Abstinence Only Government
It happens every time. I’ll be standing at Target needing toothpaste, wondering which to buy. Ideally, I’d want something that offered a great intersection of price and “tooth protection”. What “tooth protection” means, exactly, I’m not sure. I think we brush our teeth to prevent cavities, but I’m not really sure how that works. But I really don’t know what metrics to use to evaluate toothpaste, and there are so many options. I assume that if one were particularly good, or particularly bad, we’d know about it. So I assume they’re basically all the same and make my decision based on “which one tastes better”.
Thing is, everyone I’ve talked with about this does the same.
Now, take this confusion and multiply it by everything on your grocery list. Think of all the healthy eating fads America has seen come and go. Eat carbs, don’t eat carbs, drink wine, eat only grapefruit… These are the basic tools by which Americans transmit information about product choices. That’s a lot of information, and most of it is either bad or misinformed or half transmitted. But researching every item that goes into your grocery basket is time consuming and boring. The FDA would yank anything harmful from the shelves, so the hippocratic oath we make to ourselves won’t be violated.
I can’t even imagine researching the factory of every product I put into my body, and then suing if the company is lying about what they’re producing. It sounds like a boring sort of job I’m more than willing to pay someone else to do.
There is a political philosophy that holds life I’ve just described as the highest, freest, ideal. They have a child-like belief that the market’s ability to perfectly transmit information is so stupendous that simply by lifting all government oversight, producers wouldn’t dare lie to, cheat, or steal from their customers. After all– Firestone tires was destroyed after they (knowingly!) killed scores of people. They certainly didn’t change their name and move on.
Of course– of course!– government oversight isn’t perfect. Regulatory capture happens, sometimes government regulators simply aren’t up to doing their jobs, etc. That’s why we have other forms of protection, like the aforementioned lawsuits. Libertarianism is the only political philosophy I’ve ever heard of to agree with Hobbes that life is “Nasty, Brutish, and Short”, but then turn around and say that we should keep fighting anyway. Cooperation for mutual benefit is a sucker’s game.
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