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>Ultimately we are in dire need of regulation of these substances, especially where there is food contact. We don't need regulation. We need consumer education

>Ultimately we are in dire need of regulation of these substances, especially where there is food contact. We don't need regulation. We need consumer education (and in this gov funded programs can help) and entrepreneurship to provide the market with what it demands.

DomreiRoam 9y ago
I think you need good regulation and that is difficult to achieve. Seriously you can ask the consumer to be a little knowledgeable but you can't ask all consumer to have the equivalence of master in Biology, Chemistry, Material science ... and conduct testing on their food, water, car ... when you have sophisticate actor with huge budget and can make profit by tricking consumer.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  Consumers don't need to be experts to discover organizations that use experts to create standards for safe food, and only buy products certified by said organization. Regulation is about controlling what other people buy, which I find to be absolutely unjustifiable. If you don't want unsafe food, you should deliberately avoid it. The problem is no government or private company provides any kind of certification on this.
  - DomreiRoam 9y ago
    We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right. I think the difficulty is to find a source of 'Authority' that can control the controller. I don't believe that the State is always doing the right think (Flint water ...) but the private sector has already been caught doing very nasty thing (Asbestos, Cigarette ...). I believe the democratic can provide a last resort authority most of the time. In fact the Courts are sometime used in this capacity. Also we need to take in account that you cant only take in account the consumer point of view. Other aspect like geopolitics or pollution or security need to be addressed: Japan still try to support agriculture because they don't want to have starvation in case of a maritime blockade. We still have states secure maritime transport and fight piracy. The difficulty, is to see what need to be regulated and what can be let to the market force. And there is no definitive answer because the market react to regulation and regulation are adapted according to market behavior. But ideology and culture background are determinant to define what proportion you want. It is clearly the opposition between collectivism and individualism. I think both to the extreme are wrong.
    - Jabanga 9y ago
      The certification programs on the market are excellent. The problem is there is no certification program for the problem elucidated by the parent comment. This is an entrepreneurial opportunity. >We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right. I think you're underestimating how reputation and communication lead to consumers gaining reliable information in the marketplace. Apple didn't develop a reputation for quality and customer service for nothing. It earned that reputation, and the marker rewarded it for it. Consumer knowledge is often times far more sophisticated than voter knowledge. If consumers are too ignorant to solve this problem, then I have no faith voters will solve it. This comes down to a problem of ignorance, and once that problem is solved, then marketplace solutions can be introduced, whether through cookie-cutter mandates imposed by government that reduce our freedom, or through a diverse array of products/services provided by entrepreneurs that expand our options. This idea that since you need an expert, it must be done through regulations imposed on everyone, is nonsensical. Experts can work for nongovernmental organizations too, and can have a contractual obligation to serve the public interest, just as government officials do. Moreover, the government can appoint experts to the task, and provide its own certification of what products meet its standards, without making said standards mandatory. Frankly I find this insistence that only a government appointed body, that imposes standards that no one in society is allowed to opt out of (even if they like BPA in their food), would work, because of an almost religious like faith that market mechanisms, meaning people interacting through voluntary exchanges and contracts, can't work, to be immature. Assuming no pollution-related concerns affecting non-participants, there is absolutely no moral justification for prohibiting people from buying/selling food containing some hormone disrupting chemical. What society needs is the information with which to make informed decisions. But that decision should be each individual's to make.
      - DomreiRoam 9y ago
        I think I fear that marketing forces are stronger than consumer knowledge. I spend too much time debunking facts on Facebook posted by relatives to think that people in general want to spend time looking for the truth. Also we have studies that shows that doctors doesn't understand enough statistic to understand medical studies and make good choice. I also see that ordinary folk don't discern the difference in knowledge between a TV pundit a TV-star and an expert. I don't believe that government are perfect and the only solution but I think they can be part of it. You have classes of problem where regulation is an answer, one of them is when the condition of a fair market are not met: Monopoly, information asymmetry (You don't have the same resource as GS to understand the market condition ). So some regulation are in place to allow a market to work for all. The state is there to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior because he is the only one that is allowed to use violence to enforce rules. I think we need to have a minimal level of regulation because we need some liberty to have innovation. This minimum is difficult to agree on and I suspect the level of regulation i would accept is higher than yours but I think you accept certain level. Most people would reject slavery, experimentation on human, kidnapping, extortion ... as normal behavior. But they were accepted at some point.
sliverstorm 9y ago
As an educated, consumer, it's freaking exhausting reading ingredients labels for every single yogurt on the shelf, and then every single ice cream, and then every single cheese, and every tortilla, repeat ad-nauseum. I do it, but most people don't. If companies are allowed to bury the lede enough, customer choice can become ineffective at influencing the market, because it may not be exercised widely simply due to sheer pain-in-the-ass factor.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  Consumers can rely on certification labels to simplify product assessment. The certification can even be provided by the government! It just doesn't need to be mandatory. Those who want [private-market-label/government-certified/etc] foods, can look for the seal, and only buy foods with it, and those who don't care, or who want to disrupt their hormones, can ignore it.

DomreiRoam 9y ago

I think you need good regulation and that is difficult to achieve. Seriously you can ask the consumer to be a little knowledgeable but you can't ask all consumer to have the equivalence of master in Biology, Chemistry, Material science ... and conduct testing on their food, water, car ... when you have sophisticate actor with huge budget and can make profit by tricking consumer.

Jabanga 9y ago
Consumers don't need to be experts to discover organizations that use experts to create standards for safe food, and only buy products certified by said organization. Regulation is about controlling what other people buy, which I find to be absolutely unjustifiable. If you don't want unsafe food, you should deliberately avoid it. The problem is no government or private company provides any kind of certification on this.
- DomreiRoam 9y ago
  We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right. I think the difficulty is to find a source of 'Authority' that can control the controller. I don't believe that the State is always doing the right think (Flint water ...) but the private sector has already been caught doing very nasty thing (Asbestos, Cigarette ...). I believe the democratic can provide a last resort authority most of the time. In fact the Courts are sometime used in this capacity. Also we need to take in account that you cant only take in account the consumer point of view. Other aspect like geopolitics or pollution or security need to be addressed: Japan still try to support agriculture because they don't want to have starvation in case of a maritime blockade. We still have states secure maritime transport and fight piracy. The difficulty, is to see what need to be regulated and what can be let to the market force. And there is no definitive answer because the market react to regulation and regulation are adapted according to market behavior. But ideology and culture background are determinant to define what proportion you want. It is clearly the opposition between collectivism and individualism. I think both to the extreme are wrong.
  - Jabanga 9y ago
    The certification programs on the market are excellent. The problem is there is no certification program for the problem elucidated by the parent comment. This is an entrepreneurial opportunity. >We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right. I think you're underestimating how reputation and communication lead to consumers gaining reliable information in the marketplace. Apple didn't develop a reputation for quality and customer service for nothing. It earned that reputation, and the marker rewarded it for it. Consumer knowledge is often times far more sophisticated than voter knowledge. If consumers are too ignorant to solve this problem, then I have no faith voters will solve it. This comes down to a problem of ignorance, and once that problem is solved, then marketplace solutions can be introduced, whether through cookie-cutter mandates imposed by government that reduce our freedom, or through a diverse array of products/services provided by entrepreneurs that expand our options. This idea that since you need an expert, it must be done through regulations imposed on everyone, is nonsensical. Experts can work for nongovernmental organizations too, and can have a contractual obligation to serve the public interest, just as government officials do. Moreover, the government can appoint experts to the task, and provide its own certification of what products meet its standards, without making said standards mandatory. Frankly I find this insistence that only a government appointed body, that imposes standards that no one in society is allowed to opt out of (even if they like BPA in their food), would work, because of an almost religious like faith that market mechanisms, meaning people interacting through voluntary exchanges and contracts, can't work, to be immature. Assuming no pollution-related concerns affecting non-participants, there is absolutely no moral justification for prohibiting people from buying/selling food containing some hormone disrupting chemical. What society needs is the information with which to make informed decisions. But that decision should be each individual's to make.
    - DomreiRoam 9y ago
      I think I fear that marketing forces are stronger than consumer knowledge. I spend too much time debunking facts on Facebook posted by relatives to think that people in general want to spend time looking for the truth. Also we have studies that shows that doctors doesn't understand enough statistic to understand medical studies and make good choice. I also see that ordinary folk don't discern the difference in knowledge between a TV pundit a TV-star and an expert. I don't believe that government are perfect and the only solution but I think they can be part of it. You have classes of problem where regulation is an answer, one of them is when the condition of a fair market are not met: Monopoly, information asymmetry (You don't have the same resource as GS to understand the market condition ). So some regulation are in place to allow a market to work for all. The state is there to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior because he is the only one that is allowed to use violence to enforce rules. I think we need to have a minimal level of regulation because we need some liberty to have innovation. This minimum is difficult to agree on and I suspect the level of regulation i would accept is higher than yours but I think you accept certain level. Most people would reject slavery, experimentation on human, kidnapping, extortion ... as normal behavior. But they were accepted at some point.

sliverstorm 9y ago

As an educated, consumer, it's freaking exhausting reading ingredients labels for every single yogurt on the shelf, and then every single ice cream, and then every single cheese, and every tortilla, repeat ad-nauseum. I do it, but most people don't. If companies are allowed to bury the lede enough, customer choice can become ineffective at influencing the market, because it may not be exercised widely simply due to sheer pain-in-the-ass factor.

Jabanga 9y ago
Consumers can rely on certification labels to simplify product assessment. The certification can even be provided by the government! It just doesn't need to be mandatory. Those who want [private-market-label/government-certified/etc] foods, can look for the seal, and only buy foods with it, and those who don't care, or who want to disrupt their hormones, can ignore it.