The flipside of this is that companies put dangerous chemicals into food, cookware, etc. Not convinced things would be better on net.

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ericmay 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

...but then the other flip side is the government does things that result in contamination, dangerous chemicals in food, cookware, people dying, whatever.

You can't be "not convinced" that things would be better - "we" have a free market and that market produced sunscreen in the first place, without which we would have worse health outcomes. There's nothing to imagine - it happened. Things are better for us.

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DangitBobby 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Not all things the free market produced actually have resulted in better health outcomes than if they had been disallowed (many result in the opposite, in fact) and certainly not better economic outcomes for the people who bought and used them. Regulation, as always, is a balancing act between enabling those who would do good and stymieing those (who with the best of intentions or outright sociopathy) would do harm.

So yes I remain unconvinced. Free market maximalists tend to highlight their favorite part of the story while ignoring history.

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ericmay 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Regulation has not always resulted in better health outcomes than if the product had otherwise been regulated either. We don't need to set up this false dichotomy between markets and regulation and then bash markets over the head with the negatives aspects while ignoring negatives outcomes as a result of government action which you seem to be insinuating.

So to remain unconvinced doesn't make sense here. Though I guess I can just say I'm unconvinced of government regulations because why not? Same line of reasoning that you're using here.

	▲	DangitBobby an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds like we just agree then. Regulations are necessary and should be tuned, and the Free Market can operate within those regulations, the best of all worlds is where these things work together.

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Pragmata 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except you can check the differences easily.

China doesn't have the same strict regulations, and yet when we compare life expectancy the difference isn't particularly big.

Thought terminating cliches like "Better safe than sorry" simply don't stand up to scrutiny once you actually check the numbers.

No, eating brasilian beef isn't going to kill you, and stopping imports from there is going to do a whole lot more to make you poorer than it will help your health. Take a walk, that will help you a whole lot more, and won't make you poorer.

	▲	filterfish 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Life expectancy and quality of life are very different things.
	▲	kube-system 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> Except you can check the differences easily. Have you forgotten the origins of these laws? Around the turn of the 20th century, it was muckraker journalists that alerted the public to the deceptive and unsafe practices that food and drug companies were using at the time. People didn't know -- that's, eh, how deception works.
	▲	lazide 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Lol. There are so many confounding variables and long-delay influences, it’s nearly impossible to compare. Prior generation Chinese tended to eat much less than any generation Americans, which has a proven positive effect on longevity. Older generation Chinese also tended to (might still?) smoke like chimneys, which has a proven negative effect on longevity. Older generation Chinese also lived through some crazy ‘population bottleneck’ events like the Great Leap Forward, which can cause very odd one time and unpredictable long term effects on longevity. China started and enforced their one child policy early on, which has very weird population distribution effects, which will also have weird influences on longevity for everyone (due to excess or lacking societal support, etc). They have also (relatively recently) been exposed to a wide variety of industrial chemicals, artificial fertilizers and pollutants. Americans have had rapidly shifting food sources, pervasive but changing exposure to pesticides and artificial fertilizers, a massive shift from rural to urban to sedentary knowledge work, and widely shifting stress factors across a wide variety of areas. And a rather unique ability to spend massive amounts of time in commutes and automobiles. This is also offset in time; and quantitatively different than Chinese have experienced.
	▲	virgil_disgr4ce 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Except you can check the differences easily Huh? No you can't. Without regulation or oversight, companies will simply lie about what's in their product. The libertarian vision really handwaves the practical reality of "I'll simply do a gas spectrum analysis on every single bite of food I put into my body. Easy!" > Take a walk, that will help you a whole lot more, and won't make you poorer. OK, before the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act and Federal Meat Inspection Act, food was frequently adulterated with e.g. formaldehyde in milk, borax in meat, copper salts in canned vegetables, and chalk/plaster in flour or milk. Before the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, kids candy was dyed with toxic coal-tar. And on top of that was frequently contaminated with arsenic, lead, and mercury. So please explain to all of us how taking a walk is going to save us from these issues.