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I don’t know if that’s true. Look at the amount of lethal product defects over the last 100 years. And before the FDA existed, companies were perfectly willing
by sarchertech 12d ago
I don’t know if that’s true. Look at the amount of lethal product defects over the last 100 years.
And before the FDA existed, companies were perfectly willing to put formaldehyde in milk, mercury in candy, and arsenic in vegetables.
- malfist 12d agoWhoa there, next you're going to tell me government action can benefit society
- happytoexplain 12d agoThose cases are high-profile, and much more common than they should have been, but not common in the context of all products. They are examples of the type of decision-making that I am claiming has increased across the board. Also, those cases are mostly enormous-harm-vs-enormous-profit, whereas now that the same attitude is everywhere, most of the cases are just "make the thing worse", which is way less dramatic but ten thousand times more common.
- sarchertech 12d agoThere was much more than just the high profile egregious cases though. Most food adulteration is a quality issue more than a safety problem. Buy old peas but put a little green coloring in is almost the exact same thinking as let’s replace the metal gears with plastic ones to save a dollar per item. The vast majority of companies doing that didn’t kill or seriously injure anyone. Companies have always been doing this.