At 11/4/09 08:08 PM, poxpower wrote:
One thing Anarchists don't realize it seems is that there are a LOT of laws.
A LOT.
Indeed, there are many laws. In fact, there are so many that one could dedicate one's entire life to studying them, and you probably wouldn't come close to knowing all of them. Especially since as you study existing laws, new laws are constantly being created, in the context of single states that is. You can include subsidiary states / provincial states as well, which doesn't make the problem any easier.
And of course, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
One would think that in such an orderly society as we have now, uniformity and simplicity of the law would be more commonplace.
Example: I was just watching tv and they were talking about marmalade and what can and can't go in your product if you want to call it marmalade. That's right, there is a part of the law that tells you how you can use the word marmalade when selling a little jar of it in a market.
Anarchists just figure that under a free market, bad products will somehow get weeded out magically. Consumer protection is a huge part of the law and of the free market. It makes sure that if you get swindled you have other recourses than "just stop buying that stuff".
For one i highly recommend using the word Market Anarchist rather than Anarchists. There are plenty of Anarchists who despise markets, and would prefer putting everyone into animal farms... You know... For freedom's sake.
Now I'm curious, how exactly does the state ensure the quality of food products? Inspections most likely.
Now let's say that I have a food company, i produce canned tomatoes and i decide (For whatever reason) That it's profitable to put a neurotoxin in the tomatoes before they are canned and put in supermarkets. We'll assume that, if people continued to consume the canned tomatoes at the same rate as they did prior to the insertion of the neurotoxin, my company ends up making more money.
**In a statist society, the only defense against my company doing this is the state meat inspector. For the statist scheme to work, the state hires inspectors who perform the public service of inspecting the canned tomatoes, finding out that my company put a neurotoxin in the tomatoes, and then reports to Washington that the company proper is breaking some sort of law, and then in comes the police**
Before any of this, we'll have to assume that there is some sort of public demand for tomatoes that doesn't have any neurotoxin in it, or, more generally, safe food products. If we assume that the public has no interest in safe food products, it would beg the question how a politician could win an election on a program of food inspection.
Now if you can figure out some other means by which the state can figure out that my tomato company (E.g. psychic telepathy) my argument doesn't apply.
So what can a big evil corporation like me do now that I've been thwarted by the munificent oversight of state meat inspectors?
Easy. bribe the inspectors or send lobbyists to Washington to rewrite the regulatory laws so they effectively prevent new tomato canning companies from entering the market. The men in Washington are not exempt from the vices of human nature, and they're service to society only extends as far as they have an interest in serving society.
That a singular agency has been given a monopoly on the regulation of food inspection (Even if private guarantee agencies are not prohibited from regulating food production, the crowding out effect applies to these agencies as well as any other voluntarily funded agencies) Makes it all the easier to bribe.
lobbying the government to have regulations favor, not fight, corporations is not some unicorn of economic theory. Why does the government legislate that people cannot buy health insurance over state lines? Why does the government legislate that states can only have a certain number of insurance providers within those state boundaries?
Why did the meat packers lobby for the passing of the meat inspection act?
Source because you obviously won't take my word for it: http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2006_0 8/reed-meat.html
According to the popular myth, there were no government inspectors before Congress acted in response to "The Jungle," and the greedy meat packers fought federal inspection all the way. The truth is that not only did government inspection exist, but meat packers themselves supported it and were in the forefront of the effort to extend it so as to ensnare their smaller, unregulated competitors.
When the sensational accusations of "The Jungle" became worldwide news, foreign purchases of American meat were cut in half and the meat packers looked for new regulations to give their markets a calming sense of security. The only congressional hearings on what ultimately became the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 were held by Congressman James Wadsworth's Agriculture Committee between June 6 and 11. A careful reading of the deliberations of the Wadsworth committee and the subsequent floor debate leads inexorably to one conclusion: knowing that a new law would allay public fears fanned by "The Jungle," bring smaller rivals under controls, and put a newly laundered government seal of approval on their products, the major meat packers strongly endorsed the proposed act and only quibbled over who should pay for it.
In the end, Americans got a new federal meat inspection law, the big packers got the taxpayers to pick up the entire $3 million price tag for its implementation, as well as new regulations on the competition, and another myth entered the annals of anti-market dogma.
___________________________
A free society is more flexible to the problem of regulating the quality of food (And pretty much everything else)
Assuming that society is genuinely interested in the quality of a given product, and individuals are not inclined to spend their time researching the production methods of products for them self, but they are willing to spend a bit of money to find out SOMEHOW what the quality of a given product is, it only makes sense that private agencies would emerge which would provide consumers with information in regards to the quality of their products.
Though perhaps i should say 'private agencies DO emerge'. Because what i'm talking about isn't some apriori theory. It exists.
http://superguarantee.com/
http://www.angieslist.com/angieslist/
http://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/fee dback.html
http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/
The existence of these structures depends solely on the confidence they inspire via the buyers. And i find it strange that somehow you think that the state would be able to figure out that someone is ripping them off, if millions of other people (who have far more reason to care about product quality) couldn't figure it out before hand.
In other news; individuals making choices based on subjective preferences responding to the incentives of profit and loss doesn't work.
Chemistry doesn't make sense either, how all those little particles form complex systems without any divine intervention.
You're theory holds that millions of people should invest their lively hood in a singular authority for which there is no reciprocity other than a dubious election process every four years, in which only two contenders can run and of which they are almost always "bought out" by the capitalists you so despise.
So i get the impression you are making a false dichotomy between capitalists and the state. State bureaucrats are human beings subject to the same incentives as everyone else. The only difference between the private companies and the state is that state services are paid for involuntarily.
