US thoroughly punishing infractions
I like how you can tell that the hand slapping and the hand being slapped are from the same person. It draws parallels to just how bought out our politicians are, almost as though the rich are ‘punishing’ themselves.
It’s ok, though. Now that the free market has learned it’s lessons, there’s no chance self regulation will go wrong in the future. None at all!
They are going to behave now. Pinky promise. 🥹🥹
Crucial Add:
The US Supreme Court
Free market radicals forget that regulations actually exist to keep markets fair and protect private property.
I could make a business where I steal product from a competitor and undersell them. The free market solution is that people would be willing to pay more for unstolen goods so they could raise the price to cover their loss. I wouldn’t want to drive them out of business, so I couldn’t steal all their product. The market finds the happy equilibrium. No regulation necessary.
This sounds crazy, but there are a lot of markets that operate like this in one form or another. Wage theft is one good example. Pollution is something that steals a little bit of equity from a lot of people. Regulation protects private property.
Free market absolutist are childish morons.
I can’t believe anyone thinks capitalism can regulate itself.
My favorite: leaded gasoline.
If I believe in the Invisible Hand hard enough, some day I’ll get that reach-around I’ve been longing for.
should have had a panel with cops getting paid vacation for murdering people
No see everyone will abide by the non aggression principle! /s
You forgot the Baby Formula bacterial infection leading to shutdown of the largest plant in North America and widespread shortages. We actually had federal regulations which were repealed after the companies lobbied in favor of self-regulation.
I’m not sure this is true. Current US federal food and drug law has been in effect since the 1970s (for specifics, I’m thinking 21 CFR 211, which was codified 1979-ish) and it hasn’t really been repealed so much as it was never very explicit and rarely enforced, in part because of the difficulty of enforcing something so vague.
Example: The law clearly says, “you must have a written procedure in place to prevent contamination,” But it leaves it up to the manufacturer to determine what that procedure should be. In contrast, some of the EU legislation (EUDRALEX) is much more prescriptive: “you must do X, Y, and Z to prevent contamination in a multi-purpose facility.”
What little legislation was in place as US law before 21 CFR 211 was worse.
It’s also worth noting that much of the US’s regulation via agencies like the FDA is actually released as “guidance for industry.” Or to paraphrase, “don’t be a freaking idiot about things, but we can’t legally prosecute you for it if you don’t.” That’s a big loophole.
Consider the legal fiasco that was the trial of the owners and “quality manager” of that peanut company that caused multiple salmonella deaths about 10-15 years ago. Their QA manager’s legal defense was literally: I’m not qualified to do my job and should never been hired. 21 CFR says that “employees should be qualified to perform their jobs.” What does that mean? Should she have a degree in biology or chemistry? A degree in early childhood learning and k-12 education? On the job training on the day to day of the peanut factory and what to do if you have in infestation of birds? Beyond that, who is in charge of making sure she’s qualified? The regulations are unclear, and in the system that’s been in place for 40 years, all of those questions will be hammered out in the randomness of court and in the worst way possible. Like so.
I’m sorry - I could write a whole freaking book about this.
https://theintercept.com/2022/05/13/baby-formula-shortage-abbott-bacteria-safety-testing-lobbying/
The timeline is stricter regulations were announced in 2014 but weren’t implemented because of lobbying, leading to outbreaks and recalls that the companies responsible argued were not related to their formula, citing reports of frequent testing done in their facilities. Those reports turned out to be falsified.
If the regulations were put in place, then the facilities would have seen more frequent third party and/or government inspections.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
How about killing thousands of people overnight with no meaningful consequences?
I mean for Christ’s sake we’re literally watch what Boeing did when they self regulated and it’s a goddamn nightmare. Rich assholes only worry about getting richer
Libertarians: LALLALALA I CANT HEAR YOU
I’ll be honest, I don’t really see how the Love Canal has much to do with self regulation, as the chemical company involved did go above and beyond the regulations at the time for the containment liner. It only failed when people dug foundations through the middle of it because the local town council forced them to sell the property to the council, and then immediately flagrantly violated the terms of the sale where they agreed to never build on the site by concealing the site’s history and building a school while auctioning off the land to developers for a surrounding neighborhood on the site.
I grew up next to the Cuyahoga river in the '70s. I have no idea why that river wasn’t on fire every day.
Airlines might be a bad example. Before 1978 there was a lot more control, such as mandating price minimums. Without those you get affordable air travel.
But for airplane companies themselves, I absolutely agree. The FAA had to save money because of their tiny budget, so they had airplane manufacturers inspect their own things instead, with bad results.
That the FAA had to save money by not doing one of their most important job meant American lives got cheaper, didn’t it?
Sure? But Congress doesn’t fund them to be able to do their job.
Why the fuck not? It’s vitally important to the economy, there’s no reason for it to be privatized in the first place.
You talking about airlines or aircraft manufacturers?
Both? They need so much regulation and control that it makes sense to just cut out the middle men.
The manufacturers are so heavily subsidized by the government they might as well be publicly owned anyway.
Too much government control of the airlines was definitely detrimental after WWII. They couldn’t compete on prices, couldn’t adapt to changing routes, and couldn’t really cost optimize anything. Deregulating the non-safety aspects improved air travel a lot.
There wasn’t government control of the airlines, just regulations. Protectionist regulations.
The airlines were still privately owned and the government gave them sweetheart deals and intentionally limited the entry of new competition into the industry, allowing the formation of monopolies of the legacy airlines. There was no incentive for increasing the number of carriers because that would hurt profits, and the regulations helped by making entry into the market even harder.
That problem goes away if you just seize the airlines and run them as public utilities.
