United Liberty
Food Safety and Dependence on Government
Wed, 03/18/2009 - 6:32am | posted by Charles Kennedy
President Obama announced in his weekly radio address (Saturday, March 14) the formation of a new advisory group to coordinate food safety laws and recommend changes to these laws (see the following article). The President makes the typical claims of the food safety system being “too spread out”, with resulting difficulty in sharing information and solving problems. He goes on to say that there are not nearly enough FDA workers or enough money for the FDA “to conduct inspections at more than a fraction of the 150,000 food processing plants and warehouses in the country.” The President stated, ”That is a hazard to public health. It is unacceptable. And it will change under the leadership of Dr. Margaret Hamburg,” his nominee for FDA commissioner.
The President bases his views on a common but fallacious assumption, which is that government is the most capable and efficient mechanism for assuring the safety of the food supply. He claims that, while he doesn’t believe government has the answer to every problem, there are some things that “only the government can do”, such as ”ensuring that the foods we eat and the medicines we take are safe and don’t cause us harm.” But is it really true that “only the government” (that is, the federal government) can ensure the safety of our food and our medicine? A look at the FDA’s record in the most recent well-publicized crisis, the recent peanut salmonella case, calls this view into question.
David Kramer, in an item at lewrockwell.com, points out that the FDA uncovered several violations of healthy safety laws at the Georgia peanut processing plant (Peanut Corporation of America), including the potential of products being exposed to insecticides. FDA inspectors found similar violations nearly eight years later, when they returned for the first time since the prior inspection in 2001. There was no follow-up to the 2001 visit. It seems very difficult to believe, as Kramer points out, that such a time-lag was on account of the FDA’s being underfunded and understaffed. Kramer goes on to suggest a much better way of investigating food safety, in a hypothetical illustration of a retailer (Kroger in his example) sending out its own food inspectors to examine a food processing plant (or else hiring an independent food inspection firm).
There is more to the story yet, as it also turns out that the FDA was aware of a contaminated international shipment of peanuts from the same peanut processing plant, according an Associated Press report dated January 30, 2009. The peanuts from the shipment, which occurred weeks before the earliest signs of the salmonella case, were returned, but the FDA did not follow up with an investigation.
The plot thickens further, with information in another article revealing that the president of the Peanut Corporation of America actually “serves on an industry advisory board that assists the U.S. Department of Agriculture in setting quality standards for peanuts. Stewart Parnell, the president of Peanut Corporation of America, was initially appointed to the USDA’s Peanut Standards Board in July 2005. He was reappointed in October 2008 for a second term that will continue until June 2011.” The article reveals:
The Peanut Standards Board was created by the 2002 Farm Bill and also advises the secretary of the USDA on “standards intended to assure that satisfactory quality and wholesome peanuts are used in the domestic and import peanut markets,” according to the USDA.
The article further reveals:
The Peanut Standards Board is comprised completely of volunteers and isn’t directly involved with food-safety issues. Its main duties are advising the USDA about how to grade and classify peanuts after they come out of the field. This involves setting the sizes for different peanuts and standards for how much moisture peanuts should contain before they are allowed onto store shelves. The board also helps set “quality and handling standards” for domestic and imported peanuts.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that there is significant government-corporate collusion taking place in this particular notorious example, with the typical result that the corporate interest receives special protection from the government. This is but one aspect of the folly of relying upon a government regulatory agency (accompanied by “industry advisory boards”) for safety of food and drugs. The real effect of such a regulatory approach is to provide special favors and protections to large corporate entities, at the expense of smaller, more independent operations, and at the expense of the public health.
Another problem with reliance on a government regulatory agency such as the FDA, as Kramer points out, is that the money to fund its operations is collected by force (i.e., taxes), as opposed to being paid for by voluntary means. Thus, there is no accountability. We as taxpayers have no choice in the matter. Kramer puts it this way:
This Georgia plant catastrophe is a no-win situation for the people (both Liberals and Conservatives) who believe that only government can protect us from problems in the private sector. Here’s why:
If these people think that the EIGHT YEAR gap was due to underfunding, well since the FDA has still been around since 2001, the FDA obviously had enough time and money to send out notices (how about cheap, fast, efficient paperless emails?) alerting all food retailers of the initial situation at the Georgia plant—but warning the retailers that the FDA is so underfunded that it won’t be able to do a follow-up visit for EIGHT YEARS. (You would think that, at the very least, it is the FDA’s responsibility and professional duty to do this.)
If underfunding of the FDA was not the issue, then if an EIGHT YEAR gap for a follow-up visit to a plant that had some problems (regardless of how serious or benign the problems were) on a previous inspection is the standard operating procedure at the FDA, then I hope this shows to these same Liberals and Conservatives that this is what happens when you have only one entity—which you are FORCED to pay for and CANNOT compete with—impose its standards on what are, in actuality, your responsibilities to your customers.
EIGHT YEARS??!! If a private inspection firm operated as irresponsibly and unprofessionally like this, do you think that the Federal Government, the sick victims, and the families of the dead victims would blame only the Georgia plant for this tragedy?
An important moral in the tragedy of the peanut salmonella case (along with similar cases) is that we cannot look to government to protect us from these kinds of things. A centralized government bureaucracy, by its very nature is incapable of performing the task of ensuring food safety with any satisfactory degree of efficiency. Furthermore, the nature of the regulatory state always results in industry “experts” (typically the corporate executives of the industry being regulated) being brought in to serve on “advisory boards” or other capacities to help write the regulations in such a manner as to be favorable to the industry in question. This only breeds more corruption, and imperils the health and safety of consumers as both retailers and consumers alike come to assume that “everything is OK because the government is protecting us.”
President Obama, along with many in Congress (of both parties, I might add), would have us believe that the answer to food and drug safety lies in granting more power, more money and more personnel to the FDA. On the contrary, such a course of action would more likely lead to further compromises in food safety by reinforcing the dependency upon government for these tasks, unavoidably further enhancing the degree of corruption that such a system breeds.
A much better system would be one in which retailers and food distributers have their own food inspection departments, from which personnel can be sent regularly to inspect the operations of food processing facilities. Such departments, along with independent food inspection firms, would be in a far better position of monitoring the safety of food production. Results of inspections would be publicized regularly in print media and on the internet. Any food processing company that refused to allow access to these private inspectors would run the risk of being exposed for having refused such access. Had such a system been in place, instead the current system which relies on the FDA, it is almost certain that the peanut salmonella incident would not have occurred, or that at least it would have been contained on a much smaller scale. Clearly this was an incident that could have been prevented, all the more so without the reliance of a large, inefficient government bureaucracy.
None of this is to say that there shouldn’t be laws regarding food safety. In fact, there are and should be laws on the books to hold food processors accountable for endangering the health of consumers with unsafe products. However, the regulatory state is the least efficient and most potentially corruptible mechanism for ensuring food safety. If government is to be involved at all in such inspections, it should be at the local level, where it can be (and often is) done with much greater efficiency and accountability. But even better is the approach suggested here of relying on private food inspectors who are held accountable to consumers, and not to a corrupt government-industrial complex that manages to get off scot-free most of the time.
The more we rely on government for safety, the less safe we are likely to be. We as consumers need to take responsibility and ownership of the process of food safety. A bottom-up, decentralized consumer-driven process of food safety inspection will lead to far better and more consistent results than a cumbersome, top-down centralized process. President Obama and the Congress need to be presented with a bottom-up, consumer-driven, freedom-based approach to solving our food and drug safety issues.
This is an interesting point-of-view. So we should ditch the FDA with the hopes that these corporations will police themselves? We should trust Pfizer to tell us their drugs are safe? We should trust ConAgra to tell us their beef is safe?
How many consumers will die before discovering one of these upstanding, honest corporations broke the law? Sure, tainted beef will hurt sales, and will eventually cause these companies to clean up their act (or lower their prices) - but to me, that’s a reactive policy. In matters of health and safety, I believe our government should act more proactively. Can any regulatory agency be 100% accurate? No. But I wouldn’t say that an inefficient, unprofessional government agency (particularly one run by the Bush Administration - as all were inefficient and unprofessional) justifies ditching the agency altogether.
Since powers such as this aren’t specifically delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, justification for government programs like the FDA or the SEC is often based on the phrase “promote the general welfare”. The word promote, somehow, has come to mean provide (which is an issue, since the word “provide” is already used in the preamble and I assume that if they meant to use the word “provide” instead of “promote”, they would have). But one of the antonyms for promote is “obstruct”, so one of the things that the federal government should NOT be doing is “obstruct[ing] the general welfare”. However, how often does the FDA and the SEC do that very thing? How many terminally ill people are denied life-saving drugs because the FDA hasn’t deemed them safe yet? How many people were ripped off by Madoff because the SEC had investigated him several times and yet deemed his schemes legal?
I guess that’s not really the point though. The point is that the Constitution does not allow this kind of oversight to emanate from DC. If consumers don’t feel they can trust manufacturers or retailers to police themselves, then let the state or local government set up regulation.
The alternative suggested in the article is not to rely upon the corporations themselves (such as Pfizer or ConAg) to do their own safety policing, but rather to have that done by food and drug safety departments of retailers, who have to answer directly to their customers, and also by independent non-profit firms devoted specifically to safety inspections. We already have such systems in place in other sectors of the economy, such as computer electronics. Surely this concept should be utilized with food and drugs, whether or not the FDA exists, as we endanger food and drug safety by relying solely on government to ensure safety of products. As for such an alternative being “reactive”, I think that could actually be said for the way it is done with the FDA, as particularly seen in the recent peanut case.
In the illegal drug runs, if buyers from a certain dealer start dropping like flies, the seller will soon find himself without customers. Washington stated that “…law is not morality, it is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force…” Keep in mind, when you legislate something, you are talking about pointing a weapon at someone, and/or throwing them in jail. Businesses have to keep a good reputation and consumers have to learn how to use critical thinking skills.
It seems like the argument being made here is that because the government has failed in a particular instance, that a government program MUTST fail, or necessarily be more inefficient than a privately run system.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s a completely illogical argument. Or to use common language, it’s complete b*** ***t.
Don’t any of you people work in the private sector? Do you know how much fraud, waste, and failure go on in private industry? While I agree that the FDA has been poorly run, it’s a necessary component to creating a competitive free market, and the demand should be to run it better, not to dismantle it.
It’s obvious that our recent administration was the most incompetent in world history, so it’s no surprise that the FDA would take a hit here as well. So why not put competent people in charge, pay them well, and give them the resources they need?
Other countries like France (God help us if we can’t do better than France) seem to do a good job at protecting their food supplies. Is it just that Americans are dumb that we can’t have good public institutions too? Often I think that’s what conservatives believe. “Sure, other nations can do stuff, but not us. We suck.”
But let’s take a look at the proposed alternative. You want private companies to create food safety inspection programs & send a bunch of auditors out to inspect the quality of food supplies. WOW. Because America’s businesses have so much extra cash lying around that they are not spending on their actual business, so they can just jump in an do this for us. Oh, and maybe they can fix our roads and give elementary education to their cashiers too.
Get a grip please. It’s not the job of Top Foods, or Safeway to make sure our food supply is safe. We all have a vested interest in the safety of our food supply. Both in terms of our physical health and in terms of supporting a marketplace for goods to be traded, where people who produce the best products can actually compete and buyers have confidence enough to actually buy stuff. (take a look at the effect on markets of the Chinese melamine scandal please).
Because we have a common interest in the safety of the food supply, we should have a solution that is accountable to “we the people” not a handful of oligarchs… um I mean handful of store owners.
As for the constitutional argument, doesn’t the constitution give the federal government clear authority over interstate commerce? Isn’t making peanut butter in Georgia and selling it to a company in California or Illinois who then puts it into products sold in Wisconsin and New York clearly interstate commerce? If not, then please explain what it is.
Then there is your hair splitting over provide vs promote. Just what exactly do you think the government does when it promotes? Does it put up posters? Hold a pep rally? Promoting the general welfare means to enact laws and create institutions that make life for the people generally better than it would otherwise be.
Of course you disagree with my interpretation of the constitution. But that is of course why the “constitutionalist” argument is just so stupid. No two people ever agree on the meaning of a text. And it’s not like the constitution can claim divine authority so there you are.
I just have to finish by asking this, was it constitutional for congress to induct those other 37 states into the union? Can you show me where that is?
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“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1785
Article IV - The States
Section 3 - New States
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
Ah. I stand corrected.
So how does West Virginia fit in?
Shana,
So no government agency is constitutional? The CIA, FBI, and EPA have no authority. So Congress has the power to enact laws, but no authority to enforce those laws? What good is a speed limit if there are no cops?
I know everyone likes to boo-hoo on the government. Republicans like to tell us that government is the problem - and prove it when they get to run the government.
Truth of the matter is that government and regulation works - when enacted properly. I work in the environmental field, and am more familiar with environmental laws and the EPA. The Clean Air Act was an effective law, and it took enforcement on the national level. I remember in grade school hearing about acid rain on the east coast - when was the last time you heard anything about acid rain? Why? Because effective legislation and regulation fixed the problem. Should we have trusted industry to clean the air on their own accord? Should we have relied on consumers to only purchase goods that did not pollute the air?
Yeah, I’m sure that would have worked. I would like to think that people and companies do the right thing - but if that was the case, we wouldn’t need laws in the first place.
That’s a good question, Josh. Are these agencies Constitutional? The Constitution says this about defense in the Preamble-
“provide for the common defence”
Since the word “provide” is used, it appears that this is a responsibility they legitimately have, though if you read through Article 1, Sect. 8, it’s pretty clear that this supposed to be done through the military. So, why aren’t the FBI and CIA part of the military?
I definitely don’t see authorization for the EPA in the Constitution, and it’s effectiveness doesn’t justify the ignoring of the Constitution. A better solution would be for state governments to form, fund and direct their own EPA’s and/or changing the Constitution to make the EPA (and all the other unconstitutional agencies) legitimate.
I guess this is what the issue comes down to for me. Is it Constitutional? The need or effectiveness of a given agency or piece of legislation can’t be the litmus test. We have a document we’re supposed to be governed by. If everyone is allow to ignore or violate the portion they don’t agree with, why have it at all? The authors put measures into it that allows it to be changed to address emerging issues.
When people wanted alcohol to be illegal, they didn’t use legislation to make it the law of the land- they changed the Constitution. They recognized that the Constitution, as it was, didn’t give Congress the right to regulate what people ingest.
If businesses truly need to be regulated to protect the environment, then it should either be handled by the local government or a new Amendment should be added to the Constitution to put it under federal jurisdiction.
The preamble also includes the clause “insure domestic tranquility” - which is where I would argue that Congress has the constitutional authority to enact and enforce (thereby insuring) environmental laws.
insure - to guarantee against loss
tranquility - free from or unaffected by disturbing emotions; unagitated; serene; placid
I’m no Constitutional lawyer by any stretch, but I do read that the Constitution was established to guarantee my serenity (which includes a clean environment and food free from disease).
How does the government insure anything without enforcement?
Such a broad reading of “insure domestic tranquillity” could be taken to accept that the government can do anything that members of Congress and the President think necessary to that end, regardless of whether any rights or liberties are violated. This could include such matters as prohibiting controversial political or religious speech, or even something as extreme as the imposing of martial law or sending people of certain ancestoral backgrounds to internment camps (as was done with Americans of Japanese descent during World War II). My point is that you cannot read the preamble to the Consitution as a source of what powers the federal government possesses without reference to everything else that follows. The whole purpose of the Constitution was to limit the powers of government as much as possible, in order to secure the ends listed in the preamble to the Constitution. The approach you take goes in exactly the opposite direction. The government cannot guarantee your serenity. To think that it can is to assume for it magical or divine powers.
There are ways in which government can protect the environment apart from the conventional regulatory approach. One of the most important ways it can do so is through protecting property rights. No one has a right to pollute your land or your property, which includes the air you breathe. What has been missing, thanks to the government/corporate collusion inherent in the regulatory state, is a proper respect for property rights. This can best be accomplished at the local level. That is another topic for another article, but part of the mission with articles written here at unitedliberty.org is to challenge the conventional wisdom of the top-down, centralized approach to solving problems with a bottom-up, liberty and community-based approach to problem solving.
“challenge the conventional wisdom of the top-down, centralized approach…”
Hmm… sounds to me like you are driven by ideology rather than actual data.
No, I am driven by what actually works. Bottom-up, liberty-based approaches generally work very well. Centralized, top-down approaches generally work very poorly, sometimes appearing successful in the short run, but usually doing far more harm than good, and always resulting in a loss of liberty.
You could not be more wrong. The push/pull between centralization and decentralization has little bearing on personal liberty, justice, or effective government.
The middle ages were very de-centralized. Do you honestly believe that people had more liberty in the decentralized 7th century than they did in the centralized Roman ruled 2nd century? Afghanistan today is very de-centralized. Not working so well for individual liberty there either.
In American history it was the central Federal government that freed the slaves and protected individual liberty and freedom of conscience. In the early days states like Massachusetts still taxed citizens to pay for public churches. It was the central/federal authority that changed all that.
You don’t actually study what works and what doesn’t and draw conclusions. You look at the world through a window that only shows you the results you want to see. You are driven by and ideology that for some reason feels right to you. But don’t give me that crap that you believe in “what actually works.”
“What actually works” defies the little boxes and slogans that you like the frame debate within.
Dr. Kennedy,
In your article you cite government-corporate collusion as argument against the FDA. Do you have no fear of corporate-corporate collusion between two private entities tasked with keeping us safe? And from where are the non-profit safety inspectors going to appear?
A good example of a private entity inspecting for safety and compliance is Underwriters Laboratories. The record of this organization is evidence that private enterprise without the government can monitor the safety of products.
For an example of what happens when the government runs everything, see the Soviet Union.
Another really good example is bond rating agencies that Standard & Poors. Those guys are doing a great job without regulation.
Well, as it turns out, the failure of the Bush Administration’s FDA was particularly due to its reliance on private inspections.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SALMONELLA_OUTBREAK?SITE=DCSAS&SE…
AP reported yesterday that “A House subcommittee Thursday released new documents that showed how private inspectors contracted by Peanut Corp. of America failed to find long-standing sanitary problems at company facilities.” and that “Lawmakers said the food industry’s private inspection system failed to catch filthy conditions because the company itself hired the inspectors.”
The article does describe how Nestle USA inspected a Peanut Corp. facility and decided to not do business with them. While that was good for Nestle, it did not prevent the salmonella outbreak - it just covered them. Obviously Nestle just cared about Nestle, not the general population. Nestle was not required to inform the government of their audit results. Why would Nestle not inform the government? Because then their competitors would benefit from their audit. When your competitor is buying peanuts from a tainted facility, I’d say that is good for business. So Nestle kept quiet for their own corporate interests.
Other companies, like Kellogg, trusted Peanut Corp. inspections. And this will always be the case. Some companies (as a means of keeping costs low) will not have the means to inspecting every one of their suppliers - particularly suppliers which provide documentation of inspections.
So, a private corp (Nestle), hiring their own inspectors, kept them from buying contaminated food, but those who depended on in-house inspectors or government inspectors bought anyway. Sounds like Charles’ idea works!
“A much better system would be one in which retailers and food distributers have their own food inspection departments, from which personnel can be sent regularly to inspect the operations of food processing facilities. Such departments, along with independent food inspection firms, would be in a far better position of monitoring the safety of food production. Results of inspections would be publicized regularly in print media and on the internet. Any food processing company that refused to allow access to these private inspectors would run the risk of being exposed for having refused such access. Had such a system been in place, instead the current system which relies on the FDA, it is almost certain that the peanut salmonella incident would not have occurred, or that at least it would have been contained on a much smaller scale. Clearly this was an incident that could have been prevented, all the more so without the reliance of a large, inefficient government bureaucracy.”
It worked for Nestle. But if Nestle is not required to tell anyone, it does little good for the general public. Just that portion of the general public that purchases Nestle products.
“Any food processing company that refused to allow access to these private inspectors would run the risk of being exposed for having refused such access.” That would be fine, if it was only those food processors that were harmed. This is a system that requires an ever-stupider American public to actually read news reports and inspection postings. The American public I know will purchase the peanut butter that is $1 cheaper rather than educate themselves on product quality.
My point is that there will always be companies that try to cut corners to try to save a buck - ALL COMPANIES, whether they are suppliers, retailers, or inspectors. Unless the magical “non-profit” inspection team is going to appear from thin air (that is what the FDA inspectors should be), there will always be the push for the almighty dollar. Someone mentioned UL as an example, but they, too, are a for profit company. They aren’t providing that service for the common good. They see a business opportunity, and are profiting from it. God bless them. But we must all keep in mind that the overall goal of any business is to make a profit. All it takes are some immoral bastards that will do anything to make a profit.
No food processing company that puts harmful products on the market can expect to be profitable, and it is in the best interest of any company that wants to be profitable to produce a quality product that will do no harm. The Peanut Corporation of America is facing bankruptcy, as it should be, for its criminal negligence.
About Americans reading reports of inspections, no, I do not expect most consumers to do that, but I do think we should expect retailers (e.g., your local grocery store) to play close attention to such reports and to all safety issues. As for peanut butter that’s $1 cheaper, of course people will choose the cheaper option when they know they are getting a quality, safe product. The fact that one brand’s jar of peanut better is $1 cheaper than another has no particular bearing or relevance to whether or not it is safe. It’s not reasonable to assume that products are unsafe just because they are cheaper.
These large companies like the Peanut Corporation of American tend to cut corners because they can get away with it, thanks to special protection from the government (as we saw in that particular case). I do not believe this is the case with most companies, but rather it is thankfully the exception. Otherwise I think we’d have a lot more sick people from food poisoning.
You seem eager to disparage the profit motive, but what you are missing is that the free market is a profit and loss system, which is to say that anyone who cuts corners on quality and safety, or sets prices too high, runs the risk of loss rather than profit. No business can succeed without profits. Competition also puts a brake on cutting too many corners. In a monopoly system, there is less incentive to ensure quality and even safety.
Finally, I think the point should be made that one of the dangers of over-reliance on government regulators to guarantee product safety is that it produces a false sense of security, a sense of, “well, we don’t need to worry or be vigilant about safety because the government is taking care of it.” We imperil ourselves by reinforcing that attitude. Government at the federal level has a poor record when it comes to doing much of anything particularly well or efficiently, and the same is true at the state and even sometimes at the local level. That is the point of my article. I would like to encourage people to develop a different attitude about what the role of government ought to be, versus the role that we as citizens and consumers should be playing in looking out for our safety. And I reiterate my point that there certainly should be laws on the books to hold anyone liable who knowingly markets a product that harms someone else.
I have been fighting to have millions of pounds of contaminated meat recalled that was produced using a warehouse facility that makes the PBA facility look like the Ritz. The pictures I gave to the USDA and the FDA showed RAT fecal matter and rodents nests on food ingredients and materials, I submitted documents to the USDA proving the use of this contaminated warehouse for years and was denied a recall of my own products .Why –to protect a State institution that was contracted to produce this meat for my company.
Agencies state the manufacturer must generate the recall and the FDA and USDA not having the authority to initiate this action as the reason bad food gets into the system .This is not so ,I am proof of this statement not being accurate. Even when the USDA went and found this contaminated warehouse with live rodents they never tested any product for salmonella and co-operated with the state of Florida to use possible contaminated ingredients in further meat processing.
I applaud your very fine story and comments and appeal to you to visit my blog site http://bullstone-larrym.blogspot.com/ and see the evidence of rat fecal contamination in meats produced by an instrument of the State of Florida department of Corrections. I have been battling with the USDA to issue a recall on the millions of pounds of meat the State of Florida produced under contract for my company. This meat was distributed nation wide to schools, supermarkets and institutions. When we discovered that this Florida State division was storing food supplies and edible ingredients in a rat infested warehouse we began our quest to get this information to the public and get accountability placed on those who allowed this to happen. When you read the information on my blog you will see the validity of both our stories .I support your efforts and request your support of mine. Regards Larry Stone
“A House subcommittee Thursday released new documents that showed how private inspectors contracted by Peanut Corp. of America failed to find long-standing sanitary problems at company facilities”
Private inspectors contracted by Peanut Corp of America??
Are you kidding? That is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. The inspectors being paid by the people they are suppose to inspect???
By their very nature, inspectors must be independent of the people they are inspecting. Peanut Corp could have their own in-house quality assurance inspections to make sure that when the out side inspectors came that they would find no problems, but untimately, the inspectors would have to be independent. However, these outside inspectors could be from a non-governmental private company. Government is not the ONLY entity capable of being unbiased. In fact it looks to me like government is incompetent to regulate anything. Name me something that the government does well and effectively.
(I mean other than bomb other countries.)
Actually our government does a lot of things really well.
Do you have water at your house? At mine, I turn on this thing called a “faucet” and potable water comes out. All managed by my local government and paid for by my taxes and a nominal user fee.
Education? As crappy as many of our schools our, I challenge you to name one country. Just one. That has not publicly funded, government run education system where things (especially for the poor) are better than they are here. I know personally without government run schools my education would have stopped at the 7th grade. (I went to private school until my parents and grandparents just couldn’t afford it anymore).
Or maybe you’d prefer something from Nicholas Nickleby that was privately run.
I could go on, but really, governments can do a pretty good job at certain things. Especially governments other than ours.
Actually, our public schools have an atrociously bad record in truly educating our children. Why are more and more parents looking to private schools and homeschooling? Why is it that politicians always seem driven to push for more and more funding and control of public schools? It is because they know the system isn’t working well, but they persist in holding onto their faith in government.
Again, show me the non government system that’s better. Please. So far, no one has.
Where I live, natural gas is supplied by a for-profit company. Electricity is also from a for-profit company. Water is not supplied by the local government either. It comes from a company with a board of directors which is appointed by the city. Its employees are not government employees. Sewer service is another matter. It IS supplied by the county government. It is outrageously expensive and is so far in debt that the county is facing having to file Chapter 9 bankruptcy. It will be the largest Chapter 9 in the history of this country. Next week, the bond holders are going to ask a federal court to appoint a receiver to run the sewer department so that hopefully it can be run profitably and the bond holders will stand a ghost of a chance of being repaid.
Yes? And no for profit enterprise has EVER gone belly up and left it’s shareholders with nothing?
Sounds like you need to be more involved in your local government.
I am not sure what your point is.
In the first place, ou have no idea of my involvement in local government. So how could you know that I need to be more involved?
In the second, the fact that private enterprises go belly up is how capitalism works. Ineffective and poorly run private companies go out of business while ineffective and poorly run governments just cry for more tax money and never get any better.
Okay, let’s see if I can make this a little more clear.
You cited the example of your failed local sewer utility in contrast to the
public/private for profit companies that run other utilities in your area. If I take your meaning correctly, you are using this illustration to underscore the point that a government run agencies are ALWAYS less effective and more inefficient than privately held/for profit entities.
I’m confirmed in my interpretation of your viewpoint by your response, “…poorly run governments just cry for more tax money and never get any better.”
Your worldview is fundamentally flawed. Because a particular government agency is poorly run, it does not logically follow that ALL government agencies are poorly run. Because a government agency is inefficient, it does not logically follow that a government agency MUST be inefficient.
So logic is not on your side.
Now we take a look at historical examples. There are, of course, many examples of poorly run government programs. Amtrak comes to mind. But what most libertarians fail to notice are the many historical examples of failed private enterprise attempts to solve social problems. Enron and energy de-regulation is a popular recent example of a free market providing fewer services at more cost with greater corruption than the government institution that it replaced (epic fail). A more wide spread example is the replacement of paid firefighting services with publicly run and financed fire departments.
So history and factual evidence also do not support your theory that private/for profit enterprise is always better and more efficient than government run agencies.
Your sewer district failed did it? Is it conceivably possible that sewer services in your town are, for whatever reason, not economically viable. Kind of like classical music. It’s great, it’s worthwhile, but there’s just no profit in it. Do you know for sure that a private company would have done better?
In our larger context here regarding food safety, the argument has been made that it is the responsibility of the seller to police the quality of the products they sell and that food sellers will do this voluntarily and more efficiently than a government institution. I fundamentally reject this idea for the following reasons:
1. Forcing sellers to conduct food safety inspections would amount to a backdoor tax on food sellers.
2. By putting food safety into the hands of private companies, the system is not open and transparent and is only accountable to the corporations that run the inspection system.
3. It limits competition by putting a barrier to entry for small companies. If the cost were born by all taxpayers then there is free access to being able to sell food. If a fee must be paid to a separate entity for food inspection, then the entity can force small businesses out of the market.
4. Since the society at large benefits from having stable markets and safe food, the cost of ensuring a safe food supply should rightly be paid by the society at large, not by a handful of individuals or private industry.
For those reasons, in this case, a government run agency is the correct solution. If our agency is being poorly run, then we need to reform and change it, not throw it away.
Now, I’m finally coming around to the point regarding your involvement in government. Libertarians seem to have a very fuzzy idea of what government actually is. In a democratic country, government is run “by the people.” This would be opposed to something like an oligarchy where government is run by those in authority, or a monarchy where government is run by a single monarch for the benefit of their subjects.
So if your public sewer district has failed, then you, as a citizen have failed to hold your local government accountable for it’s actions. You have failed to be involved and exercise the rights and responsibilities of oversight that you have as a citizen. As a shareholder of a private company would you put up with the same outcomes? Would you file a lawsuit? Change the board of directors? Even more, as a board member of a private company, how much would the company’s failure indite your decisions? Why is it different as a citizen? You have votes. You have the right and responsibility to speak publicly about these issues. What have you been doing?
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“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1785
A shareholder in a corporation has limited power to control the management and direction of the company. They can file derivative suits and they can vote on the board of directors, issuance of stock and mergers, etc. Usually if a corporation is poorly run and loses money, the shareholders simply sell their stock and get out. Corporations fail all of the time and it can’t be blamed on the shareholders. A shareholder does not have the authority to manage the company. A corporation sinks or swims based largly on the decisions of the management which is selected by the board of directors. A shareholder is too divorced from the day to day managememt of a corporation to take the blame for the success or failure of a corporation.
Likewise, the individual voter is not responsible for the inefficiencies of government. In fact that is one of the very reasons that government is so inefficient. There are even fewer controls than those present in a for-profit corporation. The voters only have the power to elect new officials. They have no power to control the actions of government employees. If you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and get rotten service, you can’t take your business down the street to a competing Department of Motor Vehicles. You are pretty much stuck with the one you have and you have no power to make it better. If a community lucks out and hires a good police chief, the department will be a good one. However, there are good and bad departments. Likewise with fire protection. If you do not have a good fire department, you are stuck. You can’t call on a competing fire department. You are stuck with the one you have.
Even electing new officials won’t solve the problem because most government employees are very difficult to fire. While it is pretty easy to replace an employee in a private company, it is more trouble than it is worth to replace a government employee. They all have a sort of “tenure”.
I tend to agree with you about corporate shareholder votes. That system is structured to give very little leeway to the shareholder.
The rest of what you say holds very alarming implications though. Government run by the people for the people DOES NOT WORK.
um…
um….
wow.
So democracy is out. What’s next?
You are beginning to catch on. Good.
NO government really works. It is at best a necessary evil which should be kept to a minimum. Not a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”, not a government by a dictator, not a government by a king, no government.
George Washington said:
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.”
The founding fathers knew that the less government, the better and that is how they set things up. We stray from their original intent when we ask government to be a nanny state and to look out for us.
You just used the “founding fathers knew…” argument. Now I know you’re an idiot.
The founding fathers disagreed violently regarding the meaning and purpose of the constitution, and the best way to structure the government. Ever hear of the First Bank of the United States?
The divisions over the meaning and purpose of the constitution were deep and fundamental from the start. So when you say, “the founding fathers knew…” what you really mean is “I want you to turn off your brain and accept my ideas because I can appeal to a higher authority.”
By this logic we should only accept the opinions of the church fathers on the meaning of the Bible and not actually read it ourselves. Or maybe we should all just shut up and let the smart people run things and do our thinking for us.
Besides that, your argument is really great though. You can complain and complain about how the system doesn’t work, but when it comes to actual changes, you throw up your hands and say “no government really works.”
Give me a break.
Governments can be effectively evaluated on their performance. Somalia… bad. Mexico… not so bad as Somalia but not good either. Japan now, hey, that’s a pretty effective government.
If less government is truly better, then I encourage you to move to Afghanistan. By all reports the federal government is very small and non-interfering in local matters over there.
HA!!!
I win!!
I made you call me an “idiot”!!!
Resorting to ad hominem attack is the last refuge of someone who has lost his argument.
I don’t think it is fair to say that the government is incapable of providing quality services. That’s not exactly the point in my opinion. I do feel that, on the average, a private enterprise is more likely to provide better services than a government agency. “Better services” is also a subjective phrase. In the private sector, “better services” generally lead to more profits. This measuring stick does not apply in the public sector.
The key issue in my mind is competition. When the government has a de facto monopoly in the provision of a good or service, consumers are subject to the economic inefficiencies which arise from the lack of competition. And largely, the general direction of government agencies is subject to politicization. Under most any subjective measure of “better services”, politicization will lead poorer services.
It is absolutely correct that private enterprise can fail, break the law, hurt people, etc. The same can happen for a government agency. This is precisely why competition is such an important component of an economic system. No one should have to be reliant on a single entity to provide a given good or service. (There are very few exceptions which I can envision.)
As for the FDA and regulating food quality, taxpayers pay for this service. I would simply argue that it could be provided by for-profit, private enterprise. UL is a good example. Consumer Reports and various websites provide similar services. This is akin to the example of the ratings agencies. I agree that ratings agencies have not “done their job” as well as they could/should have - however, it should be noted that ratings agencies are subject to government regulation and are a protected oligopoly. If there was free and open competition to form and provide ratings services, we probably would not have seen the same problems.
These are all excellent points, Matt, which pretty much back up the point of my article. I did not make the argument that we should abolish the FDA, although that is an argument that could be made, and that many libertarians have made. The main point, for those who might have missed it, is that we should not look to government as the main avenue for ensuring safety of the food supply, and that attempts to beef up government inspections would be a step in the wrong direction and actually counter-productive to the goal of food safety. Local government can provide some of these services with some efficiency and effectiveness, much more so than we can expect at the state and federal levels, but even so, we must beware of becoming overly dependent upon government even at the local level. Citizens of Birmingham, AL and Jefferson County, AL, certainly will understand what I am talking about, with the extraordinary waste, inefficiency and corruption of their local government. And I would again emphasize, to those who do not understand where I am coming from, that laws should and do exist to protect against harm done to others by producers of goods. The way these laws are enforced (i.e., via the regulatory state) is what I am calling into question, and this is where bottom-up solutions (as opposed to centralized, top-down solutions) come into the whole discussion of what we ought to be doing.