Regulations are written in blood
But I’m an alpha man child and I need to make people bleed to prove it!
To continue with the argument of “the market will self-regulate and people wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again”
Okay but how many people died, how many people are suffering long-term effects, and what’s stopping them from adding a different deadly thing to our food?
wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again
Assuming there is perfect information in the market. In reality there is heavy information asymmetry.
It also assumes free competition while we have every market dominated by a few players buying up everyone else, often with cartel like behavior.
It also assumes it is immediately deadly poison, and doesn’t do something like cause early dementia 25 years later.
It also assumes the masses behave rationally, which they won’t ever.
We’ll just get the cheapest shit with the limited information we are given, unless it is life-or-death, where we will pay any price out of fear.
Market self regulation assumes informed consumers that are smart enough to know what things mean. Also it assumes healthy competition and companies that are competing to make the best product at the chrapest price. It ALSO assumes brand lotalty isn’t a thing, and consumers are judging things purely objectively.
Like, i understand the idea, but in practice there are a ton of caveats.
Also, if you want inspections to make sure there isn’t bird shit in the milk, then you need regulation. Otherwise people are just drinking bird shit and they don’t know.
Also the evidence shows this isn’t really true, anyway.
To continue with the argument of “the market will self-regulate and people wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again”
Turns out the parent company owns every other brand of that product, so going to another brand is meaningless
Speaking of Americans, at least half of us are criminally uneducated and watch literally nothing but Fox News. You can’t teach them even with indisputable proof. If the talking heads say it’s bad, then it’s bad.
Framing one half of the population as beyond saving or inherently evil is not just lazy - it’s historically dangerous. It reduces millions of individuals into a caricature and gives people permission to treat them with contempt, as if that’s somehow virtuous. That kind of thinking has been used to justify some of the worst things we’ve done to each other as humans.
When you actually talk to people outside your bubble, you quickly realize that most of us want the same basic things - stability, safety, meaning, a fair shot in life. We just have different beliefs about how to get there. Writing off entire groups as irredeemable only erodes any future possibility of understanding or change.
For fucks sake, this whole “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya” response is pure garbage. They’re trying to pull that “oh, it’s just different opinions” crap, but that’s a load of bullshit. We’re not talking about whether pineapple belongs on pizza here. We’re talking about a movement built on lies, hate, and actively trying to undo hundreds of years of suffrage and civil rights movements that allow you to have free speach.
This ain’t about “different beliefs on how to get there.” Half these people are living in a fantasy world where facts don’t matter and anyone who doesn’t look or think like them is the enemy. You can’t “understand” someone who thinks immigrants are poisoning the blood of America or that the last election was stolen with zero proof. That’s not a “belief”; that’s a dangerous delusion.
And this whole “tolerance” nonsense? Please. You don’t tolerate people who want to strip away your rights or incite violence against your neighbors. That’s not virtuous; that’s being a damn doormat. Some ideas are just plain wrong, and some people are so far gone on the Fox News Kool-Aid that they’re beyond reason. Pretending otherwise is just enabling the madness.
The Paradox of Tolerance is akin to an invading force telling the insurgence that no one else has to die as long as they comply.
For fuck’s sake, this whole “we need to live peacefully with our neighbors” rhetoric is pure garbage. They’re trying to pull that “oh, we just need to coexist” crap, but that’s a load of bullshit. We’re not talking about disagreements over taxes here. We’re talking about a group built on lies and corruption, poisoning the roots of our nation and threatening everything we’ve worked for.
This isn’t about “different ideas on how to build a society.” These people live in a fantasy world, manipulating the media, the economy, and the schools. They don’t care about our culture, our history, or our future. You can’t “understand” someone who undermines the moral fabric of the country and destroys our unity from the inside. That’s not a belief - it’s a threat.
And this whole “tolerance” nonsense? Please. You don’t tolerate a parasite. That’s not virtuous - that’s weak. Some ideas are poison. Some people are too far gone. Pretending otherwise just enables the collapse.
Sound familiar?
Because it should.
Pure unadulterated capitalism means adulterated bread, wine, and milk.
just to point out the other side of this…
(and I already know I’ma be downvoted for just saying that)
Some regulations are bad. Many are good and we actually need them, but some are bad. For example, when there’s a few large companies in an industry, they often lobby for regulations designed to increase the cost of doing business. While the big fish can pay the costs of these extra regulations, smaller companies cant, and just cant compete with the big fish, lowering the amount of competition in the industry and promoting more monopolistic behavior. We saw Openai try to do exactly this back when they went to Congress to warn the senators about the dangers of ‘agi’ and how it quickly needed to be regulated. Well they failed, and now there’s tons of companies with their own products that rival Chatgpt in every way other than the brand recognition.
you don’t solve this by having less regulations lmao
its solved by getting money out of politics, along with removing regulations that don’t make sense and keeping the ones that do
sure but regulatory capture and a controlled market are not really a counter argument to regulation so much as an argument for more regulation
strict rules enforcing disclosure and other sunshine laws are key to exposing corruption like you are suggesting
Wait, so you’re telling me that this politician who will definitely get a CEO position in that company does not want to make life better for me?
The tweet itself limits its scope to food safety regulations specifically. The title of this lemmy post was condensed for brevity, which might create the impression that it’s trying to make a larger point about regulations in toto. But I figured I could get away with it because I figured that surely people would read the tweet before commenting.
People? Read? Never.
Reminds me of car startups (in the US) taking off one wheel, turning them into moto/autocycles, so they wouldn’t have to go through expensive car certification processes
This is true, but it’s important to remember that some regulations were not written in blood, but instead in racism - see R1-zoning as one of the most significant examples.
Regulations are just tools, really. They can evidently be used for good, and should be used for good, but some are being used for bad and should be reformed.
Sure, and such regulations should be reformed. We should not just start turning stuff off and seeing who breaks!
Hands up if you didn’t already know that. Or intuited it. To me this seems to be something only US-Americans who argue purely ideologically for a “small government” need reminding of. They’re paradoxically often the first in line calling for government intervention when their drinking water is full of poop or something.
I will link to the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning.
Republicans: But we are the ones selling the spoiled milk.
Rivers full of industrial waste used to catch on fire, bosses used to lock workers in and let them die in fires(triangle shirtwaist fire),school was only for the wealthy, kids used to work, companies used to poison people en masse and deny it with no consequences(radium girls) work was 12 hours a day 7 days a week(people literally died to change this and trump people voted for this to happen again
That’s just the free market working as intended. Collateral damage.
Maybe people should do research on the available milk brands before giving it to their children if they didn’t want them to drink bleach.
Edit: I tried to resist adding the “/s,” but we live in crazy (stupid) times, so…
Excellent idea! I’m sure that information will be readily available from independent trustworthy sources that are not the government! Failing that, I always have my trusty mass spectrometer in my kitchen and I run all my foods through it just in case!
Regulations, and safety laws, and labor laws are WRITTEN IN BLOOD. People have literally died for every regulation we have on the books, it’s WHY the laws were written
And lawsuits
What is so incredible is that we are living st a time with such massive food surplus that it would blow the mind of anyone living in the past… but they will let all of it go to waste and just add bullshit to the food just because they can…
The absolute surplus afforded to us by modern farming and then the waste of so much of it will never cease to piss me off and will likely piss me off more in the future when we lose it to climate change.
Bleach, actually. A small amount of bleach added to spoiled milk makes it taste brand new. The government actually suggested this in a few countries for a while.
Plaster in flour was common enough that after the miller, the middle men, and then the baker all added a cut, there were loaves being sold with less than 20% flour in them. The result was mass malnutrition.
Also, and this is a spicy one but backed by basic economics, regulations are a required element to capitalism. The notion that deregulation is pro capitalism is a misinterpretation of the idea that markets are self regulating. A free market is one that is free of corruption and unfair business practices. Which cannot exist without regulations and the enforcement of those regulations. All our current economic woes are the result of straying away from proven economic theory (mostly deregulation) to the right allowing the corruption of the marketplace and emergence of a strong oligarchy.
Also, and this is a spicy one but backed by basic economics, regulations are a required element to capitalism
Indeed the free market itself has demanded regulations, hence why they exist. And the regulations don’t actually per se stop crime, they simply give a quick mechanistic action afterwards to getting retribution when the regulations are violated - they bankrupt corrupt businesses over time.
Or, they balance the benefits of corrupt practices with equally detrimental (to the corrupt entity) costs. Making them less profitable than fair trade.
I’ll go extra-spicy and point out that there’s no such thing as “ownership” as we know it without government. Legal-wonkishly, ownership is enforceable, transferrable, exclusive title to property. I can “own” land that I’m only physically present on for a few days per year because my name is on a piece of paper in a file cabinet in a government office, and it’s backed up by a court system and police force that’s constituted and willing to enforce my title.
I just mention it because a lot of the deregulation whiners are the same people as the “taxation is theft” whiners.
Oh boy. You struck gold here.
The US Constitution is the highest form of trade pact. That is all the federal government exists for, is to facilitate trade. Catching murderers, building roads, investing in education, stopping infectious disease… All there to keep us working, buying, and trading goods and services because without that whole segments of society starve and start wars.
I love how dumb the anti-taxation argument is because they have zero idea that they wouldn’t have any money, or jobs, without the government doing what it does with all that tax money.
Also, never forget that when you work for a wage you are selling your time. Looking at it that way changes how you feel about your life and job. It is 100% a choice that you make because the trade is worth the pay. If not, make yourself more valuable and get out. (It would take too long to explain how that works with disabilities and government aid).
A free market is one that is free of corruption and unfair business practices. Which cannot exist without regulations and the enforcement of those regulations.
And the truth is that the oligarchs, the established players in the game of capitalism, do not want a free market. They want a market with the illusion of freedom. A free market like the one you describe is, in fact, a true free market. Because then they have to actually compete with new players. Players who don’t come from the same backgrounds as the established players. Who may have different beliefs, who might not have the same skin color. Who may have a superior product or service to one or more of the established players. Who are free to sit at the same tables as oligarchs and take up space because their government gives them the power to do so. De regulation gives the illusion of a market being free, by making it so that if you want to be a new player in the game, you can, but unless you pay obeisance to the top players, you’re not getting very far. Plus the top players will buy you out, which is essentially them bribing you to walk away from the table.
That’s why an oligarchy is NOT the same thing as capitalism. You cannot have a free market if an oligarchy exists. Additionally, the four foundational principles of capitalism are:
- The right to own property and work for your own well being.
- The right to own the profits of your labors, after modest taxation.
- Laws and regulations to prevent corruption.
- The enforcement of those laws and regulations.
Edit: wow, the spelling errors sure make that seem crazy as hell. Fixed.
