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Have you read FDA regulations on food labels? Flavor has to be at least printed in a twelve point font. It may be started by lobbyists, but bureaucrats while d

by ryacko 7y ago

Have you read FDA regulations on food labels? Flavor has to be at least printed in a twelve point font. It may be started by lobbyists, but bureaucrats while drafting something will come up with some good ideas of their own.

jonathankoren 7y ago
Responding to the technical merits of a 12 point font: From what I remember as a high school yearbook editor, 12 point is standard text font size. (Yes, I know MS Word popularized 10 point.) Failing to specify a minimum legible font size would allow someone to print labels that were illegible thus defeating the purpose of disclosures, while maintaining technical compliance. It is an unreasonable expectation that people when purchasing food products at a grocery store to carry a 200x microscope. Given that you want to ensure legibility, I would certainly hope that a regulation would exist that specified what was legible was for say 90+% of the sighted population, and was still accessible to technological pocket readers for the blind. In a related example, the FDA respecified nutrition labels due to lobbying about its illegibility and confusing layout. Now it’s larger, high constraint, and has simpler headings around total sugar. I remember when they changed, and it was due to successful lobbying from consumer, health, and senior citizen advocates. You can read about the history of nutrition labeling at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/ Now to respond to the point that bureaucrats are incentivized to minimize freedom. What freedom is being minimized? The freedom to deceive consumers? The freedom to obscure? These aren’t really freedoms in the public interest. More importantly, you even conceded that the regulation was started by lobbyists, when the original argument was the a bureaucrat was being “incentivized” to steal Freedom(tm) from the populace. Laws aren’t just vague ideas. They’re technical specifications. Sometimes these specifications are at odds with each other. Sometimes they’re over broad, or ineffective at achieving the original goal. Sometimes they’re simple regulatory capture, (Barber and hairdresser licensure does little to protect the public, but limits the number of practitioners. Same with revoking barber licenses for felons. But do you know who is the biggest supporter of cosmetology licenses? Cosmetologists.) Even the regulators know this, but simultaneously are powerless do anything about it, as they are not the ones who pass the laws. For instance, SF Planning commission famously posted this video about trying to open a restaurant in San Francisco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA There is more evidence that police have ticket quotas than there is that bureaucrats have regulation quotas. (Show me a beat cop that still has his job after refusing to write any tickets, but rather simply uses his professional discretion to give verbal warnings.)
- ryacko 7y ago
  >There is more evidence that police have ticket quotas than there is that bureaucrats have regulation quotas. Yes, it would not make sense that there are requirements to produce impacts that aren’t publicly noticeable, particularly when there are complaints of scarce resources. Regardless, people have bosses and work multiplies. Maybe no one has no idea what they are doing, but someone has to have some self reflection that it is harmful.
  - jonathankoren 7y ago
    > but someone has to have some self reflection that it is harmful. I emphatically reject that notion, both from the perspective that that regulations and regulatory enforcement are intrinsically harmful, and from the perspective that self reflection of enforcers demoralizes them. Quite the contrary, people self deceive themselves all the time. No one ever the bad guy in their own story. Sure. Maybe someone sometime gets fails to rationalize their actions for a while, and quit, but they are by far the exception, because if they weren't you'd have high turn over and an inability to recruit replacements. Then, even under those circumstances you'd eventually end up with self selected, self perpetuating group. That's just survivorship.
    - ryacko 7y ago
      If no one is the bad guy in their own story, than you are surrounded by children.
      - javert 7y ago
        Maybe I'm missing your point but... we are? Many or most adults in the U.S. operate at the level of what we expect of children, but not what we expect of adults. I only specify the U.S. because it's what I know directly. (I suspect European adults overall are better socialized to behave in an adult way, but are not necessarily actually any wiser than American adults. Just on average. There is an enormous variation from person to person.) edit: I feel like this needs an example. I'm not saying American adults are incompetent at their jobs, for example. I'm saying they hold childish beliefs, like believing in Santa Claus, but not that one in particular. In other words, they lack intellectual hygiene. Another good example is what came up earlier in the thread: people rationalizing their bad actions so that they are not bad in their own "story."

by ryacko 7y ago

jonathankoren 7y ago

Responding to the technical merits of a 12 point font: From what I remember as a high school yearbook editor, 12 point is standard text font size. (Yes, I know MS Word popularized 10 point.) Failing to specify a minimum legible font size would allow someone to print labels that were illegible thus defeating the purpose of disclosures, while maintaining technical compliance. It is an unreasonable expectation that people when purchasing food products at a grocery store to carry a 200x microscope. Given that you want to ensure legibility, I would certainly hope that a regulation would exist that specified what was legible was for say 90+% of the sighted population, and was still accessible to technological pocket readers for the blind. In a related example, the FDA respecified nutrition labels due to lobbying about its illegibility and confusing layout. Now it’s larger, high constraint, and has simpler headings around total sugar. I remember when they changed, and it was due to successful lobbying from consumer, health, and senior citizen advocates. You can read about the history of nutrition labeling at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/ Now to respond to the point that bureaucrats are incentivized to minimize freedom. What freedom is being minimized? The freedom to deceive consumers? The freedom to obscure? These aren’t really freedoms in the public interest. More importantly, you even conceded that the regulation was started by lobbyists, when the original argument was the a bureaucrat was being “incentivized” to steal Freedom(tm) from the populace. Laws aren’t just vague ideas. They’re technical specifications. Sometimes these specifications are at odds with each other. Sometimes they’re over broad, or ineffective at achieving the original goal. Sometimes they’re simple regulatory capture, (Barber and hairdresser licensure does little to protect the public, but limits the number of practitioners. Same with revoking barber licenses for felons. But do you know who is the biggest supporter of cosmetology licenses? Cosmetologists.) Even the regulators know this, but simultaneously are powerless do anything about it, as they are not the ones who pass the laws. For instance, SF Planning commission famously posted this video about trying to open a restaurant in San Francisco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA There is more evidence that police have ticket quotas than there is that bureaucrats have regulation quotas. (Show me a beat cop that still has his job after refusing to write any tickets, but rather simply uses his professional discretion to give verbal warnings.)

ryacko 7y ago
>There is more evidence that police have ticket quotas than there is that bureaucrats have regulation quotas. Yes, it would not make sense that there are requirements to produce impacts that aren’t publicly noticeable, particularly when there are complaints of scarce resources. Regardless, people have bosses and work multiplies. Maybe no one has no idea what they are doing, but someone has to have some self reflection that it is harmful.
- jonathankoren 7y ago
  > but someone has to have some self reflection that it is harmful. I emphatically reject that notion, both from the perspective that that regulations and regulatory enforcement are intrinsically harmful, and from the perspective that self reflection of enforcers demoralizes them. Quite the contrary, people self deceive themselves all the time. No one ever the bad guy in their own story. Sure. Maybe someone sometime gets fails to rationalize their actions for a while, and quit, but they are by far the exception, because if they weren't you'd have high turn over and an inability to recruit replacements. Then, even under those circumstances you'd eventually end up with self selected, self perpetuating group. That's just survivorship.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    If no one is the bad guy in their own story, than you are surrounded by children.
    - javert 7y ago
      Maybe I'm missing your point but... we are? Many or most adults in the U.S. operate at the level of what we expect of children, but not what we expect of adults. I only specify the U.S. because it's what I know directly. (I suspect European adults overall are better socialized to behave in an adult way, but are not necessarily actually any wiser than American adults. Just on average. There is an enormous variation from person to person.) edit: I feel like this needs an example. I'm not saying American adults are incompetent at their jobs, for example. I'm saying they hold childish beliefs, like believing in Santa Claus, but not that one in particular. In other words, they lack intellectual hygiene. Another good example is what came up earlier in the thread: people rationalizing their bad actions so that they are not bad in their own "story."