Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Capitalism without Regulation [W/O Government]


Due to all the Ron Paul Supporters that I seem to come in contact with it came to my attention how complicated this issue is. I want to use Ron Paul as an example, but this is not about Ron Paul, this is about all regulation, but Ron Paul is a good lead in.

A purely capitalist society would have no regulation - trade would be unregulated and no restrictions would apply, and thus the economy would decide basically everything. In Ron Paul's perspective, in his ideal he would remove the FDA and the EPA. I have debated this heavily and sometimes I get some people who understand, but many do not want to see it from another way. I urge you to read this with an open mind, and realize the importance of regulation in a capitalistic system!

No FDA?
No where in this post am I going to claim the FDA is a god send, nor is it without its problems. To say the FDA is bad is an understatement, but its negative issues do not outweigh what it does.

First lets make sure we all know what the FDA does. The FDA makes food 'safe' for consumption by investigating factories and production plants, making sure contamination in organic food is minimal. It also regulates anything that has proven effects on people (i.e. drugs). There was a controversy some time ago that the FDA would have to regulate cheerios because cheerios were proven to reduce cholesterol. I didn't follow it, but Cheerios can still be bought at the store. The purpose of this is so that medicines that PROVE to be useful to health, MUST fit the bill, and must be watched by an entity. That is, the FDA wants to make sure the drug you're getting is actually the drug you're getting and not a watered down placebo.

However, the bads that come with the FDA (and EPA) is that often the 'most qualified' people to run the FDA (and EPA) come from big business. After all, if you were the government, wouldn't you want someone running a huge foundation such as these, to have a great deal of experience at a similar level? Where would you get that... Big business. Its a bad thing, and it should be mended. I am opposed to how this works.

However without regulation, and in Ron Paul's ideal (RPI for short lol) there would be no regulation, and more catastrophically, there would be no ingredients labels, no nutritional value labels, no information would be absolutely mandatory by law. However, in theory, the economy could choose for the products that have labels.

But who is going to verify the labels? Do you have a Mass Spectrometer in your lab? Or a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machine? Didn't think so. Are you going to dish out the 100$+ per sample of food you want tested? Probably not. The FDA does this, and makes sure what is SAID is in your food is actually in your food. 

In RPI, this would be enforced by the individual suing the company for lying or so forth. Of course this could work, but would it always? Take for example, if a company starts dishing out a protein shake that is actually contaminated with heavy metals from the water it uses to grow its Yeast or Algae? You aren't going to know until it is too late, and suing someone from your death bed just doesn't ring 'freedom' to me. Again, you could easily run the samples yourself by sending it to a company, but do you want to dish out >$100 dollars for every new protein shake you try?

How about going to the Doctors and getting some medicine. How do you really know what is in there. The label no longer is regulated.

No EPA?
The EPA is what is saving the U.S's air from looking similar to Mexico City or Beijing. Introducing pollutant control is saving a couple years on your life, arguably. You have to pay taxes for it, but the alternative is pretty nasty.

In RPI it would be now in your hands to go and find which factories are producing the most smog, and then making the economic choice to buy from them. If you live in Southern California, and live next to a nasty smog producing plant, that sucks, even though you may not support them economically, people in Minnesota aren't going to give a shit about you. In RPI, you would supposedly be able to sue said company for dirtying your air, but without regulation, who's going to say what limit of smog is too much? How are you even going to prove that they produce the most smog. You'll have to run thousand dollar tests to compare different companies.

Water polluted? In RPI you better do some intense research, because it is in your hands and your hands alone to take on this problem. How are you going to find where the pollutants came from, and what if you can't prove it?

Do you like National Parks?
Well, too bad in RPI.

That is all.

No comments:

Post a Comment