there are things we pay and maybe I would pay that are good for all of us. There are also things I would pay for even if my neighbour cannot and would let them use them or even consider it common property, as it is today. What I do not want is a fully coactive, unjust system with artificial regulations and countless state monopolies on top of me. I do not think spoiling half of the effort to someone is a promising proposition or that it is what it takes to sustain this. Needless to say, I am against welfare in a setup where it must be paid with debt. This is not what a responsible person does at home, why they can do it with taxes?
Who told you I need the government to not eat poison? This is so absurd. They have a chain of responsibility to do that today, maybe, but you could have certifications also, without any government intervention. Do you think people manufacturing the products you buy are interested in poisoning you? Would they do it? They would lose all their customers, their reputation would be damaged... no, I do not see it.
You think because the government is not there people do not care anymore whether they eat poison or not? Seriously? There is a clear demand for someone saying: this is safe food. It does not need to be the government. It just happens it is them who do it today. This is like saying people would not want schools if the government does not pay for them or hospitals. It is totally absurd. Things exist because people value them. And many do exist with no value because someone creates artificially from our taxes stuff. There is no more to it.
BTW, security, this is something many of you do not get either: you are safe because people around you have a mindset of respecting others, mainly and above everything else. That is why there are districts where you can go 2:00 a.m. safe and you know nothing will happen to you and some you would not go even at 20:00 p.m. a normal day! It has nothing to do with the police, or to a very little extent. You cannot have a police after each person. If someone takes out a gun and shoots you it will happen anyway.
If the police gave you unconditional security then that could not happen. On the other side, if you go to a prison, you have state workers every few meters. Is it any safer that good districts that are police-free? No way!! They are not. There are people passing drugs and violence, more so than anywhere else. Security comes first, and foremost, by what people are willing to respect or not, and later, there are outliers, yes, but this is not at all all the story.
The food you ate this week--where did it come from? Which pesticides were used in it's production? Was the product adulterated (see: honey)? Do you know the list of food additives the FDA has banned, and do you look for their inclusion on labels? Because someone in the government does, for your protection. So you don't have to. But you would!
Where was the "and then they'll be ruined and they'll never make another red cent," attitude when we received toys with lead paint? Never mind obvious malintent, what about products that have been unintentionally but irresponsibly handled--a e. coli or listeria outbreak? Lots of people who have perfectly good intentions can still kill people.
My question is, why are you so against a government agency (i.e. the people) from taking care of this matter? You get a lot of services at cost. It's cheaper, and there is no weird incentive structure where "well, we could let this product that doesn't make standard, because the ratings company stands to make a lot of money if goes through." Remember fannie mae AAA rating junk mortgage bonds because if they didn't, their competitors would? At least their industry was financial instruments and not food.
We've strayed too far from the topic, though. Calling taxation theft while reaping the benefits is hypocritical at best. And saying "well, some taxation is ok, but partially removing the QSBS break is theft," comes across as disingenuous. Who's to say your QSBS break didn't fund a school or the FDA or a sidewalk?
> Do you think people manufacturing the products you buy are interested in poisoning you? Would they do it? They would lose all their customers, their reputation would be damaged... no, I do not see it.
There's a long history of businesses adulterating their products in order to increase profit. One of the most infamous being the Chinese infant formula scandal[0]. It seems incredibly naive to think that these regulations haven't been paid for in human lives.
The main reason for having the government take responsibility for certain things is that they should be available to everyone in society. Roads and schools are a great examples of this in practice.
Also, who wants to live a world where you constantly have to figure out if something is safe to fucking eat.
> But how come you have to figure out if food is safe just because it is not the government who certifies that food?!
Because rather than trusting a centralised entity responsible for food safety I now need to figure out which of the 5,000 profit driven "certification" authorities are actually trustworthy and aren't just an arm of the food manufacturer. In the best case scenario I end up finding 5 or so organisations that will certify the ingredients I use most often, and I'm a bit fucked if I ever want to eat something they don't cover. In the worst case those 5 organisations have previously been bought by the market leader and now are now operated as fronts.
> Yes, you go to a link for China, where the biggest government is and you have death penalty.
The infant formula scandal is simply the one with the most widespread media attention, probably because the profit motive lead to babies being poisoned. It was a counter example to your initial point that food manufacturers would never dream of adulterating their products.
If you'd rather have a western example, then in the UK a supplier of one of the largest supermarkets Tesco, was caught adulterating their "beef" burgers with horse meat.
> Yes, you go to a link for China, where the biggest government is and you have death penalty.
I don't see how the death penalty has any bearing on what we're discussing.
> A good show of why governments work for food control, right? hahahahahaha! You are just making my point, man. It does not depend on it.
It shows that they had the motivation, resources, and authority to find and punish those responsible. I don't agree with the form the punishment took but it illustrates the limitations of a private certification body once people start dropping dead. In fact they would be incentivised to help cover up any incidents lest they lose customers.
Man, you're digging a grave for your own point of view. If you compare China where the regulation is strict (but compliance is sloppy) with India, where both are lacking, China's incidence of death from poisoning is at least 2x lower.
That is just partial data. There are way more countries and I am sure the correlation is not like the comparison between India and China. Though I admit I did not search that data, just an intuition that there are countries where people stick more to rules and do not cheat you and places where you turn back and they do it. And no, it is not because of regulations. I lived in South East Asia for almost a decade. Anyone will cheat u there way more often than in most european countries. It is not regulations. It is people and culture. Yes.
Who told you I need the government to not eat poison? This is so absurd. They have a chain of responsibility to do that today, maybe, but you could have certifications also, without any government intervention. Do you think people manufacturing the products you buy are interested in poisoning you? Would they do it? They would lose all their customers, their reputation would be damaged... no, I do not see it.
You think because the government is not there people do not care anymore whether they eat poison or not? Seriously? There is a clear demand for someone saying: this is safe food. It does not need to be the government. It just happens it is them who do it today. This is like saying people would not want schools if the government does not pay for them or hospitals. It is totally absurd. Things exist because people value them. And many do exist with no value because someone creates artificially from our taxes stuff. There is no more to it.
BTW, security, this is something many of you do not get either: you are safe because people around you have a mindset of respecting others, mainly and above everything else. That is why there are districts where you can go 2:00 a.m. safe and you know nothing will happen to you and some you would not go even at 20:00 p.m. a normal day! It has nothing to do with the police, or to a very little extent. You cannot have a police after each person. If someone takes out a gun and shoots you it will happen anyway.
If the police gave you unconditional security then that could not happen. On the other side, if you go to a prison, you have state workers every few meters. Is it any safer that good districts that are police-free? No way!! They are not. There are people passing drugs and violence, more so than anywhere else. Security comes first, and foremost, by what people are willing to respect or not, and later, there are outliers, yes, but this is not at all all the story.