When you get to matters of safety you can either take an unforgiving, Darwinian view and stake people's survival on whether they read Consumer Reports that mont

When you get to matters of safety you can either take an unforgiving, Darwinian view and stake people's survival on whether they read Consumer Reports that month, or you can take responsibility and be proactive about preventing theses dangers. The "pure free market" ideal of caveat emptor makes businesses sound an awful like muggers loitering in dark alleys waiting for victims; something you need to protect yourself from. Sure, in a perfectly rational market and with perfectly informed participants these dangers are known and avoided, but perfection is never achieved in reality. Government regulation and licensing, when done properly, papers over the irrationality and information asymmetry by making the decision of what a business can do. After all, would any rational person eat at a restaurant that gave you food poisoning more often than not? If the government didn't force its closure lack of business would, and with more sick people too.