News and Rants
Aug. 20th, 2004 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWhat is it with W? The man can't speak English to save his file. In a recent speech, he described the war on terror as "a struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world." Y'know, a single "And" would have saved his whole attempt.
I adore living in a century where people write sentences like this one: "New memories are fragile and persist only if they undergo consolidation, a strengthening regimen involving protein synthesis." When remembering might mean forgetting.
Did you know that, in high school at least, Love is a spanning-tree network with no 4-cycles? Neither did I.
Yesterday, on some talk radio station, I was listening to some airhead liberal host (and I mean the airhead part) whining at some caller about "the libertarians." He spun some weird theory about how a fast food restaurant-- oh, let's call it Tainted Meat In A Bun-- could sell tainted meat, and get away with it for a while, and sure the stock market would punish TMIABco. "eventually," but in the meantime people would get tainted meat and die, and TMIABco. would be able to pull in profits in the meantime. That, he said, was why libertarianism was "dumb" and that goverment regulation was always necessary in all facets of our daily life. And then he cut the caller off.
The host was simply wrong. The punishment for selling tainted meat is swift and sure and immediate; Jack in the Box went through a hellish year and has not yet recovered from their hepatitis incident; other chains have had similar difficulties. The attention of regulators and the attention of the public are both simply business risks, and you run the negative consequences of those risks as part of doing business if you take unwise chances. TMIABco. runs that risk just as surely as other businesses did, and if they did so purposely, they'll pay for it swiftly enough.
It's also quite clear that regulation did not help the existent victims. It did not preempt the cases we know about. So what good has it accomplished, that the massed attention of the press and the people has not?
I adore living in a century where people write sentences like this one: "New memories are fragile and persist only if they undergo consolidation, a strengthening regimen involving protein synthesis." When remembering might mean forgetting.
Did you know that, in high school at least, Love is a spanning-tree network with no 4-cycles? Neither did I.
Yesterday, on some talk radio station, I was listening to some airhead liberal host (and I mean the airhead part) whining at some caller about "the libertarians." He spun some weird theory about how a fast food restaurant-- oh, let's call it Tainted Meat In A Bun-- could sell tainted meat, and get away with it for a while, and sure the stock market would punish TMIABco. "eventually," but in the meantime people would get tainted meat and die, and TMIABco. would be able to pull in profits in the meantime. That, he said, was why libertarianism was "dumb" and that goverment regulation was always necessary in all facets of our daily life. And then he cut the caller off.
The host was simply wrong. The punishment for selling tainted meat is swift and sure and immediate; Jack in the Box went through a hellish year and has not yet recovered from their hepatitis incident; other chains have had similar difficulties. The attention of regulators and the attention of the public are both simply business risks, and you run the negative consequences of those risks as part of doing business if you take unwise chances. TMIABco. runs that risk just as surely as other businesses did, and if they did so purposely, they'll pay for it swiftly enough.
It's also quite clear that regulation did not help the existent victims. It did not preempt the cases we know about. So what good has it accomplished, that the massed attention of the press and the people has not?
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-20 09:55 am (UTC)Great, more proof that my social circle in HS was really fucking weird--it worked out so that pretty much every girl managed to date pretty much every guy, in this huge weird swirling vortex of HS drama.
Circle Jerks
Date: 2004-08-20 10:04 am (UTC)They also fooled around with each other, but that's another story.
Bitter, me? Oh yeah.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-20 09:55 am (UTC)The regulations did not prevent these people from getting sick, but that does not mean that it has not prevented anyone from getting sick.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-20 10:05 am (UTC)Which only begs the question: Why is fear of regulatory opprobrium, which can often be hushed up, more effective than fear of public opprobrium, which cannot?
no subject
Date: 2004-08-20 10:25 am (UTC)The case could be made that the two types of punishment add up, although I can't present you with "before and after" statistics to prove it. I suspect that small abusers—"greasy spoon"-type places—are less vulnerable to public oppobrium, because the newspapers will spend less energy reporting on them and because people have lower expectations for them; and meanwhile, the local health inspector makes surprise inspections from time to time, covering many of these gaps. Certainly it seems unreasonable to assume that having two mechanisms in places is not more effective than having just one, although it may not be fully twice as effective.
To the extent that it's just a quality-of-food issue (i.e., will the person who ate the food get sick?) rather than a true public-health issue (i.e., will this cause an outbreak among people whose positions in the social network were too close to the place?), I would be inclined to take the libertarian view anyway: I think people ought to be free to choose their own risk level, and so health inspection should be voluntary. That said, controlling contagious diseases is not something voluntary enforcement does well: if you are careless about vaccination or exposure to (say) hepatitis, then you are putting other people at risk against their will, which may justify intervening against you.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-20 11:53 am (UTC)I agree that people should be able to choose their own risk levels. I don't need a Big Brother to watch over me and protect me from my bad decisions, but I sure don't mind a (mostly) benevolent organization like Consumer's Union that rolls over junky SUVs so I don't have to! Or more importantly, advises me about certain companies' bad practices when I want to choose a mobile phone service provider, a new blender, or automobile.
I think the FDA underscores how bad the regulatory system is. They don't really protect Americans from much of anything but low drug prices and medical equipment and medications produced by companies that don't have bottomless corporate profits to grease the bureacratic wheels. It doesn't matter if a drug is effective or safe or does something appreciably better than an existing drug (the purported standards they have in approving new drugs), all that really matters is that the pharmaceutical company pays the money to make approval happen. An excellent example was on NPR's Fresh Air earlier this week, where the issue was discussed at length. Again. Seems like every week there's something about the issue from a different angle.
And the fact that the USDA and health department regulations ALL failed miserably at "protecting" the populace from that big E. coli outbreak underscores how ineffectual more bureacracy is. Their inspections are a waste of taxpayer money, as are their certifications and pretty much everything they do. Consumer's Union does more with their relatively miniscule (compared to gov't) staff and testers across a much broader spectrum, and they do it much more effectively and quickly than the tired and decrepit bureacratic monster.
The reasons: they're an independent watchdog. They don't make any rules, they don't enforce any rules, all they do is advise the consumer based on their evaluations and expert opinions. There are no loopholes and so long as they keep themselves free from corruption (easier with a nonprofit than a Federal agency filled with varying levels of incompetence and political pressures and personal agendas), they're the kind of organization whose recommendations are generally worth following. They catch things that might be within the rules or might've slipped by Federal regulators thanks to a kickback or generalized incompetence. I know I take their advice a lot more seriously than anything the gov't says or does.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-20 10:52 am (UTC)I don't know that it is. However, even if it is less effective, it may still be worthwhile to have it. To answer that, though, is very difficult, as it requires knowing whether its effects are seperate from the public opprobrium's effects. I have to assume that they do not simply add - are the additional effects worth the expense (and other side-effects)? That is the important question to ask.
One case to be considered is lower-profile instances of food poisoning. If a small neighborhood restaurant has unsanitary conditions that result in occasional food poisoning, this is unlikely to occasion the same sort of uproar that occurs in high-profile cases such as your initial example. It may not even be noticed, without regular inspections, as people often write off food poisoning as being something else, and are rarely sure of just what caused it.
In high profile cases, I have to say that the public response (huge reduction in eatership) dwarfs the regulatory response (a slap on the wrist, a fine, temporary closing of the restaurants in question), but in low profile cases I doubt this is true, especially since low profile cases are more likely to involve smaller businesses, which would be more harshly affected by the closing of one restaurant - it may be their only restaurant!
no subject
Date: 2004-08-20 10:15 am (UTC)As an adult, well, things have been different. Four-cycles containing me abound; and I am aware of at least one three-cycle.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-20 12:54 pm (UTC)However, he also saw hope in that: one example he cited was MacDonald's trying to make sure there were no genetically modified ingredients in their food because of the furor over "GM foods" in Europe - they wanted to head off any problems both there and here in North America.
Jack in the Box also came in for praise from Schlosser for their actions following the E.Coli unhappiness: they implemented an industry-leading HACCP food safety program to make sure that they never have another such incident.
Reputation counts for a lot, particularly if the media does its job and reports things in proper context.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-21 02:20 am (UTC)Miriam
no subject
Date: 2004-08-21 04:49 am (UTC)Not that I really disagree--President Bush mangles the English language frequently--but this was an intentional joke.
"We actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.
And, you know, that's what they do. They use terror, and they use it effectively." (from PBS)
(Thanks to the Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer