But that’s a role for trust but verify,
not deregulate even further.
O.K.
But:
(1) I don’t see how this is responsive to anything in the original article I linked to. The argument of that article isn’t to get rid of an attitude of trust but verify
towards vendors; the point Hanson made, specifically, was that you can get the informative function of verification without the police function of prohibition. So the suggestion (his suggestion) was to expand labeling requirements, not to contract them.
(2) I don’t see how this is responsive to my brief side commentary on palookas and their opinions on products. My point was that if government agencies are entitled to demand that producers stick labels on their products, then any independent body, in government or out of it, is equally entitled on the same grounds to require posting of the same kinds of information, warnings, or assessments.[*]
In any case, the interesting debate here is whether or not the verify
bit depends on the regulate
bit here, or whether you can get just as much or better verification without the regulatory scaffolding around it. If you need the regulation to get the verification, then we could argue about the trade-offs involved. But first you’d need to show that the regulation actually is a prerequisite; that’s not a premise that you can get for free. If you don’t need the regulation to get the verification, if it can be achieved through some other means (e.g. grassroots monitoring and activism) then it seems like that’s a perfectly good reason to give up on the regulation without too much worry. Isn’t it?
More valuable to me than an ingredients list would be a laboratory assay describing in detail the chemical composition of a product;
I think that would be great.
I suppose free marketeers such as yourself are fine with that so long as the entities publishing the reports are in the private sector.
Yes, I think this is a job either for existing independent watchdog groups, testing labs, certification boards and professional associations (there are lots), or else new groups custom built for the purpose.
I think it’s a problem for government agencies to be tasked with it, (1) because of moral problems with government assuming this kind of investigatory and regulatory role, (2) because of practical problems with entrusting government agencies to maintain produce reliably accurate results and useful information, and especially with entrusting them to maintain independence from industry, in the absence of open market competition, and (3) because of political problems with entrusting government agencies to stick to the job of testing and writing up results, without the usual bureaucratic problems of mission creep, expanding fiefdoms, etc. I don’t think it should be a surprise to find that some people think government agencies are really kind of piss poor at maintaining independence from industry or performing socially useful tasks without these kind of predictable failure modes; if that be Reaganism,
well then let us make the best of it.