takes a lot of time and money to market, when people want new treatment now) for a reason. Why the current example has a monopoly is because of corrupt/lobbied regulation, not because the concept of regulation is bad. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

beambot 10y ago
> You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper seatbelts in car A is any different from vinyl seatbelts in car B without any governed inspecting organ. Consumer reports?
- croon 10y ago
  Sure, I definitely would, and probably give a quick glance over who performed it. Those are however not available in all fields or products. I'm also not considering myself better than anyone else, but am still very sure that a lot if not most people don't always check that. They however still deserve at least some form of baseline safety (not get sick, not get into product-fault accident) even without that. I save you by knowing how my field works and alerting you/stopping bad practices, and you save me by knowing your field. Then we institutionalize and compartmentalize that to ensure that unlike consumer reports, it's not influenced by market interests (which the US is still brilliant at ruining with lobbying). That is how a community works. Of course, you can instead pay someone explicitly to look after your interests/safety, to make sure they're not paid by other interests, ie companies wanting to pay as little as possible to sell you as much as possible. The thing is you've now just created a government. If it's not working it's not because of its concept.
  - splintercell 10y ago
    A better approach than consumer reports is label certifications. A product bearing more testing labels (like things from Under writer's laboratory, or movies rated by MPAA etc etc) will have a better chance of being marketed to bigger audience.
splintercell 10y ago
> You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper seatbelts in car A is any different from vinyl seatbelts in car B without any governed inspecting organ. Average Joe doesn't spend time figuring out which technology/product is good for him or not because of govt regulation. If not for that, then people would develop a lot more ability to figure these things out. So you can't say that average joe doesn't have a way of knowing something which he today doesn't have any need to know.
- croon 10y ago
  We're dealing with what is observable or we're just guessing. Sure, we don't know what average joe would be capable of in such a scenario, but we equally don't know that capitalism would contain itself without regulation. What we however do know because we see it repeatedly is that corporations gladly take any shortcuts possible until they're caught. BP, VW, endless others. You can't be suggesting it would be BETTER without regulation?

by croon 10y ago

beambot 10y ago

croon 10y ago
Sure, I definitely would, and probably give a quick glance over who performed it. Those are however not available in all fields or products. I'm also not considering myself better than anyone else, but am still very sure that a lot if not most people don't always check that. They however still deserve at least some form of baseline safety (not get sick, not get into product-fault accident) even without that. I save you by knowing how my field works and alerting you/stopping bad practices, and you save me by knowing your field. Then we institutionalize and compartmentalize that to ensure that unlike consumer reports, it's not influenced by market interests (which the US is still brilliant at ruining with lobbying). That is how a community works. Of course, you can instead pay someone explicitly to look after your interests/safety, to make sure they're not paid by other interests, ie companies wanting to pay as little as possible to sell you as much as possible. The thing is you've now just created a government. If it's not working it's not because of its concept.
- splintercell 10y ago
  A better approach than consumer reports is label certifications. A product bearing more testing labels (like things from Under writer's laboratory, or movies rated by MPAA etc etc) will have a better chance of being marketed to bigger audience.

splintercell 10y ago

> You're assuming average Joe has any way of knowing wether produced-by-paper seatbelts in car A is any different from vinyl seatbelts in car B without any governed inspecting organ. Average Joe doesn't spend time figuring out which technology/product is good for him or not because of govt regulation. If not for that, then people would develop a lot more ability to figure these things out. So you can't say that average joe doesn't have a way of knowing something which he today doesn't have any need to know.

croon 10y ago
We're dealing with what is observable or we're just guessing. Sure, we don't know what average joe would be capable of in such a scenario, but we equally don't know that capitalism would contain itself without regulation. What we however do know because we see it repeatedly is that corporations gladly take any shortcuts possible until they're caught. BP, VW, endless others. You can't be suggesting it would be BETTER without regulation?