- cross-posted to:
- whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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Most US foods produced under their ‘regulations’ are forbidden in EU.
And for good reason.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.
That second paragraph is a pretty concise explanation on why ancaps and their ideas are stupid.
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.
We’ve had numerous laws precisely because companies couldn’t play fair, and made things worse for all involved. The government didn’t pass laws against company towns, scrip, and predatory pricing because they decided to ban things for fun.
is plaster bread low calorie
Technically. The constipation would probably balance out the weight loss though
Shitting bricks.
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…
And make it unaffordable, because fuck it why not
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…
The Free Market (holy be thy name) gives you the choice between $1/bottle for milk with chalk and bleach, or $10/bottle for one with less chalk and bleach. If you want one without chalk and bleach, you’ll need to find your own cow.
Also, the cows all have birth defects and need uranium-powered antibiotics to stay alive.
Now, let us open our song books to number 34: “Praise Hayek and His Perfect Mustache”.
Blasphemer! In our house we praise Wittgenstein, not that Austrian hack
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!
With no regulation there will be no other milk brands.
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.
Without regulation, the company could also just lie. Nothing would dictate that they would have to tell the truth about their product.
Well that’s why you need to do your own research. As in looking at products under microscopes, doing physics equations, etc.
If you’re not an expert on every product you purchase (and the science behind them), well then that’s on you and your kid deserves getting lead poisoning from his band-aids.
Poe’s law and all that
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?
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
And also they’re already basically Monopolies. You don’t have real options. Most food products come from like 3 mega corps who own hundreds of brands.
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.
Market self regulation assumes informed consumers that are smart enough to know what things mean
Not just smart enough, but informed enough. That means every person spending literally hundreds/thousands of hours per week researching every single aspect of every purchase they make. Investigating supply chains, performing chemical analysis on their foods and clothing, etc. It’s not even remotely realistic.
So instead, we outsource and consolidate that research and testing, by paying taxes to a central authority who verifies all manufacturers keep things safe so we don’t have to worry about accidentally buying Cheerios that are laced with lead. AKA: The government and regulations.
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.
Regulations are written in blood
But I’m an alpha man child and I need to make people bleed to prove it!
Don’t worry I’m sure we’ll find some place that lets you feel the bleeding edge of unregulated capitalism in an alpha release.
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!
I wish that would go without saying, but current events are unfortunately evidence of that not being true.
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.
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.
There’s also regulations that actually hurt the things they are intended to protect. It’s generally called perverse incentives. The example here is related to endangered species. It’s in the interest of those that find an endangered species on their property to “shovel and shut up” as the presence only creates problems for the owner.
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
Folks here think regulation, and immediately put it to food and Ai or other white collar applications.
Working in plastic manufacturing for ten years, and chemical manufacturing for a few more, the term deregulatuon terrifies me. Regulations keep employees safe, and aims to keep the products we make safe.
I think of environmental impacts first and foremost, which is the kind of deregulation I assumed was meant with this regimes obsession with bringing back coal, oil, and mining/deforestation if our national parks.
Getting money out of politics is implemented with regulation. We only have one environment, and they want to deregulate environmental safety/preservation.
…removing regulations that don’t make sense and keeping the ones that do
Having safety regulations for plastic manufacturing and protecting the environment makes sense, so those should exist.
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
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.
I know, but pretty much every comment on this point about regulation isn’t just discussing food regulations, their talking about regulations as a whole. Also my point about some regulations not helping can still be applied to foods.
I mean look at the stuff they say about ketchup:
The consistency of the finished food is such that its flow is not more than 14 centimeters in 30 seconds at 20 °C when tested in a Bostwick Consistometer in the following manner: Check temperature of mixture and adjust to 20±1 °C.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-155/subpart-B/section-155.194 - section B, part 1.
the flow of ketchup does not matter in the slightest to anyone
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
Pure unadulterated capitalism means adulterated bread, wine, and milk.
KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY BREADED MILK-WINE!
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.
And pure unadulterated something-else-ism would not, lol. The concept of responsibility that hard to grasp?
The concept of responsibility that hard to grasp?
For companies that seems to be case yeah
Right. And how does capitalism have anything to do with it?
Edit: companies do not exist. Humans do
And how does capitalism have anything to do with it?
Oh that’s a rhetorical question right?
Under capitalism companies have one and only one responsibility: making the most profit from the capital invested in them. This means that the responsibilities of all employees, even/especially those deciding how the company should act, are driven by this directive. A CEO would not be fulfilling their responsibilities to the shareholders if they made decisions that lower their profits without being forced by law to make those decisions.
companies do not exist. Humans do
Companies forwards their directive of maximizing profits to the humans that are employed by these companies.
No, that’s not a rhetorical question. The “profit above all else” you have described is a bullshit tracing back to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy
And again, there is no such thing as “companies direct responsibility”. Humans do
So once again, what does capitalism have to do with people being absolute morons?
It’s not people being morons it’s people following the incentives of the system and fulfilling the responsibilities given to them by the companies they work for. Both of those are directly tied to capitalism.
How exactly do you think that Wikipedia page disputes that companies are incentivised to maximize profit over everything else? It clearly says that
However, the doctrine of shareholder primacy has been criticized for being at odds with corporate social responsibility and other legal obligations.
The social responsibilities have to be enforced from the outside exactly because they are “at odds” with what companies would do without that enforcement.
“But what about my rights?? Drinking spoiled milk with chalk probably cures cancer or something, of course They don’t want you doing that! Why do you hate freedom?”
You’re free to add your own chalk.
Republicans: But we are the ones selling the spoiled milk.
