I authorize you to give me food and drug
Socialist states: Okay.
In a just society without a profit motive the incentive to adulterate foods/drugs disappears.
Today, regulators are needed to combat the consequences of the profit motive.
USSR still had oversight over food production, because people may still contaminate food accidentally or because they didn’t maintain the storage and production equipment in good (and clean) enough shape.
Even without the profit motive people can still fuck shit up, and you still sometimes get quacks trying to convince people to take their snake oil miracle cures. Standards organizations exists for a reasons.
As someone who has worked as a QC in both food and pharmaceutical industries, let me tell you that contaminations are not only driven by profit motives. Scientists and workers are all human beings and therefore are not immune to errors. Fuck-ups actually happen in the supply chain and that’s why regulations are there.
If there were no regulatory bodies to research and publish these contingent issues and their preventative measures, it would become near damn impossible for every drug maker to come up with their own safety protocols. Regulatory authorities are not only regulation institutions, they are also public services.
As a former anarchist, one thing that lead me down the path of becoming an ML was reading a CrimethInc. (Remember those guys) Zine that claimed you could cure type 2 diabetes with a raw vegan diet.
Granted this was one of their older zines back when it was just a polycule of punk in Eugene Oregon, but still.
That’s magical thinking o_O
And that really captures one of the biggest problems I have with Anarchists, at least the ones I see in America:clinging to magical thinking in the face of material evidence to the contrary. I think it’s probably simultaneously their greatest weakness and their greatest strength, and a contributing factor in why they take up so much oxygen in the American Left. Magical thinking is more alluring and comforting than material analysis, and that’s perfect for a populace that has been trained since birth to ignore material reality and instead take everything on faith (in American Christianity, in American propaganda, in american “news”). Talking with them and reading their texts, so much of the language and rhetoric feels like it’s trying to weave a spell that will draw the reader into this magical mindset.
The good: faith in the dream makes true believers die-hard to the end. Faith and comfort attract people who are disaffected with the institutions that betrayed their faith, but still need the comfort of belief.
The bad: it becomes taboo to ground arguments in reality. It creates a fertile space for wacky things like " you can cure type II diabetes with a raw vegan diet" to fester, and people get offended if I lovingly try to pull their heads out of their asses so they can see reality. Magical thinking is the most sacred of all anarchist tenets, because without it how can you go on fighting? (The answer of course is that I can fight on without magical thinking, and it’s a skill issue if they can’t).
I read part of the Crimethinc book Expect Resistance years ago and my experience was basically this:
read a page waow they capture the feelings of agony and alienation from capitalism so well! This is so wise and poignant! And they dream of a better world! This is profound!
read next page wtf this is the stupidest shit I’ve ever read Back and forth, back and forth.
I feel bad saying all this because despite my personal ruptures with anarchists, one of my best remaining friends is himself a committed anarchist who also seems very grounded in material analysis (and told me to read Mao because Mao has a lot of very wise lessons for organizers). So #notallanarchists but many I guess.
Mao has some really optimistic things to say people should really read him.
What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas?
As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech.
But incorrect ideas among the people are quite a different matter.
(Good example of why it’s important to read texts in full lol)
If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the imperialists; it is also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will completely collapse.
The United States now controls a majority in the United Nations and dominates many parts of the world – this state of affairs is temporary and will be changed one of these days. China’s position as a poor country denied its rights in international affairs will also be changed – the poor country will change into a rich one, the country denied its rights into one enjoying them – a transformation of things into their opposites.
He’s very good at revolutionary optimism.
Lmao. I still can’t believe that even cancer patients fell for that shit!
They’re desperate and will try anything out of desperation. I find it really tragic rather than funny, personally.
We are presently seeing in real time with Secretary
an extreme example of regulatory capture, which exists in many degrees where established institutional actors in the context of market interests end up with a revolving door with their regulators. It will take years after a socialist revolution to iron out the favoritism and biases that humans are prone to and which advanced capitalism incentivizes.Standards for food production would be much easier to do as a federation, then implemented across municipalities, instead of each municipality having to make its own standard from scratch. Also, the shortening of supply chains would put consumption within visible distance of the effects/externalities of consumption. I would be 100% in favor of collaborating with Marxist state formations or parties on developing standards.
Most drug regulation serves to prop up corporate profits. Doing away with IP law means cheap generic medications for everyone. A liberated populace will result in many more people collaborating on scientific research, such as the medical research required for essential pharmaceuticals. This means more peer review, more effective science, safer medications, and better patient outcomes.
That said, Western civilization has been in a centuries-long process of crushing all plebeian-accessible and/or holistic understanding of how the body works and how substances work on the body, in favor of reductionist institutions that hoard power over training healers. Most of the disease burden we face today is “diseases of civilization” which conventional medicine treats at a high cost but fails to cure. In a nutshell, we have a concoction of drugs that we’re on just to deal with the effects of each other, and 98% of people would be better off with just the right nutrition, fresh air, sleep, exercise, and maybe supplements.
For better-developed anarchist perspectives on production and propagation of pharmaceuticals, I would pass the ball to Mixael Laufer.
plebeian-accessible and/or holistic understanding of how the body works and how substances work on the body, in favor of reductionist institutions that hoard power over training healers.
all the woowoo holisitic bullshit that fails double-blind experimentation would not magically start helping people after the revolution either. The current system is deeply flawed but scientific investigation is very good at saying “no this doesn’t have any clinical effect”
and 98% of people would be better off with just the right nutrition, fresh air, sleep, exercise, and maybe supplements.
funny that you talk about secretary
and then engage in the most tired health in history.supplements are a scam and are a great example of the regulations not going far enough.
For real, higher in this very thread another user and I talk about this exact sort of thing.
But apparently it’s colonialist western chauvinism to demand double blind studies and evidence that something actually works
I meant supplements in a broad sense, to include stuff like herbal remedies.
No doubt that the stuff that’s commercialized and in overpriced pill form is just making a handful of people rich using the placebo effect. But a lot of the medications we have were developed from what indigenous peoples were using for centuries if not millennia.
It’s reductionist and borderline capitalist-brained to suggest that non-Western cultures did not have any effective way of treating and preventing illness.
that “developed from” is doing a lot of work. the important reason to have an aspirin tablet instead of brewing some willow bark is dosage control.
“traditional” or whatever medicine that works just became regular medicine. other than stuff that has like a weed panic around it the stuff that’s leftover is what didn’t stand up to scrutiny or couldn’t be cultivated
Certainly. Conventional (pharmaceutical- and surgery-centric) medicine won the race to being viable, and what came with it was the ability to refine things that came from different traditions.
It still suffers from problems of overdiagnosis, iatrogenic and hospital-borne illness, the antibiotic-resistance time bomb, now the reproducibility crisis, and being particularly suited for being turned into a tool of capital and of social stratification. We were just talking about this a few days ago.
I wouldn’t scrap it, but there are a lot of reforms that could be made to it.
I think it depends on a lot of factors. What’s your government like? What is the authority trying to accomplish? What are penalties? Are there penalties? Is it somehow getting in the way of human experience (street food). Is this being used only as a weapon for the ruling class to attack the marginalized? Is it actually accomplishing anything that is deem worth while for the public good? Is there research being done to make sure this is providing a public good? Etc
It prevents people from dying of curable diseases due to consumption of snake oil.
most definitely more rules and regulations than what currently exists in amerikkka. Anarcho-communists love rules and regulations.
