From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.marrou
Subject: Labelling laws
Date: 20 Nov 1992 17:22:10 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

Out of several responses to my postings on labelling, some interesting
responses have come up.

First, nobody named an alcoholic beverage with a complete list of
ingredients despite my challenge to do so.  Nor has anyone explained why
manufacturers don't.

One person mentioned that some restaurants (such as McDonalds and Burger
King) are posting ingredients and nutritional information without regulations
requiring it.  My challenge was to name an industry where this was widespread
or universal without legal requirements, not exceptional cases which do so
as a marketing ploy to counter charges that their food is unhealthily fat
laden, etc.

One person challenged me to provide a reference for the case I mentioned of
someone dying from a reaction to albumen used to clarify wine.  I don't know
offhand where I originally read this, and researching this would take alot
of time.  I may try calling Consumer Reports or one of its allied organizations
when I have some time in a week or so.

A few people claimed that printing ingredients on labels was a burden on
manufacturers, and that people who didn't want to beg manufacturers for
information or join special interest groups that reviewed foods for their
particular needs were simply lazy and deserved what they got.  I don't know
what planet these people come from.

The first time a manufacturer needs to answer a letter asking for ingredients,
he will have done the work that could have gone into the label.  Ingredients
take perhaps 10% of label or package real estate, a very small amount.
Recently, Consumer Reports reported industry data on the cost breakdown of
a box of cornflakes.  Why not use that data to estimate the actual cost to
the consumer that would be relieved by eliminating such "burdensome"
regulations.  And of course these people are proposing increasing the burden of
learning ingredients that the consumer bears.  It costs time and money to
mail a letter to a manufacturer.  The manufacturer would not have to answer,
nor would he have to answer completely.  Indeed, complete answers might be a
marketing disadvantage: who wants to reveal that their secret miracle
ingredient in Coca Cola is really sugar or cocaine?  I think that making
the ingredient list (if present) a marketing tool where omission, ingredients
listed only by unidentifiable trade names, etc. will place a huge burden on
consumers trying to make reasoned choices between products.  Making products
commensurable by labelling laws helps shift competition from marketing
images in the consumer's mind to the actual products.  Marketing competition
that isn't based on real product differences is as wasteful as any bureaucratic
load imposed by a government: it doesn't produce anything, and it makes it
more difficult for a consumer to make a reasoned choice.  This hearkens to a
major theme that libertarians try to overlook: capitalism has its wastes
also.

PC's were presented as an industry where commensurable standards have been
voluntarily adopted.  (In response to my challenge to name one.)  The
standards listed were clock rates and main and disk memory.  I don't think
this is an analogous example to ingredients because of the homogenous
nature of PC's: they all have exactly those same ingredients, and you
cannot make a purchase without knowing how much you need.  This is analogous
to making a stew: you know the quantities in the recipe, so you specify
the quantities.  Useful commensurate measures in the PC industry that are
rarely available are mean time between failures, noise levels, how fast
typical programs will run under working conditions (as opposed to optimal
conditions), etc.  In addition, once you move away from IBM compatible,
all these figures are incommensurate.  Try comparing an IBM to a MAC based
on MHZ and MB.

I also liked Ingraham's point that on PC's, learning how much memory and
disk is attached is free, but that it's not free to learn the ingredients
of unlabeled food, or to evaluate many other important aspects of products
that labelling laws make conventional.  He points out that considerable
specialization may be needed to judge what the specs of a product are, and
that there are market efficiencies in trusting specialists to make such
judgements for us.  I think that most producers are already specialists in
their products, and the greatest market efficiency results from their
making the information directly available to us through a label.  This
label also functions as a contract, with a presumption by law that it is
complete and not fraudulent.  The producer also can get the information of
a change in contents out to the customer in a more timely fashion than any
other agency, since each product is labelled.

I can just keep on naming industries where labelling standards in the USA
provide low-cost efficiencies for consumers.  How about fabric contents and
care labels on clothing?  Mandated by law in the US, but not in most other
nations.  No international industry standard exists.  Would libertarians
like to explain that?

Mike Huben

"It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by
eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
the habit of thinking of what we are doing.  The precise opposite is the
case.  Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them."  Alfred North Whitehead