Fine I see your point there is no need to exaggerate the argument like that.
Lets put it this way, I wouldn’t buy something that I cant be sure what contains or if it would do me harm. So OK the baker can put his cookie in the market as long as he doesn’t lie about what is inside it and although it may be his right to keep his product information to himself in reality its just an economic suicide since none in his right mind would buy a “mistery food” containing God knows what… now that’s my assumption but I think its a safe bet.
A mystery cookie does not contain “God knows what”! A mystery cookie is a cookie with a secret filling. Therefore once you bite into it the mystery is resolved. Was it strawberry marmalade? Was it apricot? Chocolate? Something else? There would be no point in a mystery that does not get solved. It would be like a detective novel without the last chapter! So if it is “economic suicide” it is only because in your lack of imagination you have created a totally warped picture of the product! Ha!!!11 In your opinion then, also nobody would ever buy a lottery ticket without first knowing if it is a wining or a losing one? No child would ever want a Kinder Surprise for the toy? And nobody would ever order desert in a Chinese restaurant without first grabbing the waiter by the tie demanding to know what “Confucious says” right now?!
Ok, so you are assuming once you bite it the mistery is solved, and even further that the mistery itself is the desirable thing but what happens when the ingredients are not so apparent? like a coca-cola or a chinese dish?
I must say I feel relieved that I can read the bottle of a coca-cola and enjoyed it knowing exactly what it contains.
Yes that is true. But I specifically brought up the “mystery cookie” (a fully culinaric version of the fortune cookie) to show how silly your initial assertion that you had “a right to know” had been. You conceded this point, but then you bashed it as bad business. Naturally I had to defend the poor cookie! [8o|]
What if a fortune cookie had shards of glass in it? I don’t think consumers have the right to know, but surely the seller or manufacturer is liable for injuries that consumers never consented to, and had no reasonable expectation that they would be injured. All exchanges have some implicit guarantees.
Do you ask restaurants about every ingredient they put in their dishes? Do you know all the individual ingredients of a McDonald’s hamburger? Why does packaged food need to be any different?
And like others alluded to, even in this regulatory climate, we have consumer watch groups that keep an eye on many corporations.
That’s true that we have consumer watchdogs for this. But I was thinking like a what if situation, like, hypothetically what if we were back to where we were before when we thought all this bad stuff was okay, and was good for us. It turned out that these corporations were placing all these chemicals in our food to make us eat it more and now because of that as a result people for the most part are at least more aware of the health problems posed by what they eat.
If a situation like that were to arise again- would the government be justified in making a law requiring them to put their food through screening if they knowingly were harming consumers, without telling them? The act of harm would go against the NAP. So if they said their food was perfectly fine when it wasn’t- that would be bad. But would a temporary government solution be okay until the market could find a way to perform the function itself? I guess some people here would say no, they’re not required to… but like this has happened in the past- and my Mom talked to me about it before, people didn’t know what they were eating and they got all fat.
So, like in a case where there’s no awareness what so ever and lots of people are getting harmed, at least a law regarding protection be somewhat justified? I’m all for a market driven solution but shouldn’t the government require that people know that they’re being harmed at least until a consumer watch dog agency can take its place? I mean in the 50s people knew jack about what they were eating and look at what happened to everyone.
No, it’s still a case by case thing, done by courts, based upon observable damages that were obviously not implied in the product’s nature. (Fatty foods obviously make you fat, etc. Smoking obviously may have adverse effects on your respiratory system.) Such laws are simply a moral hazard.
You do realize that in the 1950s the government started to stress “healthier solutions” right? Look at the food pyramid, it’s really done well for America right?
For myself, the big question that comes to mind here, one that it would have been nice to ask of Hayek too, is this :
why would you [or Hayek] believe that government regulations would actually work and achieve the stated objective(s) in this, or in any other [i.e. non- dietary] area?
[Believe it or not, this is meant as a serious question, and is not intended to be a derogatory “I can’t believe you would think otherwise” type put down/smear.]
Okay. I don’t really believe that government regulation would really achieve the end of forcing the producer to put everything on their labels. But, as a temporary solution until a market solution gets worked out, in that setting it would have to make do. I personally think that consumer watch dog agencies have been pretty helpful with fighting the corporations that just put unhealthy chemicals and all those kinds of things in their foods. But, like I said, they haven’t really always been around, and in some situations there may be justification for government intervention in this (it’s not my view that a government should force producers to include everything on their labels, my view is that the regulation would be that the corporations can’t just flat out lie about what their food/drink does).
First of all, it is worth remembering that there already is massive regulation of the food and related industries, which means that any practices that those industries currently follow are a direct result of the regulations already in place.
Obviously, those regulations do “not work” from certain persons perspective - and therefor do not satisfy those certain same people/groups, but nevertheless, the fact is, the current practices of those various food industries are the “market solution”, [although obviously not what you had in mind [:D] ]
The argument /logic appears to be something along the lines of:
" despite the heavy regulation of the food industry, the regulations do not “work” - therefor we need more [“right” / “enlightened”] regulation, which, of course, will “work”-at least until a “market solution” comes along." [Does this approximate where you are coming from?]
My question would be: if the old regulations already in place did not/do not “work”, why would anyone believe that new ones will?
Bottom Line?
The plain fact is, the existing regulations do not protect consumers from unscrupulous food vendors [ no differently than for any other industry], and new regulations, regardless of how draconian they might be, won’t either.
As always, you, and you alone must take full responsibility for what does and does not pass your own lips. Governments do not/ cannot protect you.
Caveat Emptor. Find a local organic farm. Ask for a tour, only eat that stuff. Better yet, grow your own food. Bingo, you no longer need regulation to know the ingredients of your food!
I’m not calling for extreme radical regulations. All the regulation would be would just be a temporary regulation in a hypothetical situation as the one I described. Do you think that government intervention would have the desired effect in that hypothetical scenario? I think that people should know what’s in their food, and, the government doesn’t necessarily need to do it, but in this hypothetical it might be somewhat justified.
I wouldn’t say never. I think that they fail to do their job. But I think in situations where there are no such watch-dogs perhaps it might be necessary.
You can’t choose your food wisely if you don’t know what’s in it!
Are you part of the state or the market? Think about that for a moment. If you say part of the market, then your desire to know what’s in food will be discovered using the market. If you say part of the state, then your desire to know what’s in food will be discovered using the state. It’s a clear-cut choice. Do you desire to work within the state or market because either one will do it and you know how one works compared to the other.
And just in case, pertaining to what I wrote above, the first couple chapters, at the very least, discuss this.
Naturally I had to defend the poor cookie! [8o|]