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Plastics posted:What I mean is that the government is taking the responsibility for thinking upon itself. Okay let me give an example. Pretend you work for a food standard organization. If you are the government FDA then a lot of people will choose to believe you because they will think "Oh this is the government so they have my best interesta at heart" and they will not think for themselves about whether the evidence is good and reliable or not. Tomorrow if I started another FDA then a lot of people would ignore me because the government one already exists and they would assume it is better. And in the short term even if we got rid of the government FDA I think the private ones could be bad while people figured out the good ones and the bad ones! but once people learn how to do that they will be better at judging who is reliable and who is not. And the same is true with everything else. People who are against Libertarianism are probably right about the downsides in the short term because people would take time to adjust to the new way of doing things. But once that time was past it would be better because people would be thinking for themselves. We do need to have a healthy skepticism towards the government. But we need to be at least as skeptical of the private sector. Profit motive can at times align with what's in the best interests of people, but when it doesn't it can and will end human lives. quote:But if there is no Objective Morality then how can we say anything at all is Right or Wrong? It is all about circumstance in that case. The aztecs did nothing wrong because they believed sacrifices were needed for something. That does not mean they didn't kill people! Even if I am right and Morality is Objective then why does our Human differences of opinion matter? Historical societies also came up with lots of different ideas for how the universe worked, before we had telescopes and particle cannons and NASA and stuff but that does not mean that in the year 1015 that physics was subjective, only our interpretation of it. But really, I think whether morality is objective or subjective is a distraction in a way. It's a question that as far as I can tell doesn't actually point to anything practical. Ultimately the test of a given moral position is what effect it has on the world. Over the course of this thread we've let Jrodefeld subject us to countless libertarian propositions, and we've pretty much found them all wanting. This is because they're either wholly untested, or they've been tried, and the current government-based method we've adopted, although imperfect, was something we as a society agreed on because we didn't want to see quite so many senseless deaths.
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Aug 9, 2015 04:27
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Plastics posted:Okay I will try not to capitalize things as much, it is a habit I have and it makes sense to me but you're not the first people to point it out. I will try not to do it as much. They didn't run you off! Yay! quote:You and some other people said similar things so I will try to clarify. I do not say that coercion is not a factor in making a choice, but that we can choose what extent we care. There are a lot of different possible hypotheticles here. If I am being mugged I can decide that my safety is more important or my money (or some people would say dignity, but I don't think most people would place dignity above not being stabbed??) but it does not mean the mugger is doing nothing wrong. He is using force to force someone to do something they would not otherwise do. Taxes are the same. I can choose to not pay them or try not to pay them but unless I am very clever or can pay someone very clever I will probably get in trouble. It is scary to me that when they could not get him for anything else the government could still get Al Capone on tax crimes! Counterpoint: Taxes are not theft in any measurable way. People who evade taxes are thieves because they are stealing all the benefits of society. See what I just did there? I put forward an argument with the same intellectual weight as the one you are providing here. You are stating as fact the idea that taxation is theft, and leaving it at that. You are saying, in essence, taxation is the same as a highwayman giving you the choice of your GP or your HP and expecting us to take your starting point as gospel. Worse yet, your position is actually counter to the one normally understood by essentially all of humanity, leaving you with even more of a burden to actually put up some sort of evidence for your argument. If you want to argue that taxes are theft you can't just say "Well the government takes my money when I don't want them to and so do burglars". That position is a childishly simplistic one that ignores crucial differences between the two situations. By your logic a serial killer could say "Arresting me is no different from kidnapping so laws against murder are immoral!" because yes, being arrested is in fact very much like kidnapping or other unlawful forms of imprisonment. Except that we the people actually determine what is and is not kidnapping. I'll give one more example before I move on. My uncle was a repo-man for a number of years, and very often he would run into situations where there was dispute over ownership of property. The current owner of a car, or a TV or whatever might imagine that product is theirs, while the company hiring him disputes that. My uncle would go out and effectively steal it from the person who had ownership, and society was okay with that because it is society that ultimately determines what is and is not theft. Theft is the unlawful taking, but the law clearly permits taxation. Feel free to make an argument as to why you think it is theft, but actually make an argument, don't just state it as fact and accept people to cede the ground to you. quote:What I mean is that the government is taking the responsibility for thinking upon itself. Okay let me give an example. Pretend you work for a food standard organization. If you are the government FDA then a lot of people will choose to believe you because they will think "Oh this is the government so they have my best interesta at heart" and they will not think for themselves about whether the evidence is good and reliable or not. Tomorrow if I started another FDA then a lot of people would ignore me because the government one already exists and they would assume it is better. And in the short term even if we got rid of the government FDA I think the private ones could be bad while people figured out the good ones and the bad ones! but once people learn how to do that they will be better at judging who is reliable and who is not. And the same is true with everything else. People who are against Libertarianism are probably right about the downsides in the short term because people would take time to adjust to the new way of doing things. But once that time was past it would be better because people would be thinking for themselves. One thing to keep in mind is that corporations have an awful track record of self inspecting or industry inspecting. For example, the FDA allowed industries to self inspect or to hire third party inspectors and well... even you predicted what would happen. The industries involved engaged in rampant fraud and little to no regulation because at the end of the day it is simply more profitable not to properly regulate. As I've mentioned previously, people are not rational actors. Humans are poo poo at predicting long term trends, weighing risk/reward and things of that nature. We have faulty monkey brains that don't make the sort of rational choices required for libertarian society to function the way you want it to. I hate to bring up the old joke, but the counterpoint to your argument is recorded history. We have an FDA precisely because the sort of self regulation that you are arguing would be inevitable (once the kinks got worked out) never materialized. Instead we got radon eyeshadow and colloidal silver tinctures. Without the ability to make rational decisions with significant information the best we can hope for is to shut businesses down after people are already dead. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and the libertarian society does not have a mechanism to actually produce that prevention. quote:Okay and that is good, and I think that states who worked to abolish slavery deserve to be praised for it. That is definitely good. But what happens if and when society decides that forcing someone into slavery is okay again? Three hundred years from now we might all say that the 19th to 21st centuries were crazy, those guys thought slavery was wrong! Then the government will be right back to supporting it again? What if pigs could fly through the air with the power of unicorns? In all seriousness, you could be right. I'd counter with the simple fact that the exact same argument applies to you. Modern slavery is primarily economic in nature and does not require the apparatus of the state to succeed. If you think that there is some weird conjunction of the stars that will bring back slavery then I can guarantee you it will come back in your hypothetical libertopia because unlike statism (ha) there is no collective will of the people to force down the sort of anti-social behavior represented by slavery. quote:Okay I think that people were meaning this specific term when I did not mean the exact same thing as you. What I mean is that I think people will make the best Choices open to them to achieve the things they want. They might want to have food or shelter (everyone wants these!) so they will choose to get a job or claim entitlements to afford it. If I want to watch TV shows I can pirate them or I can pay for cable or I can get a Netflix Subscription. I might not make the best choices yes because my information is not perfect! But if people do not have perfect information how can governments have perfect information? They are just people too? The only difference is they can force their own information on other people! Remember Thalidomite?? I agree with you that rational actors do not require perfect information. However, insufficient information can be dangerous. As I pointed out with say, vaccines, people can make choices that are 'rational' but ultimately very detrimental based on incomplete information. The advantage the state has over the individual is size and deliberation. Your typical person doesn't have enough hours in the day to make an informed decision on each and every thing they do. If I go to the grocery store, I have to trust that the things on the shelves are safe because I simply do not have enough daylight to do a full court press to get all the information required to know if this toothpaste is carcinogenic. This is where agencies such as the FDA excel. As an aside, I think you meant either thalidomide or Thimerisol. If you meant thalidomide its actually pretty funny because thalidomide was marketed as an anti-insomnia, anti-morning sickness drug that just so happened to cause birth defects in the pregnant mothers who took the drug. This is actually a wonderful example of why we need agencies like the FDA. Thalidomide led to the death of over 2,000 children and serious birth defects in more than 10,000. In the US that number was 17 total because the FDA largely blocked the drug on account of it having no clinical safety tests. If you mean Thimerosal, then my answer is that you need to stop drinking the vaccine kool-aid. Thimerisol was taken out of vaccines as part of the "Oh poo poo gently caress" panic due to the fabricated autism study. Autism rates were unchanged despite the removal of this drug, and in areas of the world where it is still used the rates of autism are likewise unchanged. Thimerisol was a functional preservative taken out of use because of false science and idiocy. quote:I do not think that God exists so I do not believe that Morality comes from Him but even if there was a God the question would be is He WISE enough to know what is perfectly Moral and Good or is He actually MAKING the rules of Moralty? If it is the last one then that is no better than any other authority. I think the facts of the natural universe are what dictates what is Moral. Now I do not know if any people are smart enough yet to figure out what that exactly is but for me I think that my mind is my own sovereign being and my body is an extension of that because of physical factual attachment. Infringing on that sovereignty is Immoral, Evil, etc. You realize you've just described subjective morality here. You think that your mind is your own sovereign being and your body is an extension of that because of physical attachment and thus you think infringing on that is evil. That is subjective morality. You think that, and I do not, the morality of doing these things is subjective based on the point of view of the person you're asking. But if there is no Objective Morality then how can we say anything at all is Right or Wrong? It is all about circumstance in that case. The aztecs did nothing wrong because they believed sacrifices were needed for something. That does not mean they didn't kill people! Even if I am right and Morality is Objective then why does our Human differences of opinion matter? Historical societies also came up with lots of different ideas for how the universe worked, before we had telescopes and particle cannons and NASA and stuff but that does not mean that in the year 1015 that physics was subjective, only our interpretation of it.[/quote] We can say what we feel is right or wrong and nothing more, that is the lovely thing about subjective morality. We both agree that murder is morally wrong, but there are people out there that don't. Morality comes from what you and the people around you agree is moral. Ultimately morality is just human opinion on what is good or bad, I'm sorry you had to find out this way.  Your physics example falters because physics has actual physical properties in the real world. The concepts of good and evil are ephemeral. We can't test them or observe them. I can drop an apple and get a good idea of how physics works by the fall of that apple. But morality? If I cheat on my wife is that good or bad? Well it certainly depends on who you ask. To my wife, probably bad. To me? Well that depends on my relationship with my wife. Or what about this old goon favorite? "You are in Berlin, 1933. Somehow, you find yourself in a position where you can effortlessly steal Hitler's wallet. This theft will not affect Hitler's rise to power, the nature of WW2, or the Holocaust. There is no important identification in the wallet, but the act will cost Hitler forty Reichsmarks and completely ruin his evening. You do not need the money. The odds that you will be caught committing this act are less than 2 percent. Are you ethically obligated to steal Hitler's wallet?" What does objective morality say about the theft of Hitler's wallet? How can we even begin to come up with an answer that is any better than a best guess? quote:No because our Morality as I think of it is based on our FACTUAL INDEPENDENCE from each other mentally. So it does not work if you have some kind of psychic link together! That does not mean it is not objective though. Gravity breaks down at black holes but gravity is not subjective.  Morality as you think of it is based on factual independence. No offense, but, so what? Do you have any proof, any evidence anything other than just your opinion on this issue? For you to be right on this issue "Caros banging his mistress is wrong" has to be objectively as true as "1+1=2" and you've produced nothing other than your own opinion on this fact. And don't get me wrong, you can have a subjective opinion on whether or not something is morally right or morally wrong. You can hold to the belief that taxation is theft because it violates your weird individual sovereignty belief, that is absolutely fine, but holding to that belief does not make it objective fact. We can argue about whether taxation is theft, but from our perspective you seem like sort of a loon when you are arguing from the position that is more or less boils down to a religious faith in your subjective beliefs. Absent proof arguing with you is no different from arguing over the existence of god with someone, except you lack even the basic trappings of religion to try and support your belief.
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Aug 9, 2015 04:33
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Please stop banging your mistress Caros. Mrs. Caros deserves better than that.Literally The Worst posted:Have you ever hosed a watermelon This is the most important question you could ever answer, Plastics.
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Aug 9, 2015 04:42
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paragon1 posted:Please stop banging your mistress Caros. Mrs. Caros deserves better than that. She didn't even take my last name tho.
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Aug 9, 2015 04:46
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Caros posted:She didn't even take my last name tho. It's you, you're the patriarchy.
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Aug 9, 2015 04:49
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paragon1 posted:It's you, you're the patriarchy. But is that morally wrong? Yes. Yes it is.
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Aug 9, 2015 04:50
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I never learned about the patriarchy, so it's not reflected in the Facts of the natural universe.
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Aug 9, 2015 05:09
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paragon1 posted:Please stop banging your mistress Caros. Mrs. Caros deserves better than that. Maybe she's into reverse-cuckold, you don't know. Don't hypothetical kink-shame, trashlord.
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Aug 9, 2015 05:21
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Who What Now posted:Maybe she's into reverse-cuckold, you don't know. Don't hypothetical kink-shame, trashlord. I think its called cuckqueaning. I really, really wish I didn't know that. gently caress you internet.
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Aug 9, 2015 05:22
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Caros posted:I think its called cuckqueaning. I really, really wish I didn't know that. gently caress you internet. These are the reactions that make it so satisfying to provide you with the knowledge. You're like the student in a teacher/student dialogue in a Rennaisance text on fencing or geometry, only the subject is cuckoldry or Ayn Rand's hygiene.
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Aug 9, 2015 05:28
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SedanChair posted:These are the reactions that make it so satisfying to provide you with the knowledge. You're like the student in a teacher/student dialogue in a Rennaisance text on fencing or geometry, only the subject is cuckoldry or Ayn Rand's hygiene. Goddamnit SedanChair! I just loving blocked that out.
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Aug 9, 2015 05:32
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Caros posted:I think its called cuckqueaning. I really, really wish I didn't know that. gently caress you internet. That's one of the stupidest words I've ever come across. Like, I can't think of a way to pronounce it without sounding like an idiot.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:16
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Caros posted:Goddamnit SedanChair! I just loving blocked that out. You can't block it out. Nathaniel Branden only managed to block it out last year, and only then because the release of death finally embraced him. Until then, he was bound to recollect it any time fish spoiled, or a towel became mildewed.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:22
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Posting from a beach in Hawaii. I now have to think about Ayn Rands foul smelling genitals. How I've missed SA.
Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 06:32
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SedanChair posted:You can't block it out. Nathaniel Branden only managed to block it out last year, and only then because the release of death finally embraced him. Until then, he was bound to recollect it any time fish spoiled, or a towel became mildewed. Well this was poo poo I certainly didn't need today. On the other hand it led to me realzing that there is a movie called, and I poo poo you not this is real: The Passion of Ayn Rand. This is the second best thing I've found out today, after realizing there is a sitting US governor named Butch Otter. Caros fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 06:46
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If Ayn Rand had looked like Helen Mirren IRL, I'd have definitely taken one for the team and made her cigarette holder clatter to the ground.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:54
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Caros posted:Well this was poo poo I certainly didn't need today. On the other hand it led to me realzing that there is a movie called, and I poo poo you not this is real: The Passion of Ayn Rand. If funny political names are what you're after, in Australia we have a politician called the Shadow Minister for Justice - who comes from Batman.
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Aug 9, 2015 08:51
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SedanChair posted:If Ayn Rand had looked like Helen Mirren IRL, I'd have definitely taken one for the team and made her cigarette holder clatter to the ground. "Oh Sedan, you and I are independent intellectuals, a man and woman of the mind. And it is right that an un-brainwashed mind should have an un-soapwashed nether region is its one single expression"  
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Aug 9, 2015 09:08
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BreakAtmo posted:If funny political names are what you're after, in Australia we have a politician called the Shadow Minister for Justice - who comes from Batman. Isn't the shadow thing just for the losers who couldn't get elected, so they formed their own cabinet and started pretending to be in charge?
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Aug 9, 2015 09:48
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Wanamingo posted:Isn't the shadow thing just for the losers who couldn't get elected, so they formed their own cabinet and started pretending to be in charge? I'm actually not completely sure how it works. They apparently form the Opposition to the current government and criticise their policies while offering alternatives. I should learn more about it.
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Aug 9, 2015 10:10
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BreakAtmo posted:I'm actually not completely sure how it works. They apparently form the Opposition to the current government and criticise their policies while offering alternatives. I should learn more about it. Yeah it's a fancy way to say 'The opposition'. More correctly 'Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition' (I like that title.) Basically they're supposed to act as devil's advocates. Well supposed to, sometimes they aren't.
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Aug 9, 2015 15:06
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Plastics posted:... Others have gone on about the taxes/force thing, so I'll let them do that. You still haven't answered my criticism of people not thinking for themselves, namely that private organizations do exactly the same thing. I don't mean that there's a private equivalent to the FDA, I mean that private organizations divide themselves into departments so that not every employee has to do all the thinking about every product every step of the way. You can even take a step back and see companies compete with each other by encouraging people to not think. How much advertising is based around the idea that 'our company is reliable (more so than our competitors)'? I don't see how the market will be able to fix that. At all. Also you realize that these things didn't form spontaneously one day and attach themselves to society as it previously existed, right? Part of the reason we have things like the FDA is due to how rampant adulterated and contaminated food and medicine was a hundred years ago. People looked at that and went "Holy crap this is crazy. Let's hire a bunch of people specifically to watch out for this stuff so it doesn't keep happening." This is not to say that the FDA (or any other organization, governmental or no, ever) has been 100% successful, merely that having the FDA has resulted in less pain and suffering than would otherwise be the case. Also you're really close to making an important link in the paragraph where you talk about Thalidomite. Governments are just people. Governments are forcing their own information on people (whatever exactly that even means). So that means some people are capable of forcing information on other people. Why wouldn't a company, which is also just people, be capable of the same thing? I mean I know your go-to answer is 'well markets and competition mean bad actors get punished' or something like that, but you haven't shown that to be the case, especially in light of the fact that you admit that people have imperfect information. If people don't know that a company is bad, they can't choose to stop shopping there for that reason. Hell, you've even gone down the road of 'people act to fulfill their wants' which can wind up getting you results like people shopping at a company that they know is bad in some way because it fulfills other wants anyway. Also due to the amount of beliefs and ideas that people can carry around inside their own heads, it doesn't even matter how 'bad and 'good' are defined in this case, it's always a logical possibility for things to turn out bad. So if you care to respond to this bit, you can skip the whole bit about morality.
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Aug 9, 2015 15:07
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Caros posted:thalidomide was marketed as an anti-insomnia, anti-morning sickness drug that just so happened to cause birth defects in the pregnant mothers who took the drug. This is actually a wonderful example of why we need agencies like the FDA. Thalidomide led to the death of over 2,000 children and serious birth defects in more than 10,000. In the US that number was 17 total because the FDA largely blocked the drug on account of it having no clinical safety tests. I just came across an article - Frances Kelsey, the FDA official apparently chiefly responsible for the creation of these regulatory frameworks and the blocking of thalidomide, died on Friday. She made it to 101 - badass. Here's to a genuine hero. http://io9.com/rip-frances-kelsey-who-saved-the-nation-from-thalidomi-1722969276 BreakAtmo fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 18:34
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It's been briefly touched on already, but the idea that people blindly trust the FDA because it's the Government is absurd. Look at GMOs. The FDA tests them and only allows them on the market if they're deemed safe. So everyone trusts GMOs now, right? The FDA said so, and people blindly accept its judgment. Wait, no, that didn't happen. People still distrust GMOs, just like they didn't trust irradiated food.
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Aug 9, 2015 19:08
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No you guys are not understanding what I mean! I do not mean that people trust the FDA 100% and nothing else because the government created it what I mean is that it Damages people's abilities to think for themselves. They are not given any choice in it they just have to like it. When I said Thalodomite I meant that some countries said it was a good idea and some said it was a bad idea to ban it. They could not all be right and they ended up finding out because a lot of people suffered from it! But in my system once it is working properly it would be different, because it would mean that REPUTATIONS matter more than these silly appeals to authority! Private FDAs would have to earn their respect by showing they deserved it. Sometimes they would make mistakes and yes people do not have perfect information but the bigger the mistake, the more likely it is more people would care more. So it would be a project with several steps. 1_ Private food standards people are set up 2_ They all start to check food and stuff to make sure it contains what it says it contains and does not contain things it does not say it contains 3_ Then this would start having real effects in the world where some groups succeed and some do not and the ones who do not are left to fail 4_ BUT THEN this means that in the future the ones who succeeded are trusted because they are worth trusting not because the Govenrment says "you have to do what we say". This would be more Ethical. And they would also be at risk of losing their prestigious positions without keeping their standards high enough. Free society would choose what those standards are by Virtue of the Trust placed in these institutions. 5_ So then people COULD choose to buy something that has not been rated if they want to but if they were paying attention they would know which companies are reliable and which are not. Then it would be easy to choose food that is safe. But also if people do not blindly support the Government and use their own judgement like you say that only proves that people are capable of doing making these decisions for themselves which they should be doing? Buried Alive you say that I have not answered the question about people thinking for themselves but I am clearly saying it is okay to put your trust in someone else to Think for you. The difference is that YOU should choose who you trust and what you trust them with! It should not be imposed on us from a bunch of people we never met or voted for or whose credentials or records we never even got to see! I can go and see some of those things now but so what does that matter because I can not change their Position or role? And NO I've never had sex with a watermelon and I do not know why you all keep asking me that!!
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Aug 10, 2015 00:55
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Plastics isnt as fun as Jrode
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Aug 10, 2015 00:57
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Plastics what issue do you take with slavery considering it is the slaves choice to remain as such?
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Aug 10, 2015 01:26
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Plastics posted:No you guys are not understanding what I mean! I do not mean that people trust the FDA 100% and nothing else because the government created it what I mean is that it Damages people's abilities to think for themselves. Can you elaborate? Are you trying to say that the FDA makes people stupid? I simply don't agree with that. I'm busy thinking about lots of other things, I don't want to have to worry about whether or not my next meal is safe to eat. quote:They are not given any choice in it they just have to like it. When I said Thalodomite I meant that some countries said it was a good idea and some said it was a bad idea to ban it. They could not all be right and they ended up finding out because a lot of people suffered from it! But in my system once it is working properly it would be different, because it would mean that REPUTATIONS matter more than these silly appeals to authority! Private FDAs would have to earn their respect by showing they deserved it. Sometimes they would make mistakes and yes people do not have perfect information but the bigger the mistake, the more likely it is more people would care more. You're wrong. Countries that lacked the equivalent of an FDA continued selling Thalidomide for decades after it was known that Thalidomide caused birth defects. The company producing Thalidomide didn't give a poo poo, and they continued to pull in profits from selling Thalidomide to pregnant women who weren't aware of the side effects due to their lack of perfect information. Without the power of law, what incentive is there for me to submit my drug to a private FDA? There is none. It's easier to claim that my drug is completely safe and effective at treating *whatever the gently caress*. Some people will refuse to buy it due to the lack of rating, but many more won't do enough research and will buy it anyway. This is exactly what you see with countless huckster treatments even today; you can still run an extremely profitable business by skirting FDA regulations and selling directly to stupid people. Right now there are people that successfully sell bleach as a cure for autism, knowing fully well that this treatment does not work. I mean look at the loving darknet, even when it's clear that Research Chemical 064B will gently caress you up and put you in a coma people still buy and consume it. Reputation is meaningless to most people. Human history has proven that you are 100% wrong quote:So it would be a project with several steps. Why is this system preferable to the system that we have today, where a single trustworthy group does the checking? You've added a bunch of inefficiency to an already working system. There's nothing more Ethical about your system, you're just making statements without backing them up. Why do you want to force me to investigate the safety of food and drug producers for myself? Your system sounds loving terrible. I have a lot of other poo poo to worry about, I don't want to also have to worry about whether or not my food is safe to consume. quote:But also if people do not blindly support the Government and use their own judgement like you say that only proves that people are capable of doing making these decisions for themselves which they should be doing? People already don't blindly support the government and use their own judgement. Plenty of people don't trust the FDA when they say that something is safe. Why is forcing people to investigate the safety of their food preferable to ensuring that all food sold for consumption is already safe? You keep dodging this question, saying that it's preferable without giving a reason. quote:Buried Alive you say that I have not answered the question about people thinking for themselves but I am clearly saying it is okay to put your trust in someone else to Think for you. The difference is that YOU should choose who you trust and what you trust them with! It should not be imposed on us from a bunch of people we never met or voted for or whose credentials or records we never even got to see! I can go and see some of those things now but so what does that matter because I can not change their Position or role? It's already not imposed on you; you don't have to trust the FDA. You can choose to buy beef infected with Mad Cow if you really want to, just go find an unscrupulous rancher. If you privatize the FDA and create a bunch of competing agencies, you're not going to ever meet or vote for or see the credentials or records of the raters under these private organizations, either. All that you're doing is creating a more inefficient system because you worship the Free Market. You haven't actually stopped to consider the possibility that maybe the Free Market is not the best solution to every problem. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 01:35
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Plastics posted:No you guys are not understanding what I mean! I do not mean that people trust the FDA 100% and nothing else because the government created it what I mean is that it Damages people's abilities to think for themselves. They are not given any choice in it they just have to like it. When I said Thalodomite I meant that some countries said it was a good idea and some said it was a bad idea to ban it. They could not all be right and they ended up finding out because a lot of people suffered from it! But in my system once it is working properly it would be different, because it would mean that REPUTATIONS matter more than these silly appeals to authority! Private FDAs would have to earn their respect by showing they deserved it. Sometimes they would make mistakes and yes people do not have perfect information but the bigger the mistake, the more likely it is more people would care more. Or you could, you know, nip it in the bud, keep the FDA and save on the human misery. And yeah you have a severe case of that Libertarian Optimism, If it works, and everyone follows these very specific, unenforced rules, and companies continue to be the beacons of morality that they are, and Reckitt Benickser-Nestle-Unilever remains something only seen in fever dreams, THEN IT WOULD BE UTOPIA.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:38
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Hey Plastics, here's a hypothetical for you to consider. I'd really appreciate it if you could answer my post directly. I produce a drug that sometimes alleviates headaches but is also guaranteed to give you brain cancer. I call it Quarkacin. In my human trials I observe the headache alleviation in 5% of cases and the brain cancer effect in 100% of cases. Actually, I told a bunch of the administrators that I wanted to take advantage of the placebo effect, so the trials that I conducted weren't really blind at all; really the drug just causes brain cancer and might alleviate your headache if you believe hard enough. I'm a shitheel, so I want to immediately put my drug for sale on the market. In the world that we have today, the FDA reviews my test data and says "No, you can't sell a drug that occasionally relieves headaches and guarantees brain cancer." My drug does not go to market. In libertopia, my drug immediately hits the shelves. I create an advertising campaign that promises sunshine and roses to anyone who takes my drug. Private rating agencies purchase my drug for their own human trials; I bribe a number of them to give me a positive review, but the more scrupulous ones note that a bunch of people developed brain cancer as a result of taking my drug. Some people who are subscribed to these more scrupulous private rating agencies decide not to buy my drug, but everyone else keeps buying it because they either haven't done the research themselves or they're subscribed to one of the private rating agencies that are in my back pocket. My profit margins remain high despite the small loss in revenue from the small fraction of people who are well-informed. The libertarian solution to this problem creates untold human suffering and is also less efficient from every perspective. Why is it preferable to the centralized rating system that we have today? Is it better to give brain cancer to millions than to require a sniff test for drugs before we let them be sold to consumers? QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 01:48
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Plastics posted:No you guys are not understanding what I mean! I do not mean that people trust the FDA 100% and nothing else because the government created it what I mean is that it Damages people's abilities to think for themselves. They are not given any choice in it they just have to like it. When I said Thalodomite I meant that some countries said it was a good idea and some said it was a bad idea to ban it. They could not all be right and they ended up finding out because a lot of people suffered from it! But in my system once it is working properly it would be different, because it would mean that REPUTATIONS matter more than these silly appeals to authority! Private FDAs would have to earn their respect by showing they deserved it. Sometimes they would make mistakes and yes people do not have perfect information but the bigger the mistake, the more likely it is more people would care more. I didn't study medicine in school so it's not like I can think for myself in any meaningful way with regards to the safety of medication and gently caress something like a Yelp where people will give Mcdonalds 5 stars. quote:So it would be a project with several steps. So why wouldn't I set something up and then lie/cheat and steal my way to the top? There's money and power to be had so its in my best interests as a free market entrepreneur to cheat the system as much as possible to get ahead of the game.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:56
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Ignore theses fools. Sit back and have a fresh, invigorating glass of radium water instead!  Your jaw will hit the floor! 
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Aug 10, 2015 02:09
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Plastics posted:No you guys are not understanding what I mean! I do not mean that people trust the FDA 100% and nothing else because the government created it what I mean is that it Damages people's abilities to think for themselves. They are not given any choice in it they just have to like it. When I said Thalodomite I meant that some countries said it was a good idea and some said it was a bad idea to ban it. They could not all be right and they ended up finding out because a lot of people suffered from it! But in my system once it is working properly it would be different, because it would mean that REPUTATIONS matter more than these silly appeals to authority! Private FDAs would have to earn their respect by showing they deserved it. Sometimes they would make mistakes and yes people do not have perfect information but the bigger the mistake, the more likely it is more people would care more. In addition to what QuarkJets said, we tried private ratings agencies for financial instruments, and it turns out that you have to be willing to lie to get access and get paid to rate products. But now instead of toxic mortgages, it's toxic drugs that pregnant women are taking. Oh hey, why haven't more reliable private agencies arisen in countries with a dysfunctional government and no FDA? Is this Libertarian magic where the existence of a single state anywhere in the world makes people too dumb to act in their self-interest so we need to dismantle our entire public safety apparatus first then hope you're right? As far as the FDA making people stupid, does it make you stupid? When you go out to eat, or when you're on a roadtrip stopping at a roadside diner, or when you're buying groceries, do you research the entire supply chain of each product you buy and each restaurant you patronize, and ask them for a tour of the kitchen, do you inspect the facilities? No? Why not? Isn't it dangerous to rely on statists to do all your thinking for you, how are you still alive? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 02:20
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Independent third party non-government certification /inspection of whatever isn't always terrible, the incentives just have to be right. It's also ok in conjunction with regulatory standards created by governments or international bodies, that are well made and clear and straightforward. It also works when governments are on the board of directors (particularly when it's non-elected career bureaucrats). It's also good for them to be non profits. But libertarians won't go for any of that.
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Aug 10, 2015 02:37
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Literally The Worst posted:Plastics isnt as fun as Jrode I dunno I'm pretty amused about "X or Death isn't coercion towards X because you can freely choose to die, but also taxes are still theft even though you are presumably equally free to choose the consequences of not paying taxes."
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Aug 10, 2015 02:57
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He's more insane, less dumb
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Aug 10, 2015 03:03
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Plastics posted:And NO I've never had sex with a watermelon and I do not know why you all keep asking me that!! Though you have not attained enlightenment, you have taken a small step towards Truth. You may enter the 2nd Chamber of Libertarian Thread. Namaste.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:20
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We take copulation with fruits very, very seriously.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:22
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Plastics posted:No you guys are not understanding what I mean! I do not mean that people trust the FDA 100% and nothing else because the government created it what I mean is that it Damages people's abilities to think for themselves. They are not given any choice in it they just have to like it. When I said Thalodomite I meant that some countries said it was a good idea and some said it was a bad idea to ban it. They could not all be right and they ended up finding out because a lot of people suffered from it! But in my system once it is working properly it would be different, because it would mean that REPUTATIONS matter more than these silly appeals to authority! Private FDAs would have to earn their respect by showing they deserved it. Sometimes they would make mistakes and yes people do not have perfect information but the bigger the mistake, the more likely it is more people would care more. You still haven't answered my criticism. I'll put the question another way. Have you considered that the FDA and the general democractic government (or any other government, for that matter) is a result of this five step process you've outlined above? Again, the reason we have an FDA is because food and drugs were so, I'll just say corrupted as a general term, that people no longer trusted the reputation of the people providing them. They wanted an alternative. They wound up with the FDA. We didn't have to wind up with this three-branched representative democracy/republic style of government. We could have all gotten together and said "Hey, let's make this guy king for eternity," or, "Hey, let's have an absolutely pure, majority-rules democracy," or even, "Hey, let's just not have any regulations at all." Like, libertarianism has always been on the table, and is kind of the default situation any time anything new comes along. You can't regulate something until it exists, and once it comes into existence it will spend some time being unregulated. That has proven to be a bad state of affairs for many things. In other words, going entirely in the direction of maximizing freedom for everyone often results in situations that are either inefficient, lay waste to human lives, or both. Going that direction has a bad reputation. So we regulate.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:30
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Um, but then how would I feel superior to those who don't have the money or time or ability to research every rating company and pick the most competent one, which I, as a total layman with zero knowledge of chemistry and pharmaceuticals, would obviously do so much better than the FDA? What's the point of being protected from toxic or adulterated drugs if I don't get to know I'm better than the children of proles who die of poisoning from ethylene glycol?
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Aug 10, 2015 03:45
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