9 ms·

It's not surprising that Reason points to trade restrictions which makes sense because importing food from Europe should not be an issue, but on the other hand,

It's not surprising that Reason points to trade restrictions which makes sense because importing food from Europe should not be an issue, but on the other hand, why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well... the stuff you feed infant children with? Same situation as the masks again. Yes, free trade alleviates these issues but only if you're not in global bottleneck which seem to be increasingly common with supply chain and production issues. This is food security, and countries should have the industrial capacity and backup to not end up with empty shelves.

chitowneats 5y ago
In addition to this, the reason that Europe is an attractive option for baby formula is because their regulatory bodies take "food for infants" more seriously than we do here.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Does "Europe" have an abundant surplus of infant formula that they are prepared to export? A lot more mothers breast-feed in Europe, formula feeding is rather uncommon so why would one expect that inventory is available to send somewhere else? And then you have the mother in Tennessee who gets a can of German-labeled formula powder, with mixing instructions in metric. Is she going to add the correct amount of water? Or are we going to re-label it? Who does that? Who checks it? How long will it take? I don't think this is the simple answer it appears to be.
  - samatman 5y ago
    Certainly, since this would be the first food Americans have ever imported from Europe, there is no framework for Imperialization of nutrition labels, since no one has ever done it before in the history of ever. Congratulations you found a show-stopper!
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Of course EU producers who package food for export label it accordingly. However what Reason seems to be implying is that we just load up some cargo planes with pallets of surplus formula that are apparently not needed in Europe and bring it to the USA under some kind of "emergency" order.
      - alasdair_ 5y ago
        It can’t be that hard to add a label on top of the existing label.
        golem14 5y ago
        In fact, a lot of somewhat shady spice packets you get at asian groceries in the bay area have a crummy paper sticker with english labeling over the Indian/Chinese/... original label. If this can happen for spices, why not for baby formula ? I think that this is a case of noone wanting to take the risk of eventually someone selling some product that is expired or otherwise bad with relaxed labeling/... rules. I can understand it, too, from a biz POV. I think the government needs to provide some sort of indemnification to importers/distributors/groceries. If the tradeoff demands it – 'X babies die/get sick because of malnutrition b/c missing baby formula' vs 'Y kids die/get sick because of bad baby formula.' X/Y are just hard to pin down.
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        > If this can happen for spices, why not for baby formula ? Surely this shoupd be bloody obvious? Like asking - if you can import dried fruit, why cant you import donated blood?
        samatman 5y ago
        The task is translating from metric to imperial and German or Dutch to English. Once. This will take someone an hour, someone else will spend thirty minutes proofreading it. Tell you what, two people take thirty minutes to proofread it, just to make you comfortable. How do you expect this task to fail? Compare and contrast the failure modes of importing blood and translating a nutrition label for me, please. If it's so bloody obvious.
  - molyss 5y ago
    Being from Paris and living in The bay area, a lot more women breastfeed here than in France. Even in the countryside of France, where my extended family is, few women breastfeed. Please let’s not make blanket statements about Europe vs USA. Clearly, European countries will be touchy about exporting baby formula. Also, the food regulation being widely different, I’m not sure how easily one could import european baby formula
    - yakak 5y ago
      > Clearly, European countries will be touchy about exporting baby formula. Formula will have to be labeled in English (and possibly French or Spanish) to not violate EU Export Regulations.. No one got upset about bulk exports to China, shipping direct consumer containers was OTOH illegal.
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    These are fair points. I suppose I was giving Reason the benefit of the doubt about the EU being interested in selling some type of surplus. Certainly not a forgone conclusion, as you pointed out. The most potent critiques of libertarian thought often rest their case on the world as it is, not as the libertarians imagine it to be. I did a cursory googling and you are correct that formula feeding is less prevalent in Europe. TIL. My only knowledge was that, anecdotally, I know several expats that prefer EU formula for their kids. This jived with my general sense of more stringent EU regulation around food safety.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      The most potent critiques of libertarian thought often rest their case on the world as it is, not as the libertarians imagine it to be. Isn't that equally true for critiques of progressive thought?
      - chitowneats 5y ago
        Yes.
diob 5y ago
The classic, "if you're prepared and it doesn't happen, it looks wasteful" reason. Or even if it doesn't happen, because you were prepared and released the stockpile, folks don't realize that's the reason. So prep for some politician to cut it.
- daenz 5y ago
  Plus, if it does happen, but the other party is in charge, they take all of the credit.
  - Natsu 5y ago
    Even if that happens, it's a good thing we filled up the oil reserves back when we did.
    - daenz 5y ago
      Agree it's a good thing. Purely from an incentive perspective though, there's a perverse incentive to let your opponents take the blame for things that you did, and take the credit for things that they did.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  or worse, we have too much captivity and donate overages… the horror
- ip26 5y ago
  Although, if it's more of a buffer in the supply chain instead of a strategic reserve, the waste doesn't have to be that great. Which takes us right back to JIT vs JIC. Perhaps sensible regulation on just how lean manufacturing may be in critical industries. (It's a race to the bottom, so re-define the bottom & let the market re-optimize)
  - ip26 5y ago
    One fun thought: for identified industries, each production line maintains X days of inventory of any foreign dependencies. The implications are interesting to ponder.
avs733 5y ago
It’s also funny that the thread talking about how this problem results from one monopolistic factory/company is so much further down the front page compared to the one blaming government regulation
- willmadden 5y ago
  The government regulations enable the monopolies. It’s incestuous.
vkou 5y ago
> why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well... the stuff you feed infant children with? Isn't infant formula a solution to a problem that is in large part created by infant formula manufacturers?
- daenz 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? I've always been surprised at how many families use formula. Do mothers just not breastfeed much anymore?
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Check the female workforce statistics. We decided as a culture it was more important for women to be working than “wasting time” raising and caring for their children.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      This development has occured in most of the world, including some rather conservative societies like Japan and Iran. The sad truth is that modern economies need a lot of educated workers.
  - mbbbb 5y ago
    Exclusively breastfeeding is very challenging to do while working, for one. Even at my megacorp with a dedicated space, a hospital grade pump, and 2 hrs a day dedicated only to that, it was a substantial hit to supply. Considering that most women don't have those amenities and support I'm not surprised they don't breastfeed exclusively after their mat leave (for most women in the US, 6 weeks unpaid) Not to mention - it can be painful (if I had no option of course I would endure pain for my child, but there is no shame in looking for something less painful) or the baby can not learn to latch (formerly known as "failure to thrive" and a driver of infant mortality)
    - nmfisher 5y ago
      I've recently become a father and I do wonder how much US maternity leave (or rather, lack thereof) accounts for your high formula usage. While my wife is coping, it's still very draining to handle a newborn and pump at regular intervals, even at 10 weeks. If she was in the US and had been forced to go back to work already, she may well have given up on breast milk already.
bsder 5y ago
> why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well Because the real issue is that we have no diversity of supply. 1) We have allowed everything to become monopolized such that losing a single supplier knocks out large chunks of supply. At this point, it is quite clear that for economic robustness, any company found to control more than 25% of the market for any product should be repeatedly broken in two until that is no longer true. But that would require robust anti-trust enforcement. 2) The suppliers are Always-Late(tm) Inventory optimized such that they can't absorb a significant uptick in demand without a long wind up time. Covid comprehensively demonstrated that industrial producers no longer have the ability to "retool". By removing as many humans from production and replacing them with automation, the productions lines have traded any flexibility for maximum profit.
- ipsin 5y ago
  I don't understand what the two have to do with each other. You say there's already a monopoly but if we'd bought a stockpile from the monopoly at market prices, we'd... still have a stockpile.
  - bsder 5y ago
    The point is that you don't need a stockpile if you have supply diversity. If you have two suppliers, one going down clobbers half of the market and the other company has to ramp up 100% to take over. That's simply not feasible. If you have five suppliers and one goes down, the remaining four companies only have to increase 20% each to take over the load. That's not easy, but it's actually in the realm of being possible.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  In 1, what's the product that you're considering the market share of? An iphone 13 mini? All iPhones? All smartphones? Or any phone? Or any portable computing device? A Macbook? Or a laptop? Or a computer? Or a computing device (to include laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones)?
semenko 5y ago
The lack of a stockpile is due to limited shelf stability and long-term bacterial growth. It's unfortunate Reason doesn't expand on the other side of this issue: the formula industry lobbied the FDA to reduce bacterial testing frequency (and inspections overall), with an emphasis on Cronobacter risks, arguing that the FDA "overestimat[ed] the expected annual incidence of Cronobacter infection". [1] [1] https://theintercept.com/2022/05/13/baby-formula-shortage-abbott-bacteria-safety-testing-lobbying/ https://theintercept.com/2022/05/13/baby-formula-shortage-ab...
- dereg 5y ago
  It seems that the regulatory system is broken and I don't know how to fix it other than to remove the barriers of entry to this industry. Four manufacturers, consisting of 89% of the nations supply, have so much influence over a regulatory agency insofar that they can write their own rules. Four manufacturers are able to shape the competitive landscape because the government has deemed their voices vital.
pdonis 5y ago
> free trade alleviates these issues but only if you're not in global bottleneck Which we are not with regard to infant formula; as the article notes, there's plenty in Europe that meets standards at least as stringent as US standards, the FDA just won't let US customers buy it because of stupid labeling requirements. Also, your implication that in a global bottleneck, free trade doesn't work as well as other solutions, is not correct. Free trade has the least severe failure modes in global bottlenecks, precisely because there are no artificial impediments that get in the way of producers adjusting to market conditions according to straightforward economic incentives.
- devman0 5y ago
  It likely isn't the FDA's choice, there are a lot of statutory requirements under 21 USC 350a that requires inspections, audits and specific quality control measures that can't be set aside via CFR with an emergency rule making process. Changing these would require Congress to act, but bilateral food regulations on something as sensitive as baby formula is not a topic that lends itself to quick resolution.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    It does if the baby starves otherwise.
  - nostromo 5y ago
    You'll notice most of that law is giving authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, which is the same person that runs the FDA.
- 8note 5y ago
  Isnt that a really easy to spin up business slapping stickers on bottles and shipping them to the states?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago
_3u10 5y ago
Because like most things the govt stockpiles it would just go to waste. Why not just get rid of the regulations? It’s free, and saves everyone money and alleviates shortages. Personally, I love having moved to a country where no one relies on the govt for anything.
- patmcc 5y ago
  Because some of us don't want to buy infant formula that's full of lead, bacteria, cellulose, or whatever other garbage would end up in it?
- bumby 5y ago
  Why not just go back before the FDA existed, in other words? Because it's generally frowned up when people mix things like plaster of paris, "bluish, white compound of true milk, pus and dirty water" and sell it as milk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
  - _3u10 5y ago
    This stuff happens even with the FDA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma
    - bumby 5y ago
      I don't think anyone is making the claim that regulation is foolproof. But the idea that no regulation is inherently better seems specious.
- 8note 5y ago
  Risk isnt free, it's mitigated by insurance costs, and when the negatives happen, from the government stepping in as the last resort. You don't save money by sending infants to the emergency room because they are bad formula
bee_rider 5y ago
There are lots of crucial goods, right? I don't see how the government could stockpile all of them. And infant formula is only good for a couple years, right? So it would have to be an ongoing project to keep it good. n95s eventually degrade, but I believe they've got a much longer shelf-life. Also, masks become unusually important when there's an epidemic, so we wouldn't expect the economy to have capacity to deal with that. We should expect that in a well balanced economy, the supply of baby formula should basically match the demand. It seems to me that instead of government stockpiles (since they can't stockpile everything and don't know what will be needed) it would make more sense to monitor the market more closely and keep tabs on inventory... and, actually, it is pretty surprising that they didn't catch this before it became an issue.
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  Stockpile to a point and then regularly auction off things that are nearing end of life (or, in the case of baby formula that is heavily provided by state programs, just give it to the states to distribute). We have national oil reserves. Having reserves of other essential assets seems fine to me, especially in the case where there are few substitute goods.
  - kareemsabri 5y ago
    Why is that necessary when it appears there is sufficient global supply and regulations are causing it to be unavailable to the US market? The issue isn't a shortage of production, as far as I can tell. And even if there were, a stockpile only absorbs a temporary shortage. A strong industry with many producers is what the government should desire, I imagine.
    - alasdair_ 5y ago
      It makes sense from a national defense perspective to have reasonable stockpiles of essential goods.
      - kareemsabri 5y ago
BurningFrog 5y ago
> "only" if you're not in global bottleneck Weird thing to bring up for this very local bottleneck. Mostly because of one factory being closed by regulators, if I understood things. There is tons of formula just across the borders in Canada and Mexico.
- cperciva 5y ago
  There is formula available in Canada, but there have also been some shortages recently. We're not completely immune.
eschaton 5y ago
Reason never found a regulation they didn’t hate or cast as the root cause for a complex problem. The Kochs created it specifically to promote that point of view.
- nervlord 5y ago
  [dead]

chitowneats 5y ago

In addition to this, the reason that Europe is an attractive option for baby formula is because their regulatory bodies take "food for infants" more seriously than we do here.

throwawayboise 5y ago
Does "Europe" have an abundant surplus of infant formula that they are prepared to export? A lot more mothers breast-feed in Europe, formula feeding is rather uncommon so why would one expect that inventory is available to send somewhere else? And then you have the mother in Tennessee who gets a can of German-labeled formula powder, with mixing instructions in metric. Is she going to add the correct amount of water? Or are we going to re-label it? Who does that? Who checks it? How long will it take? I don't think this is the simple answer it appears to be.
- samatman 5y ago
  Certainly, since this would be the first food Americans have ever imported from Europe, there is no framework for Imperialization of nutrition labels, since no one has ever done it before in the history of ever. Congratulations you found a show-stopper!
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Of course EU producers who package food for export label it accordingly. However what Reason seems to be implying is that we just load up some cargo planes with pallets of surplus formula that are apparently not needed in Europe and bring it to the USA under some kind of "emergency" order.
    - alasdair_ 5y ago
      It can’t be that hard to add a label on top of the existing label.
      - golem14 5y ago
        In fact, a lot of somewhat shady spice packets you get at asian groceries in the bay area have a crummy paper sticker with english labeling over the Indian/Chinese/... original label. If this can happen for spices, why not for baby formula ? I think that this is a case of noone wanting to take the risk of eventually someone selling some product that is expired or otherwise bad with relaxed labeling/... rules. I can understand it, too, from a biz POV. I think the government needs to provide some sort of indemnification to importers/distributors/groceries. If the tradeoff demands it – 'X babies die/get sick because of malnutrition b/c missing baby formula' vs 'Y kids die/get sick because of bad baby formula.' X/Y are just hard to pin down.
        ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        > If this can happen for spices, why not for baby formula ? Surely this shoupd be bloody obvious? Like asking - if you can import dried fruit, why cant you import donated blood?
        samatman 5y ago
        The task is translating from metric to imperial and German or Dutch to English. Once. This will take someone an hour, someone else will spend thirty minutes proofreading it. Tell you what, two people take thirty minutes to proofread it, just to make you comfortable. How do you expect this task to fail? Compare and contrast the failure modes of importing blood and translating a nutrition label for me, please. If it's so bloody obvious.
- molyss 5y ago
  Being from Paris and living in The bay area, a lot more women breastfeed here than in France. Even in the countryside of France, where my extended family is, few women breastfeed. Please let’s not make blanket statements about Europe vs USA. Clearly, European countries will be touchy about exporting baby formula. Also, the food regulation being widely different, I’m not sure how easily one could import european baby formula
  - yakak 5y ago
    > Clearly, European countries will be touchy about exporting baby formula. Formula will have to be labeled in English (and possibly French or Spanish) to not violate EU Export Regulations.. No one got upset about bulk exports to China, shipping direct consumer containers was OTOH illegal.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  These are fair points. I suppose I was giving Reason the benefit of the doubt about the EU being interested in selling some type of surplus. Certainly not a forgone conclusion, as you pointed out. The most potent critiques of libertarian thought often rest their case on the world as it is, not as the libertarians imagine it to be. I did a cursory googling and you are correct that formula feeding is less prevalent in Europe. TIL. My only knowledge was that, anecdotally, I know several expats that prefer EU formula for their kids. This jived with my general sense of more stringent EU regulation around food safety.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    The most potent critiques of libertarian thought often rest their case on the world as it is, not as the libertarians imagine it to be. Isn't that equally true for critiques of progressive thought?
    - chitowneats 5y ago
      Yes.

diob 5y ago

The classic, "if you're prepared and it doesn't happen, it looks wasteful" reason. Or even if it doesn't happen, because you were prepared and released the stockpile, folks don't realize that's the reason. So prep for some politician to cut it.

daenz 5y ago
Plus, if it does happen, but the other party is in charge, they take all of the credit.
- Natsu 5y ago
  Even if that happens, it's a good thing we filled up the oil reserves back when we did.
  - daenz 5y ago
    Agree it's a good thing. Purely from an incentive perspective though, there's a perverse incentive to let your opponents take the blame for things that you did, and take the credit for things that they did.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
or worse, we have too much captivity and donate overages… the horror
ip26 5y ago
Although, if it's more of a buffer in the supply chain instead of a strategic reserve, the waste doesn't have to be that great. Which takes us right back to JIT vs JIC. Perhaps sensible regulation on just how lean manufacturing may be in critical industries. (It's a race to the bottom, so re-define the bottom & let the market re-optimize)
- ip26 5y ago
  One fun thought: for identified industries, each production line maintains X days of inventory of any foreign dependencies. The implications are interesting to ponder.

avs733 5y ago

It’s also funny that the thread talking about how this problem results from one monopolistic factory/company is so much further down the front page compared to the one blaming government regulation

willmadden 5y ago
The government regulations enable the monopolies. It’s incestuous.

vkou 5y ago

> why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well... the stuff you feed infant children with? Isn't infant formula a solution to a problem that is in large part created by infant formula manufacturers?

daenz 5y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I've always been surprised at how many families use formula. Do mothers just not breastfeed much anymore?
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Check the female workforce statistics. We decided as a culture it was more important for women to be working than “wasting time” raising and caring for their children.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    This development has occured in most of the world, including some rather conservative societies like Japan and Iran. The sad truth is that modern economies need a lot of educated workers.
- mbbbb 5y ago
  Exclusively breastfeeding is very challenging to do while working, for one. Even at my megacorp with a dedicated space, a hospital grade pump, and 2 hrs a day dedicated only to that, it was a substantial hit to supply. Considering that most women don't have those amenities and support I'm not surprised they don't breastfeed exclusively after their mat leave (for most women in the US, 6 weeks unpaid) Not to mention - it can be painful (if I had no option of course I would endure pain for my child, but there is no shame in looking for something less painful) or the baby can not learn to latch (formerly known as "failure to thrive" and a driver of infant mortality)
  - nmfisher 5y ago
    I've recently become a father and I do wonder how much US maternity leave (or rather, lack thereof) accounts for your high formula usage. While my wife is coping, it's still very draining to handle a newborn and pump at regular intervals, even at 10 weeks. If she was in the US and had been forced to go back to work already, she may well have given up on breast milk already.

bsder 5y ago

> why does the government, federal or local not have a stockpile of well Because the real issue is that we have no diversity of supply. 1) We have allowed everything to become monopolized such that losing a single supplier knocks out large chunks of supply. At this point, it is quite clear that for economic robustness, any company found to control more than 25% of the market for any product should be repeatedly broken in two until that is no longer true. But that would require robust anti-trust enforcement. 2) The suppliers are Always-Late(tm) Inventory optimized such that they can't absorb a significant uptick in demand without a long wind up time. Covid comprehensively demonstrated that industrial producers no longer have the ability to "retool". By removing as many humans from production and replacing them with automation, the productions lines have traded any flexibility for maximum profit.

ipsin 5y ago
I don't understand what the two have to do with each other. You say there's already a monopoly but if we'd bought a stockpile from the monopoly at market prices, we'd... still have a stockpile.
- bsder 5y ago
  The point is that you don't need a stockpile if you have supply diversity. If you have two suppliers, one going down clobbers half of the market and the other company has to ramp up 100% to take over. That's simply not feasible. If you have five suppliers and one goes down, the remaining four companies only have to increase 20% each to take over the load. That's not easy, but it's actually in the realm of being possible.
sokoloff 5y ago
In 1, what's the product that you're considering the market share of? An iphone 13 mini? All iPhones? All smartphones? Or any phone? Or any portable computing device? A Macbook? Or a laptop? Or a computer? Or a computing device (to include laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones)?

semenko 5y ago

The lack of a stockpile is due to limited shelf stability and long-term bacterial growth. It's unfortunate Reason doesn't expand on the other side of this issue: the formula industry lobbied the FDA to reduce bacterial testing frequency (and inspections overall), with an emphasis on Cronobacter risks, arguing that the FDA "overestimat[ed] the expected annual incidence of Cronobacter infection". [1] [1] https://theintercept.com/2022/05/13/baby-formula-shortage-abbott-bacteria-safety-testing-lobbying/ https://theintercept.com/2022/05/13/baby-formula-shortage-ab...

dereg 5y ago
It seems that the regulatory system is broken and I don't know how to fix it other than to remove the barriers of entry to this industry. Four manufacturers, consisting of 89% of the nations supply, have so much influence over a regulatory agency insofar that they can write their own rules. Four manufacturers are able to shape the competitive landscape because the government has deemed their voices vital.

pdonis 5y ago

> free trade alleviates these issues but only if you're not in global bottleneck Which we are not with regard to infant formula; as the article notes, there's plenty in Europe that meets standards at least as stringent as US standards, the FDA just won't let US customers buy it because of stupid labeling requirements. Also, your implication that in a global bottleneck, free trade doesn't work as well as other solutions, is not correct. Free trade has the least severe failure modes in global bottlenecks, precisely because there are no artificial impediments that get in the way of producers adjusting to market conditions according to straightforward economic incentives.

devman0 5y ago
It likely isn't the FDA's choice, there are a lot of statutory requirements under 21 USC 350a that requires inspections, audits and specific quality control measures that can't be set aside via CFR with an emergency rule making process. Changing these would require Congress to act, but bilateral food regulations on something as sensitive as baby formula is not a topic that lends itself to quick resolution.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  It does if the baby starves otherwise.
- nostromo 5y ago
  You'll notice most of that law is giving authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, which is the same person that runs the FDA.
8note 5y ago
Isnt that a really easy to spin up business slapping stickers on bottles and shipping them to the states?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 5y ago

_3u10 5y ago

Because like most things the govt stockpiles it would just go to waste. Why not just get rid of the regulations? It’s free, and saves everyone money and alleviates shortages. Personally, I love having moved to a country where no one relies on the govt for anything.

patmcc 5y ago
Because some of us don't want to buy infant formula that's full of lead, bacteria, cellulose, or whatever other garbage would end up in it?
bumby 5y ago
Why not just go back before the FDA existed, in other words? Because it's generally frowned up when people mix things like plaster of paris, "bluish, white compound of true milk, pus and dirty water" and sell it as milk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
- _3u10 5y ago
  This stuff happens even with the FDA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma
  - bumby 5y ago
    I don't think anyone is making the claim that regulation is foolproof. But the idea that no regulation is inherently better seems specious.
8note 5y ago
Risk isnt free, it's mitigated by insurance costs, and when the negatives happen, from the government stepping in as the last resort. You don't save money by sending infants to the emergency room because they are bad formula

bee_rider 5y ago

There are lots of crucial goods, right? I don't see how the government could stockpile all of them. And infant formula is only good for a couple years, right? So it would have to be an ongoing project to keep it good. n95s eventually degrade, but I believe they've got a much longer shelf-life. Also, masks become unusually important when there's an epidemic, so we wouldn't expect the economy to have capacity to deal with that. We should expect that in a well balanced economy, the supply of baby formula should basically match the demand. It seems to me that instead of government stockpiles (since they can't stockpile everything and don't know what will be needed) it would make more sense to monitor the market more closely and keep tabs on inventory... and, actually, it is pretty surprising that they didn't catch this before it became an issue.

alasdair_ 5y ago
Stockpile to a point and then regularly auction off things that are nearing end of life (or, in the case of baby formula that is heavily provided by state programs, just give it to the states to distribute). We have national oil reserves. Having reserves of other essential assets seems fine to me, especially in the case where there are few substitute goods.
- kareemsabri 5y ago
  Why is that necessary when it appears there is sufficient global supply and regulations are causing it to be unavailable to the US market? The issue isn't a shortage of production, as far as I can tell. And even if there were, a stockpile only absorbs a temporary shortage. A strong industry with many producers is what the government should desire, I imagine.
  - alasdair_ 5y ago
    It makes sense from a national defense perspective to have reasonable stockpiles of essential goods.
    - kareemsabri 5y ago

BurningFrog 5y ago

> "only" if you're not in global bottleneck Weird thing to bring up for this very local bottleneck. Mostly because of one factory being closed by regulators, if I understood things. There is tons of formula just across the borders in Canada and Mexico.

cperciva 5y ago
There is formula available in Canada, but there have also been some shortages recently. We're not completely immune.

eschaton 5y ago

Reason never found a regulation they didn’t hate or cast as the root cause for a complex problem. The Kochs created it specifically to promote that point of view.

nervlord 5y ago
[dead]